This is the Bompani range we are looking at:

Bompani 90x60 "giant oven" stove

The cost is about P53,000.  A similar-looking La Germania seems to be over P70,000.  Any feedback?

http://www.bompani.it/

1. The finished concrete walls need to cure from two weeks to a month before painting. The setting of concrete is a much longer chemical process than it seems.

2. The walls are treated with a neuralizer to reduce the alkaninity of the concrete. We used Boysen #44 Masonry Neutralizer. This is diluted 16/1. Be careful with these neutralizers. They seem to be pretty strong acids. We applied the dilute neuralizer with an ordinary paint roller and pan. When the neuralizer is dry the wall can be washed down with water or sanded to remove any effloresece caused by the reaction between the concrete and the neuralizer.

Applying concrete neutralizer

3. Next we primed the walls. We used Boysen B701 “Permatex” flat latex paint applied with a roller.

4. At this point, there may be lots of hairline cracks in the wall. This next step is to apply a very thin coat of masonry putty to the wall. We used Boysen #7311. It’s applied with a putty knife or a small piece of sheet metal serving the same function. The putty seems to be very similar to the gypsum joint compound used to fill joints in gypsum wall board. This material is NOT used on exterior walls. We’ll cover that later.

Normal cracks in concrete finishing

Applying masonry putty

Boysen masonry putty

5. Once the masonry putty dries, the wall is sanded. We bought a Bosch GSS140A orbital sander at Far Eastern Hardware. So far it’s holding up well.

Sanding after putty

Painting master bedroom ceiling

6. When the sanding is complete and the dust cleaned up, it’s time for the finish coat. We are using Boysen “Permatex” gloss or semi-gloss.

Almost done

This post may sound like an advertisement for Boysen paint.  We have had good luck with Boysen.  We’ve experimented with other brands, especially since some of the others offer the convenience of pre-mixed colors but go back to Boysen because the quality seems so good.  We’ve been buying our paint from Quezon Paints on Quezon Street in Iloilo City.  Bring them a paint sample and they’ll do an amazingly good job of matching it.  We are using a very light gray on the exterior of our house.  The Quezon Paint worker worked so hard to make a perfect match using white gloss paint and black and Sienna pigments.  He was a real paint matching artist!

Back of house painted very light grey

That’s it!

Our Philippine house building project.  Building to survive a Philippine earthquake. Philippine seismic design.

When we hired the engineer to design our house we were aware that the Philippines was included in the “ring of fire” earthquake zone and that our part of Panay Island had experienced a magnitude 8.2 earthquake in 1948. In 1948 the island was much less developed. Doubtless all or almost all the hollow block buildings on the island were built after 1948. The 1948 quake damaged or destroyed dozens of buildings. The huge and beautiful church in Oton was destroyed. The Alimodian church was heavily damaged. Bell towers were toppled, including that of the Jaro Cathedral. Of course these buildings were of very heavy unreinforced masonry construction. Many pre-War reinforced concrete buildings seemed to have survived quite well. Engineers were well aware of Philippine earthquake dangers and built very strong public buildings. The strength of these massive Commonwealth-era government buildings were one reason that the Japanese forces were so hard to dislodge during the Battle for Manila.

Finance Building, Manila, 1945 - withstood huge assault

Magnificent Oton Church, destroyed by 1948 earthquake

There have been some small, but still damage-causing quakes since 1948. A big quake could happen at any time. Tigbauan is in the most dangerous Mercalli earthquake zone.

Philippine Hazard Map

We asked the engineers to design the house with earthquake survival in mind. They did so. The size and quantity of reinforcing bar was more typical of that used in a two story house. The columns were substantial. We took additional steps which we thought might help. We used 6″ rather than 4″ hollow block for the exterior walls. As the blocks were filled, the larger block had a much more significant concrete core . We tried to police the project to be sure proper rebar was used, in some cases tearing down and rebuilding when problems were found. We used a very strong 1-2-3 (concrete, sand, gravel) mix. We installed reinforced concrete lintel and tie beams. We thought we were doing what was necessary to build an earthquake resistant house.

Recently we’ve been reading up on earthquake resistant building design. We learned that the really damaging earthquake motion is lateral shaking, not just vertical shaking, that lateral forces are the major destroyer of buildings. Structures built with concrete columns have great compressive strength but may not withstand lateral forces very well.

Another concept we encountered was that buildings should have “ductility” — that is that they should be able to flex without breaking. We deduced that a concrete column and hollow block building is about as un-ductile a building as you can get. A wood or bamboo building is likely much better at accommodating lateral forces without damage.

Another concept is preservation of building integrity — that if different portions of the building are not well connected, the building will break apart. This integrity is accomplished by tying the building together with stiff exterior and interior “shear walls”. We’re assuming that this is especially necessary in the non-ductile hollow block house.  You’ll be told that the weak block in Philippine houses is not a problem because the structural strength is in the beams and columns, but weak block can’t produce a strong shear wall.

One of the best resources I’ve found is the book, “Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country” by Peter Yanev, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1974.* Yanev analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the various forms of residential construction. Since almost all construction in the Philippines (except for high rise or bamboo buildings) is hollow block, here’s what he says about hollow block buildings.

“When the hollows of concrete blocks are properly reinforced with vertical and horizontal steel rods and then carefully grouted with poured concrete, the walls of concrete-block buildings form solid and continuous sheer-wall units. Thus, reinforced concrete-block buildings can exhibit great strength and resistance under the stress of earthquake forces. Attention to detailing and workmanship is critical however. Because the walls are an assemblage of separate block units joined by poured concrete and mortar, they can share many of the weak points of brick construction if the mortar is faulty or poorly executed, if the poured concrete grouting does not completely fill the cavities, if the steel reinforcing is inadequate, or if the connections with the diaphragms of the building are weak or insufficient.”

Yanev then goes on to list twelve specific construction standards needed to ensure a strong block building. Here I’ll mention a few areas of concern based on our experience with trying to build a strong block home.

Miserably weak 4″ hollow block are standard for building homes in the Philippines. These 4″ block just don’t have a large enough cavity for the concrete grouting mentioned above. Further, workers don’t seem to understand the need to carefully pack the cavities. I had to fight against workers using old, re wetted mortar instead of concrete. We did use decent quality 6″ block for our exterior walls. See http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-cement-blocks/. The big cavities in the 6″ block welcomed good filling. The 4″ block we used in building our interior walls was crumbly, poor quality stuff and we have no confidence in their strength. If we had used 6″ block throughout, we’d be more confident in the strength of the building. One reason they are not used is that so much concrete is needed to fill them — the very reason they should be used! In our view, the actual additional cost of using and filling 6″ block is minimal as compared with the benefit.

We mostly stuck with local standards for vertical and horizontal reinforcement bars in the block walls; 12mm vertical bars every 60cm and 10mm horizontal bars every 60cm.   When my workers inexplicably changed to using 10mm vertical bars, I had them tear down and rebuild the affected wall areas. The bars are supposed to be continuous. As a practical matter, the bars were spliced. Lifting block over three meter vertical rebar is not practical. My workers did not know correct splicing . Often the splices were far short of a 40X bar diameter standard spice — 48cm for 12mm, 40cm for 10mm. See http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-rebar-splicing/ for more discussion.

An almost perfect column but....

The rebar protruding out of the left side of this column will be spliced to the horizontal rebar in the hollow block walls.  The protruding rebar is too short for an effective column-to -wall tie.

Reinforcement around door and window openings. Yanev says that inadequate reinforcement around door and window openings is a major cause of failure. In an attempt to keep cool, we have lots of exceptionally big 5′ x 8′ windows. We did put in a continuous lintel beam on the exterior wall. Then two more blocks up we poured a roof beam using 16mm rebar. Door openings inside have lintels over each door. The 16mm top tie beams were also used on the interior partition walls. If we had it to do over again, the roof tie beam and the lintels would have been replaced by a well-reinforced 32″ tie beam, combining two courses of block, the lintel beam over the windows and the roof beam above.

The roof beam is complete

If you look closely at the photo above, you can see the lintel beam above the windows and the roof beam in the plywood forms.  They are separated by two rows of 6″ block.  If the block had been eliminated and a single 32″ band of reinforced concrete constituted the lintel and roof beams, the house would have been much stronger at very little additional cost.  This would have been an especially wise move given that the very large window openings  do compromise the building’s strength.

Weight up high on the building is another hazard. With lateral shaking, a clay or cement tile or a cement roof can act as a pendulum, magnifying the shaking motions. The situation will probably be worse with a two story building. Tile roofs also require a heavier structural framework to support them, adding to the problem. The low hip roof (quatro aguas) found on many Philippine bungalows is ideal. There is little mass up high and a sleek roof profile to avoid catching the force of typhoon winds.

So, we started out hopeful that we’d build a house with excellent earthquake survival qualities. The most we can say now is that our house is more rugged than most, but falls short because we accepted the concrete column and beam with hollow block infill model of construction which prevails in the Philippines. From an engineering perspective, this may not be an especially good choice for earthquake country. The reality is that in many cases poor materials and untrained workers compound the problems inherent in the design. Readers concerned about seismic survivability may do well to explore reinforced concrete and steel frame designs. Also, bear in mind that the Philippine hollow block residence is economical, can be built of locally available materials and is very well adapted to surviving the much more common hazards of life here, typhoons and flooding. Big earthquakes may come every 100 years. Typhoons arrive like clockwork every year! Also bear in mind that these views are those of a homeowner, not an engineering professional.

*This book is available used from many online book sellers for a low price. If you’re ordering from the U.S., U.K. or Europe for shipment to the Philippines, I’ve found that prices and shipping rates from ABE (http://www.abebooks.com/docs/HelpCentral/Search/index.shtml#11) are generally better than Amazon.

Installing the glass

My estimate of the total cost of our eleven windows is about P120,000 or about P11,000 per window.  Aside from the size of the windows, we used more expensive, higher cost materials; 11mm security bars, the best Z-bar we could find, epoxy primer, brass hardware, thicker 3/16? glass and Corning silicone.

Completed windows

Carport, almost done!

Carport, big enough for delivery trucks

Carport from the road

House Construction Expense Report
1/1/2010 through 7/18/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,379.95
Labor 9,465.06
Materials 36,341.32
Soft Costs 1,023.19
OVERALL TOTAL 49,209.52

Total includes stockpiled material; floor and wall tile, Hardiflex for ceilings, all plumbing fixtures and cost of carport.   Also included are the tools and equipment needed to build the house. Some of this (cement mixer) will be sold.  Some (power drills, saws, cut-off saw, welder, grinder) will be kept after the job is complete.  Many skilled workers are available, but realistically, the employer must provide the major tools.  You may be able to hire a contractor with tools, but you’ll pay more.

House is 150 square meters

Carport is 36 square meters

Size of crew: 7

One of the things that amazed me when I first came to the Philippines is that houses, even in very peaceful small places, had steel bars on their windows. Where we lived in Upstate New York, such a thing was inconceiveable. Most people there did not lock their houses and left their keys in the ignition of their cars. Surely, something is different. See our discussion on crime and security at http://goiloilo.com/crime-against-foreigners-philippines/

My experiences in the Philippines have been exceptionally positive. However, we’re building our house in a quite isolated location with no near neighbors. We see that Filipinos with nice houses take security precautions, so we think it’s prudent to assume they know what’s needed.

Building windows - security bars

How the windows look

We built security bars into our window design. The openings are small enough so that even a child could not get through. We worked to make the bars a positive part of the sash design, so that the bars would give the appearance of window panes. We are happy with the result. The window security bars are 14mm square. Each room, as required by our building permit, has a hinged window panel which serves as a fire escape. For more on how we built or windows see http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-windows/

We also constructed security screen doors. These are modelled on designs used in some higher crime areas in the U.S. See http://www.torreswelding.com/security_screen_doors.htm and   http://www.titansecurity.com/traddoors.html

Constructing security screen door

We welded these up of 1 1/2 x 1 1/2″ angle bar. We incorporated curly decorative panels so the doors would seem a bit less jail like. The doors will have ordinary lever latches and deadbolts. The deadbolts will be keyed on both sides so that one won’t be able to reach through the grilles to unlock the door. Are these overkill? There’s no way to really tell. We just feel we’ll sleep a bit better at night with these doors locked.

Almost completed 100 cm security screen door

The padlock is temporary, allowing us to secure the house, tools and materials during construction.  The door will have a conventional lever door latch and deadbolt.  The transom window above the door is fixed.  We plan to experiment putting colored glass in these lights. Screening is not yet installed.

Security door allows light in.

The door above is the smaller 80cm kitchen door.  One of the things we like is that these screen doors will be able to stay open day and night,allowing in more light and breeze. We will have a inside-opening standard door which will be closed during stormy weather.  The door shown above does not yet mortared into place.  It really is plumb! I checked it.

We also have pretty standard security lights; a lamp in each corner of the soffit and lights on our front fence and both front and rear gates. Our plans called for halogen lights in the center of the soffits. We decided to use a pole mounted yard light instead.  We bought a 250 watt sodium vapor street light and installed it on a pole in or yard. We decided on this type of light because it gives the most light per watt and because it can illuminate our entire yard.  Our lot is 1,500 square meters and except for the lighting we provide, totally dark.  As we live in our house we’ll decide how much lighting to use.  We’d like to minimize lighting at night so we (and others) can enjoy the starry nights.

Installing security light (250W HID Sodium vapor)

Finally, we will have a panic button in our bedroom which will be connected to a siren in our roof peak.  This is not so much to summon help but to scare off prowlers.  Of course we’ll keep a cell phone in our bedroom so we could call the police if we have a concern.  Did I motion a dog — perhaps the best security device there is!

Are all of these security measures necessary?  We don’t know.  Foreigners tend to think they are overkill, Filipinos less so.  We’ve lived in the Philippines for four years but always in situations where our landlords provide excellent security.  The compound in which our apartment is located is protected by roving, armed security guards, German Shepherds and video surveillance. When we move to our new home we’ll be on our own and responsible for our own safety.

Rough-cut Mahogany 2"x6" from local saw mill

Wood shop - door casings

It might be one of the other similar Shorea woods such as Almon or Bagtican (white lauan) or Bagras which is called “southern mahogany” which is really a Eucalyptus. Or, it could really be mahogany. The prized central American mahogany “Swietenia macrophylla” is widely planted in the Philippines and grows like crazy. The wood we bought has three or four growth rings in two inches so it’s far from the quality of old growth timber.

I was pretty familiar with American wood species but now I have to start from scratch.

UPDATE:  One mystery solved.  The wood I have been buying is indeed the Central American true mahogany Swietenia macrophylla. It’s from a sixteen year old plantation on Guimaras Island.

Door casing detail

We are also buying “Philippine Mahogany” doors. For us there is the same confusion as to what the wood really is. We are giving mid-price doors by Orowood of Mindanao a try. The rails on our first door are of “old growth” lumber — 25 to 50 growth rings per inch. We are not certain of the door hanging prowess of our carpenter is, so we are letting him make up one casing and hang one door so we can see what kind of job he does. The 80×210x41CM door cost P2650.

15 panel Orowood door

Cementing door casing into opening

You can see lots of finger joints in these mid-priced doors.  We have decided to treat the doors and casings with the dark brown version of Solignum.

Installed

The lighting in this photo shows how this door is made up of lots of finger-jointed bits of lumber.  Still, it’s a pretty nice door for the money.

Workers install Mahogany ventilator in roof peak

More to come…..

The height of the fill contained within the perimeter walls of the house is adjustable based on local conditions.  Our house is located on level agricultural land on Panay Island.  We want the have our finished floors about one meter above the surrounding terrain because we wanted to avoid any possibility of storm water entering the finished house.  We already owned our property when Typhoon Frank hit Iloilo.  We were able to see that there was lots of rain water in the surrounding rice fields, but no flooding.

Our lot the day after Typhoon Frank - June 22, 2008

Still, we had to consider that the surrounding land is open to development and that our future neighbors will fill their lots.  This filling is sort of an “arms race” with the loser receiving the storm water from higher filled neighbors.

The wall is up and filling delivered. The house now sits where the workers are standing.

We trucked in sand and gravel fill to raise the entire lot and the house location even more.  The height of the finished floor was raised even further by filling the area within building walls.  This fill was put in in layers with lots of water to settle it.  The final layer of fill was gravel.  Initial compaction was done manually using the medieval device shown below.

Medieval Compacting

"modern" gas powered compacting

Then we were able to rent a gas powered compactor for P450 per day including the operator.  Three days of compacting produced a very, very firm surface.  The next step was installing the plumbing pipes and electrical conduit which will be embedded in the concrete floor.  All electrical circuits embedded in each floor are tested before the floor is poured. While all electrical circuits are in conduit and theoretically could be rewired, some wires in this room go outside the house to lighting at the front gate, so they could be a little difficult to repair.

Next the reinforcing bar was installed.  We used 10mm rebar on a 60cm x 60cm grid.  Philippine workers are not always careful about positioning the rebar up in the concrete.  We had the same problem with our footers.  Workers would let rebar lay in the bottom of the footer excavation rather than raise it up into the concrete.  Plastic rebar “chairs” are used to position rebar in the U.S.  but I have never seen them for sale in the Philippines.

Commercial rebar chair

Fellow blogger Yannic made his own cement “chairs”.

Concrete spacers

I showed this photo to my foreman and said that’s how I wanted things done.  I suspect that if he was left to his own devices no rebar supports would be used.  Anyway, my foremen supported the rebar grid using scraps of “L” or “J” shaped rebar driven into the compacted fill and wired the the rebar grid.  At first I was dubious, but in fact the fill is so heavily compacted that these supports are probably stronger than the plastic chairs.  Another innovation used by my foreman was to drill holes in the finished walls into which he inserted the rebar.  This provided good support for the rebar at the edge of the room.

Our "chair" from scrap rebar

We did not use a vapor barrier under the concrete.  My reasoning was that such barriers are essential in sealed, heated houses in the north to try to keep interior moisture levels under control.  Since we are aiming toward an all windows open, maximum ventilation approach, I could not see the function of a vapor barrier in the floor.  Am I missing something?

Our concrete floors are about 5″ in thickness.  We are using a 1-2-4 mix (one part cement, two parts sand, four parts gravel).  I do not allow any concrete to be poured except under my supervision.  My crew had no problem accepting my mix — generally 1-2-3, but I had many fights with them over how wet the fix should be. Over the months they have gotten much better about that.  Another problem was not allowing enough time in the mixer.  When mixing and pouring concrete my crew gets into a hyper-macho mood, wanting to go really fast.  Concrete should be in the mixer at least 2 1/2 minutes.  Unsupervised, they would dump the mix too quickly.  I have insisted that they slow the pace and do careful rather than fast work.  They really would rather work hard rather than deliberately. After these months of working together, we generally produce good concrete without much fuss.  Unfortunately, I don’t trust my foreman to do things as I would like them done unless I am there supervising.

Floor layout

This photo shows how my crew goes about floor cement work.  Chalk lines show the desired floor level on the walls.  As a first step, a narrow band of concrete at the proper level is laid down the middle of the room.  The similar bands are laid at the room edges.  These two start to set.  Then the areas between these bands are filled in, starting at the far corner of the room and progressing toward the door. Tools being used are a bamboo pole to “vibrate” the wet cement into all areas, a simple wooden float and an 5′ aluminum bar. Earlier, we had a gas powered concrete vibrator but we sold it after I realized it required skills we did not have to use it properly.

Since the rooms are to be tiled, an ultra smooth surface is not desired.  While we have our roof on and the concrete is not exposed to the sun, we still keep the floor wet for at least three days.

Electrical conduit converge on panel box

These electrical conduit will soon be buried in the concrete floor.  The genius of this system is that wires can be replaced (if necessary) by pulling them through the conduit embedded in the floors.  For this to work there can be no shortcuts.  The wide arc elbows must be used.  There are no electrical conduit tees.  The blue water system fittings can be used with the electrical conduit but such use may well defeat the ability to pull new wires as the bends are too sharp to pull through.  We used a tee and I regret it!

Kitchen floor being poured

The kitchen/living room pour used 41.5 bags of cement 160 bags of gravel and 80 bags of sand – 42 loads mixed in our one-bagger mixer.  This took a very full day for our seven workers.  They were really tired afterwards.  We bought them three pizzas and three liters of Coke.

Porch floor

Note the concrete on the right.  The workers are now consistently making concrete with a decent slump — not soup.  The mix is 1-2-4.

Next — tiling

We’re building a house in the Philippines.  Here’s how we’ll be installing our ceilings.

Our ceilings will be about 30cm (1′) below the top of our walls and 3.1m (10′) above the finished floors.  We wanted high ceilings because we hope that the hot air will rise above us but also because it makes our modest rooms feel more spacious.  Changing lightbulbs will be a challenge!

Generally Philippine ceilings are marine plywood or one of the cement board products such as Hardiflex.  The price is about the same.  There are plusses and minuses for both.  Termites and rot don’t attack cement board but the cement board is said to be more affected by roof leaks.  Originally we decided to use marine plywood.  Cement board is a totally uniform material.  Plywood has some texture, some hint of once being a natural product.  We  like the look of plywood ceiling better but, based on comments we’ve received (see below) on this blog, we’ve decided to use 4.5mm Hardiflex.

Ceilings can be supported by wooden joists or one of many suspended ceiling systems.  We decided to use 1 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ 2.5mm steel angle bar as our main ceiling support system.  This decision was a bit irrational, but not totally.  We have good welders.  Decent wood is expensive, more expensive than steel.  We paid P375 for 6M lengths of the angle bar.  We painted the steel with epoxy primer, but then wood is normally treated with a preservative.

The usual lightweight suspended ceiling systems just seemed too flimsy.  As can be seen in the photo, our ceiling system is strong enough to walk on.  Our roof is high above the ceiling, three meters higher at the center, so the possibility of attic storage is real.  Anyway the angle bar system seemed substantial and affordable so that’s what we’ve done.

First, angle bar is bolted around the perimeter of the room at the ceiling height.  These are bolted to the hollow block wall using 3/8″ lag screws and lead expansion bolts.  A 60cm (2′) x 120cm grid of angle bar is welded to these supports.  The 120cm span is split using 1″ flat bar.  The angle bar crossing the center of the room is heavier (2″ x 2″ x 3mm) to support the heavy Hunter ceiling fan.  Supports using scrap material extend from the ceiling angle bar to the steel roof rafters, further making the ceiling structure strong.

I have to disclose that our engineer has told us that this whole system is ridiculously overbuilt and wasteful, as are so many things in our house.

Each 60 x 120cm panel will have a bevel at the edge.  The holes for recessed pin lighting will be cut before the Hardiflex is installed.  The Hardiflex will be attached to the angle bar using blind rivets recessed into the Hardiflex.  The recesses will be filled and the ceiling painted.  A crown molding will cover the joint between the Hardiflex and the wall.  These are all very standard ceiling details on modest Philippine houses.  We find this grid-pattern ceiling to be attractive.  Fancier Philippine houses go in for all sorts of over-the-top ceiling elaborations, the more complex the better.

Ceiling in our apartment

Above is the plywood ceiling system in our apartment.  It’s simple but the 60 x 120cm panels give a little more visual interest than a plain ceiling.

Riveting Hardiflex panels to steel ceiling structure

Holes are drilled through the Hardiflex, angle bar (1 1/2″ x 1 1/2″ x 2mm) and flat bar and the Hardiflex riveted to the ceiling with blind rivets.

The first ceiling being finished

The center cutout is for a ceiling fan.  There are four other cutouts in this room for recessed lights.  The rivet heads are recessed and filled with a polyester body filler.  Other finishing is done with the same type of gypsum joint compound used for sheet rock.

Kitchen/Living Room Ceiling

This shot shows how much of the “attic” will be concealed above the kitchen-living room ceiling.  That kitchen ceiling looks low but is over 10′!  About 5,000 5/32″ x 3/4″ blind rivets will be used in total to attach the Hardiflex to the angle bar ceiling structure.

Completed ceiling, but no crown molding yet

Bracket for Hunter ceiling fan bolted to angle bar joists

1 1/2" crown molding

Finishing is with one coat of Boysen flat latex and two coats of Boysen gloss latex.

More to come…

Finishing

Workers begin by laying out a network of guide strings to ensure that the finished wall will be flat.  During the process, about 3/4″ of finishing will be applied, first rough courses to level the wall and then increasingly smooth final coats.  Lots time and cement are consumed.

Finishing - more

It’s this process of finishing which makes me really appreciate the Filipino method of construction.  My workers are quite skilled at their finishing work.  I worked at restoring old houses in the U.S.  We always tried to use plaster rather than sheet rock when we could afford it.  Plastering, especially over wood lath, creates wall surfaces and interiors with character and visual interest whereas sheet rock is a too-perfect machine and rather flimsy made surface, especially for a historic house.  We referred to the “curse of sheetrock”.

To do the plastering in the U.S., we had to seek out specialized workers and materials.  The wages paid were steep and the quality of the work not as good as that delivered by my Philippine workers.  When I compare my Philippine house to U.S. houses built of 2×4 or 2×6 studs, sheet rock and T-111, to me it feels like the Philippine house is so much more substantial.

It seems to take my crew three masons and one or two helpers about three days to finish a bedroom.  We project that the house will be finished, inside and out by mid-July.

Finishing (plastering, stuccoing) the outside of the house

Finishing - first steps

This photo gives insight into how the wall finishing proceeds.  First strings are used to determine the final finish level.  The vertical bands you see on this wall are set by these string lines.  Then the areas between the vertical guides are filled with cement mortar — in this case lots of cement mortar.  Once this roughing sets, the wall is ready for the smooth finish coats – see above.

This photo shows a cross section of a finished wall.  On the outside (both) is the cement finishing, next is the outside of the hollow block, in the middle is the concrete filling of the hollow block.  This an exterior wall built of 6″ hollow block.  If we ever built another house (never!) we’d use all 6″ block.

More details to follow….

Compounding the problem is the metal roof which can turn the attic into an oven. The overall effect is a house which can be markedly hotter than than the outdoor temperature and very uncomfortable. Our own apartment is routinely over 90 degrees inside even when it’s in the 70s at night. The coolness of the tropical nights don’t penetrate our bedrooms which remain hot all night. It’s painful to switch on the air conditioning when just outside the walls is a lovely, comfortable tropical night.

Here’s how we are trying to avoid this fate in our new house. Firstly, we tried to design the house to resist the sun. Our eave overhang is almost 1.5 meters, almost 5′. The overhang, combined with the relatively low eve height outside (about three meters) and big windows placed high on the walls, keeps almost all the sun from the windows and greatly minimizes sun on the concrete building itself. The house is mostly shaded from the midday sun — say from 9am to 3pm. We’ll plant plants, shrubs and trees to further keep the sun out of and off of the house. It’s amazing how many Philippine houses are designed with little or no regard for the tropical environment in which they will be situated. The main focus seems to be on grandiosity.

Overhang will shade the house. Big windows will let in the breezes.

Our "cool" roof

We also really focused on keeping the roof and attic cool. We used a very light colored reflective roof material. Such reflective roofs reflect much more of the solar radiation than the more popular dark colors. Dark colors such as dark red, dark green, brown and terra cotta are popular because they mimic the look of clay title but this is a triumph of appearance over comfort. Houses with absorptive roofs need bigger air conditioning units which have to work harder to disperse the absorbed heat. With no aircon the house is just hot.

Our next step was to install reflective metal foil underneath the metal roofing. This reflects back a significant amount of the radiant heat that makes it through the roof. Next is a 25mm layer of fiberglass bat insulation. The foil and fiberglass insulation were add-ons to our roofing contract. The fiberglass insulation is referred to as “ACI” insulation. ACI is a now defunct manufacturer of fiberglass bats but fiberglass is now all called “ACI” just as all toothpaste is called Colgate.

Fiberglass insulation.

The metal roof is screwed to steel roof supports called purlins. The roof installers wanted to put the fiberglass insulation over the top of the purlins and then screw-down the sheet metal roofing. This of course would have totally compressed the fiberglass at the purlins, minimizing its insulative value. Just imagine installing fiberglass batts over studs rather than between them and then nailing on plywood sheathing!

Of course the notion of insulation is much more foreign to the Filipino than to those of us from the north where insulation is a fact of life and survival. While they did not really understand my objection to compressing the batts, they agreed to install it the way I wanted it installed. They drilled holes through the 3″ high metal purlins and threaded a network of 16 gauge wire to support the bottom of the insulation. The wires were spaced every 20cm.

The reflective foil did not come attached to the fiberglass batts so the workers manually glued the foil to the batts using contact cement. This sounds awkward but went well. First they sawed the 120cm wide rolls of fiberglass in half to create batts to fit between the purlins which are spaced 60cm on center. The batts, with the foil up, where laid over the network of wires and then the roof panels were screwed down. The wires were 1.5″ down from the top of the purlins so that there was a 1/2″ airspace between the underside of the roof panels and the reflective foil. This is ideal.

Roof going on over foil and fiberglass

The end result is a reflective light colored roof, a 1/2″ airspace, reflective foil and then 25mm of fiberglass insulation. This combination should make the house several degrees cooler. In fact it seems to be working. Since the roof was installed, we’ve had very hot weather but the house seems cool. There was no added cost for the light colored roof. Our roofing came from DN Steel. They call the color “beige”. The foil and the fiberglass added about P50,000, installed. The roof also has two large ventilators at the peaks and will have soffit vents to further control heat in the attic area.

There are other things we’ve done and will do to make the house cool. Our property is located in an open and very breezy agricultural area. We put in exceptionally large (240 x 160 cm) windows casement windows. We like casement windows because 100% of the window opening can be open, whereas sliding windows leave 50% closed, even when the windows are fully open. We also put two windows in each room for cross ventilation, except for one room. Since the windows are exceptionally large, thermal mass is reduced and air circulation increased. Our ceilings are over ten feet high. Each will have a Hunter ceiling fan.

Workers install Mahogany ventilator in roof peak

Completed ventilator. Screening is behind

It’s our hope that all these things will combine to reduce the interior temperature of the house by several degrees, especially at night. The weather is hot now, between 95 and 100 most days but the house is distinctly cooler, cooler even than my bamboo office. Time will tell, but we’re optimistic that we can mostly avoid air conditioning and instead have the delicious fragrance of the Gardenia waft in our open bedroom window at night. The Gardenia is already planted and blooming!

Listen to “The Chilling Facts about Air Conditioning” podcast on Tom Ashbrook’s “On Point” at http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/05/chilling-facts

Lots more reading on cool roofs at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory http://coolcolors.lbl.gov/

NYT: White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/science/earth/30degrees.html?_r=1

http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/publications/html/FSEC-CR-1220-00-es/index.htm

(Apologies to those who find this post duplicative.  It’s just a new summary of previous posts.)

Interior plumbing

We will only have “cold” water plumbing so our water supply plumbing is quite simple.  We are trying to avoid running pipes in tiled walls or tiled floors to avoid having to tear out tiling to make repairs.  In this photo the blue pipes are supply lines to a bathroom on the opposite side of the wall.  That way, if there’s a leak, we can make repairs from the untiled wall in this bedroom.

Plumbing outside

This photo shows three elements of the plumbing system.  The horizontal blue pipe is a 1″ water supply line which encircles the building outside.  Repairs and changes to these outside pipes will be simple. The vertical blue pipes are 1/2″ lines into the bathroom inside of this wall.  These pipes can be repaired from the outside with no need to damage the tiled bathroom.

The upper 4″ orange pipe is leading from the toilet to the septic system.  Only toilet waste goes into the septic system.  The lower 4″ orange pipe carries downspout water from the roof and wastewater from the kitchen, showers, lavatories and floor drains to a series of catch basins and then through the perimeter wall to a ditch.

Catch basins

The house is surrounded by a system of catch basins and pipe which discharge outside the lot.  The 3″ pipes facing the house will be connected to the roof downspouts.

Gray water piping

These two 4″ pipes carry gray water from the catch basin system out through the perimeter wall and into a future roadside drainage ditch.

Septic tank just about done and ready for 4" reinforced concrete top. 3-3-10

Stainless steel water tank in car port.

Rather than having a separate water tank tower, we put the 500 liter stainless steel water tank high in the roof structure of our car port.

Mixed materials

We are using blue plastic water pipe but all stainless steel and brass fittings at faucets and fixtures.  That way when we need to make repairs in the future we will have good material to work with rather than having to tear out tile to replace a stripped plastic fitting.  This is a riser for a hose bibb. It’s been checked for leaks and will be cemented  into this exterior wall, under about 3/4″ of cement finishing.

Testing for plumbing leaks

This is the set up we used to test our plumbing for leaks before cementing the pipes over.  The green hose from the water pump connects to and pressurizing the system.  We found only one leak in the plastic pipe but several in the brass and stainless steel fittings.  This set-up also provides water during construction.  Eventually we’ll move the water pump along with a washing machine and generator into a concrete utility building attached to the carport.

More plumbing coming…….

House Construction Expense

Our Philippine house building project – construction cost report as of 5-22-10.

Roof completed

1/1/2010 through 5/22/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,545.19 (Most to be sold at end of project. Concrete vibrator already sold.)

Labor 7,095.75

Materials 30,251.73

Soft Costs 1,011.65

OVERALL TOTAL $40,904.32

Total includes stockpiled materials, almost all electrical and plumbing supplies and fixtures. Electrical work about 50% complete. Plumbing about 75% complete. Includes work on 35 square meter carport. Next step finishing the walls (cement plaster) inside and out.

Cost per square meter to date P12,271 (P10,226 including carport)

For prior expense reports see http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-construction-cost-report/

Project after 70 work days 4-19-10

House Construction Expense 1/1/2010 through 4/21/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,484.79

Labor 5,866.73

Materials 21,756.69

Soft Costs 972.16

OVERALL TOTAL $31,080.37

Number of workers: 8

Cost per square meter P9,324 so far.

Cost figures include a P200,000 ($4,500) deposit on roofing not yet installed.

http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-construction-cost-report/

We’re building our dream home in the Philippines and want it to have a Filipino flavor.  Our roof design seeks to capture a bit of the design aesthetic of the classic Philippine native house – the “bahay kubo”.

Here’s a little about the architectural design of our roof.   Our roof design goes against the trend.  Increasingly elaborate roof designs are very popular, especially for houses that are or aspire to be “upscale”.  The more valleys, ridges, dormers and other complications the more impressive the house.  Bob was brought up in the northern U.S. where every valley was another spot for ice and snow to build up and cause ice dams and leaks to form,  so simple roofs are an instinctive choice.

These over-complex roofs are a recent development in the Philippines.  Traditional Philippines houses had “dos aguas” or “quatro aguas” roofs.  These terms are a carryover from the Spanish “un tejado de dos aguas”, a simple ridged roof or “un tejado de quatro aguas” a hip roof.  The older members of my construction crew still understand and use these old Spanish terms.

The hip roof has been very popular in traditional Philippine buildings and for good reason.  In a land where buildings are buffeted by typhoons every year, the hip roof is streamlined, giving the winds little purchase.

The roof above was popular in the 19th century but during the Commonwealth era one starts to see a modification which adds roof vents.

In Western architectural lingo such roofs are called “gablet” roofs or “Dutch gable” roofs.

Certainly the aesthetic for this roof  is inspired by the roof profile of the beloved Philippine “bahay kubo” native bamboo house. Filipinos, rich or poor, seem to have a deep attachment to life in the provinces.  For Filipinos, the provincial life  and the bahay kubo conjure up an idyllic paradise lost.  Of course Filipinos know about the hardships of provincial life, but those don’t seem to dilute the romantic attraction of life in the provinces.  Just consider the current crop of TV soaps which alternate between a sorid, squabbling life in huge, pretentious houses in Manila, lives filled with greed, envy and bickering.  Then in a flash you are in the provinces, in a bahay kubo,maybe with some pretty capiz windows–a harmonious pastoral life populated with kindly, wise lolos and lolas with birds singing and maybe a carabao contentedly ploughing in the background!

This rustic bahay kubo roof design, transferred to wood frame and concrete buildings,  has evolved to incorporate a ventilator in the peak of the roof.  We wanted to incorporate at least some Filipino style into our house and also realized the advantages of attic ventilation under our hot metal roof.  Here’s our original design for a two story house.

We finally decided on a one story home but kept the roof design we liked so much! More at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-design-devolution/

Here’s a single shot showing our bamboo bahay kubo and our house roof taking shape.  See the similarities?

More to come……

Roofing systems have become very standardized in the Philippines.  What we describe here is the roof system that goes on most houses except the very high end such as real clay tile or cement tile, a few asphalt shingle roofs and the Nipa or sheet steel roofs of the ordinary “bahay” – native house.

Steel trusses of various designs rise from the topmost concrete roof beam.  The trusses are welded to stubs of rebar protruding through and well anchored in the concrete roof beam.

The trusses are almost always welded-up on-site and then primed.  It’s best to use one of the two part epoxy primers, especially if you’re anywhere near the sea.  We used Boysen Red Oxide Epoxy Primer which we bought from Iloilo City Hardware on Iznart Street in Iloilo City.  The cost was P603 per gallon.  You get two cans per gallon, the primer and a smaller can of  hardener.  You’ll also have to buy epoxy reducer, an expensive thinner for epoxy.  The reducer is about P420 per gallon.  Some of my crew members tended to waste the reducer, especially trying to clean brushes. Finally, I learned to buy cheap brushes which could be discarded.  Once the hardener is mixed into the primer, it very difficult to clean brushes.

Roof is going up 4-10-10. This photo shows the perimeter wall, the carport, the bahay kubo and my "office".

Metal trusses of of various designs rise from the roof beam which top the hollow block walls.  The trusses are welded to stubs of rebar previously embedded in the roof beam for that purpose.  This system seems to work.  We did not see any roofs of this type blown off during Typhoon Frank in Iloilo City.  Here you see four 12mm rebar wrapped around the truss and welded in place.  They will be painted later.  In total, the roof is held on by at least thirty such rebars.

Welded rebar ties the roof to the house

Our roof  trusses were a bit unusual.  Most trusses use the interior walls of the house for support so that the spans are shorter.  This requires less steel and saves money.  Our trusses were designed so that they could span the entire house without support — sort of like what you’d see in a basketball court or warehouse.  This would allow us to have quite a lot of open space in the attic, although we never requested this and are unlikely to use it.

Making roof rafters in our on-site welding shop

The center girt is 40cm wide and is welded up from 2″ x 2″ angle bar, 5mm for the frame and 3mm for the webbing.  The 35cm wide rafters use the same angle bar.

Originally, the height of our roof from the top of the wall to the peak of the roof girt was to be 2.5 meters.  We put up the center girt and two rafters and it just looked too low.  On the spot, we decided to increase the roof height to 3.0 meters This what’s possible when you’re running your own crew, but such decisions, if they’re not carefully thought out, can have ramifications you’ve not yet imagined.  In this case we seem to have gotten away with this snap decision.

3-23-10 The center girt and first rafter go up and we decide on more roof pitch.

Turnbuckles welded to rebar are used to bring rafters into alighnment before purlins are attached. Also shown are collar ties at the peak of the roof.

Once the trusses and or rafters are in place, a system of lightweight steel purlins are installed perpendicularly across the rafters.  The purlins can be initially first pop-riveted to the rafters, then when the all adjustments have been made, welded to them. These are our 2″ x 3″ 1.2mm roof purlins.  They all have to be painted with epoxy primer.  We paid P400 each for them in April 2010 but steel prices are going up rapidly.  Our roof needed 85 of these purlins.  They are spaced between 50 and 60CM apart.

2" x 3" roof purlins

Purlins are welded to rafters using scraps of angle bar

Roof structure

This photo shows the purlins installed across the rafters (trusses). The photo really shows all the elements of the roof structure; the 40cm center girt at the ridge, the 35cm rafters, the collar beams and the purlins.  Next comes the facia and soffit frames.

The purlins support the long span steel roofing, but before the roof itself is put on, a metal  ”facia frame” is installed around the perimeter of the roof.  Our frame will be welded up of 1″ x 1″ angle bar and 1″ flat bar.  This frame supports and is hidden by a metal facia “board”. The facia frame may also eventually support the soffit.  At the rakes, the facia frame may be welded to ends of the purlins.  At the eves they can be welded across the rafter tails.  The facia frame is the structural heart of the Philippine roof cornice system.

A simple roof

This is a photo of a very simple roof.  It shows the scalloped prefabricated steel facia, the prefab gutter attached to the facia and the red oxide primed purlins supporting the unpainted galvanized roofing.  On simple buildings like this one, pop rivets hold things together.

Shown here are small samples of the standard facia "board" (left) and the gutter (right) used in Philippine metal roofing.

Here are the metal facia and the gutter positioned on a facia frame.

Once the purlins, facia and soffit frames, facia board and gutters are in place, the long span roofing can be screwed to the purlins using tek screws.  This is usually done by a crew working for the company which sells the roofing.  ”Long span” means that the roofing sheets are long enough to reach from eave to peak without joints. Once the roofing is on, the matching ridge caps and any other accessories go on.

Soffit and facia frames

This photo shows the soffit frame (below) and the facia frame. The soffit frame is constructed of 1½ x 1½” 1/8″ (2mm) angle bar.  This angle bar is P305 for a 6 meter length.  It’s cheaper than wood.  We plan to use a 60 x 120 framework of this angle bar for our entire ceiling structure.

To recap; a system of lightweight steel purlins are installed perpendicular to the trusses.  The purlins provide support for the long span steel roofing which is screwed to the purlins using “tek” screws.  The other parts of this standardized system are a steel frame welded to the ends of the rafter tails.  This “facia frame” extends around the entire roof edge.  A pre-painted steel facia “board” is attached to and covers the facia frame.  Then pre-painted, decorative gutter is attached to the facia board.  The installation of the facia frame, facia board and gutter allow the tweaks and adjustments so that the final roof installation can proceed smoothly.  We’ll add some photos as these steps are completed.

These roofing systems are generally available in .4, .5  and .6mm thickness. Generally .4mm is used as it’s the least expensive.  We originally ordered .5mm for the roofing and .6mm for the gutters but it was not available so we had to order .6mm at a considerably higher price.  Our roofing is said to be “Galvalume” coated, that is coated with a mixture of aluminum and zinc which is supposed to be more durable than ordinary galvanized steel.  Supposedly the paint is applied in a Taiwan factory.

May 5, 2010 roofing arrives. Completed roof structure in background.

Metal facia being installed. 5-7-10

Installing the gutter 5-8-10

Insulation.   Metal roofs are notorious for turning your attic space into an oven. It’s fairly common to install a thin foil-faced foam insulation under the roofing to try to reduce heat transfer.  We were dubious about the durability of foam under such extremely hot conditions.  We also wondered if so much foam could be a fire hazard so we decided to use foil-faced 25mm fiberglass instead.  The roofing is available in a range of colors.  We’re using a light color.  See this New York Times article on how white roofs save energy.  Dark metal roof colors are quite popular in the Philippines, we guess because they give the look of clay tile roofs.

Roof going on. Reflective foil under roof.

Roof going on over foil and fiberglass

Fiberglass insulation.

Now that the roof is on, the house looks a bit like a Philippine basketball court.  The interior walls are 3.4 meters above the finished floor.  It’s another 3.0 meters to the roof peak.  The total height is about 20 feet.  We could have spectacular cathedral ceilings, but will likely install ceilings between 3.2 and 3.4 meters above the finish floor level giving us a 10 foot ceiling height.  Even then, changing light bulbs and cleaning ceiling fans will require a high ladder!  The ceilings will be supported by ceiling joists of 1.5″ x 1.5″ 2mm angle bar.

This photo also shows electrical conduit running from outlets to the panel box.  The concrete floor will be poured over the conduit.

The design of our roof includes two large vents high in the roof.   More on that later.

Material options for the soffit include pre-painted, ventilated steel soffit packages, Hardiflex brand cement board and plywood.  Since we’re trying to give our house a bit of a traditional feel, the metal soffit system, while very practical, are a little too reminiscent of a mobile home.   Hardiflex appears to be similar to the asbestos-cement board we used to see, but the asbestos has been replaced with wood fiber.  We decided to use painted 1/2″ marine plywood.  The plywood is referred to “11mm plywood” but actually measures 10mm.  Since a hole punched in the soffit can open up access to the building, we felt that plywood was a more secure choice than the brittle Hardiflex.  The plywood is attached to the steel soffit frame with 3/16″ blind rivets.  The rivet heads are recessed and filled.  All surfaces of the plywood are primed before installation.

Plywood soffit panels August 2, 2010

Note that, except for the plywood soffits,  not one bit wood is used in the entire roof structure.  Termites are a part of this, but Philippine forests have been almost entirely cut off and wood is quite expensive.

Cost. The surface area of our roof  is about 300 square meters.  The total cost of the roof excluding the structural elements but including insulation and installation is about P280,000 or about P700 per square meter.  The fiberglass insulation added about P50,000.  We were told to expect to pay about P500 per square foot for our roof but extras drove the price higher.  We have not yet calculated the total cost of the roof structure plus roofing but it must be at least P800,000.

Summary. All parts of this Philippine roofing system are matching;  preformed and pre-painted so that the entire ensemble of roof panel, gutter, facia board and ridge cap are in the same design and color.  This is a very slick, economical and attractive system which provides a durable roof able to withstand the monsoons, typhoons, termites and other rigors of life in the Philippines at a moderate cost. We’re impressed.  My only reservation is that roof sealants (Elastaseal, Vulcoseal etc.) seem to be an accepted part of the Philippine roofing world.  I have some experience with high quality metal roofing on U.S. historic restoration projects.  I consider the use of these sealants to be a bad sign.  These sealants always fail.  A roofing system that depends on them is poorly designed and will require frequent maintenance as the sealants break down.  Our rental apartment has a metal roof.  Whenever there’s a strong rain, it leaks and the landlord sends a crew with tubes of roof cement to try to repair the leaks.  That’s not how I’d like to spend my retirement! A properly constructed metal roof will use proper design, not sealants and will be leak free for decades.

Roof completed 5-20-10

We’ll update this with more commentary and photos as the project progresses.

Roof Design

Here’s a little about the architectural design of our roof.   Our roof design goes against the trend.  Increasingly elaborate roof designs are very popular, especially for houses that are or aspire to be “upscale”.  The more valleys, ridges, dormers and other complications the more impressive the house.  Bob was brought up in the northern U.S. where every valley was another spot for ice and snow to build up and cause ice dams and leaks to form,  so simple roofs are an instinctive choice.

These over-complex roofs are a recent development in the Philippines.  Traditional Philippines houses had “dos aguas” or “quatro aguas” roofs.  These terms are a carryover from the Spanish “un tejado de dos aguas”, a simple ridged roof or “un tejado de quatro aguas” a hip roof.  The older members of my construction crew still understand and use these old Spanish terms.

Simple gable roof

Hip roof

The hip roof has been very popular in traditional Philippine buildings and for good reason.  In a land where buildings are buffeted by typhoons every year, the hip roof is streamlined, giving the winds little purchase.

Hip roof 19th century Philippine house. No aircon but wide eaves, high ceilings and big windows for ventilation. We try to emulate these features in our house.

The roof above was popular in the 19th century but during the Commonwealth era one starts to see a modification which adds roof vents.

Here's an example south of Cebu City

Closer is the old Guimbal, Iloilo Municipal building. Guimbal has a new city hall but thankfully has preserved the very elegant older one. Photo from HCS.

House in Lucban, Quezon Province, our architectural model.

In Western architectural lingo such roofs are called “gablet” roofs or “Dutch gable” roofs.

Certainly the aesthetic for this roof  is inspired by the roof profile of the beloved Philippine “bahay kubo” native bamboo house. Filipinos, rich or poor, seem to have a deep attachment to life in the provinces.  For Filipinos, the provincial life  and the bahay kubo conjure up an idyllic paradise lost.  Of course Filipinos know about the hardships of provincial life, but those don’t seem to dilute the romantic attraction of life in the provinces.  Just consider the current crop of TV soaps which alternate between a sorid, squabbling life in huge, pretentious houses in Manila, lives filled with greed, envy and bickering.  Then in a flash you are in the provinces, in a bahay kubo,maybe with some pretty capiz windows–a harmonious pastoral life populated with kindly, wise lolos and lolas with birds singing and maybe a carabao contentedly ploughing in the background!

Panay Island bahay kubo

This rustic bahay kubo roof design, transferred to wood frame and concrete buildings,  has evolved to incorporate a ventilator in the peak of the roof.  We wanted to incorporate at least some Filipino style into our house and also realized the advantages of attic ventilation under our hot metal roof.  Here’s our original design for a two story house.

Perspective Drawing for our Tigbauan House

We finally decided on a one story home but kept the roof design we liked so much!

Workers install Mahogany ventilator in roof peak of our new home

More at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-design-devolution/

More to come……

A carport was a part of our original plans and permits, but we only decided to really commit to building it when our small crew started to run out of work while waiting for the house roof to be finished.  After the house roof is done, then there’s the floor to pour and finishing of the interior and exterior walls. In the meantime we could use our crew to build the carport.  Also we had over- ordered 16mm rebar so we had 16 extra bars to use up — perfect for the carport concrete beams — four 16mm bars per 5.65m beam So we decided to so ahead with construction.

The carport will be 5.65 meters by 5.65 meters (18.5′ by 18.5 feet) plus a one meter roof overhang.  Originally the carport design was to be 6m x 6m but by reducing the carport size and beam size to 5.65m we could use our 6m long rebar without splicing, so it’s stronger and cheaper.

We figure the initial materials as; the (16) 16mm rebar (4 per beam) P290 each , (16) 12mm rebar (P165 each) for the 25cm square concrete columns, and (5) 10mm rebar (P114 each) for the stirrups.  We used up scrap rebar for the footers.  We expect to use about 25 bags of cement at P212 per bag. The rebar prices are from our large purchases in February.  All steel product prices are going up sharply.  We just bought 2×3x1.2mm roof purlins for P400 each.  The next day they were over P500 each.

We calculate the cost to get the concrete frame up to be $500 to $600 including materials and labor, not including the blunders shown below.  The roof will probably be another $750, so the overall cost is pretty inexpensive.  The floor (tiled?) will be additional expense.  Still, the overall cost is modest, perhaps P4,000 per square meter, because we have our our crew, own equipment and buy our own materials.

Getting started, batter boards and site cleanup 3-22-10

12mm rebar and stirrups for carport columns. Not centered on footer.

The footer is 1.2 meters deep, 1 meter square and 25cm (10″)  thick.  The footer rebar grid is one meter square built of leftover pieces of rebar, some welded together.  I was not supervising closely enough and the crew put the rebar cage right at the edge of the footer.  They did this because the footer excavation was not exactly in the right location.  Rather than enlarging the excavation so that the column could be in the middle of the footer as it should be, they moved the rebar cage to the edge of the footer. This is about as stable as sitting on the edge of a chair!  This kind of thing is inexplicable and frustrating to me.  The workers know I want quality work but the habit of “good enough” is so ingrained. Three workers spent more than two days breaking up the concrete so the the footer could be repoured.  We were using our strong 1-2-3 concrete mix.  The concrete was pretty tough to break up.  The crew and I were in a state of depression until the footer was repoured.  Once that was done, spirits were raised when we could concentrate on building rather than demolishing.

Carport columns going up. Some splashes of color from our earlier plantings. 3-31-10

Column forms are leftover from house. Note electrical conduit cast into columns.

4-5-10 after Easter vacation, forms off columns and rebar cages for beams added

Detail of beam rebar cage for carport. 16mm rebar, 10mm stirrups. The curved house wall shows some spherical aberration in my Sony lens!

Forms for slightly arched beams 4-7-10

4-10-10 the carport beams were poured.  The beams which, once the forms and temporary supports are removed, will be completely unsupported.  So, the forms and bamboo supports have to stay on for thirty days, until the concrete has reached full strength.  After that, the forms can come down.  I have my fingers crossed as to the formwork.  I told my foreman I wanted perfection, not speed.  He looked at me as though this was the most incomprehensible thing he had ever heard!

The carport forms come off showing yet more poor work

Carport frame ready for roof 4-19-2010

Carport Center Girt

Welding up the carport center girt.  This is essentially the “ridge board”.  It’s ridiculously overbuilt because we are using material left over from the house roof trusses.  The welding workshop shown is in what will become the kitchen of the house.

Carport center girt and rafters going up

The rafters are surplus from the house project and are really oversized for this small carport.  The roof pitch is steep because we want to put our water tank high in the garage roof rather than having a separate water tower.

500 liter stainless steel water tank to go under carport roof. Cost about P9,500.

Stainless steel water tank in car port.

The roofers are coming to do the garage roof. We decided to put up two masts for antennas on the garage roof and to do it before the roofer arrived so that they could roof around the masts rather than us having to seal around masts we installed later. Also, the roof will be quite steep so it’s easier to get up there now.

Carport almost done 7-12-10

Car port from road 7-12-10

More to come…….

Electrical conduit

Above: before pouring a tie beam at the top of the wall above the location for the panel box, the workers place eight pieces of electrical conduit through the form for the beam.  This will provide a path from the panel box for the circuits in the ceiling, mainly light fixtures and ceiling fans.

We’re building house in the Philippines.  I’m my own general contractor, so I’ve had to learn about how Philippine electrical wiring systems work so I can be sure we end up with safe and convenient wiring in our new house.  Take the information here as hypothesis, not gospel and feel free to offer comments, suggestions and corrections.

With a few exceptions, the Philippine electrical system is 230 volt 60 cycle, but beyond that fact there are big differences based on where you live.  Our comments mostly apply to areas in the Philippines served by rural electrical cooperatives which use a single 230v load wire and a ground wire to your residence.  They are not applicable to urban areas using two load wires (including Manila and Iloilo City) or to  systems around former American military bases.  In Iloilo City each of the two load wires carries 115v.  Combined they provide 230v.  We assume that many cities offer the same type of service.

Our property is served by an electrical cooperative, “Ileco 1″.  The distribution grid for areas served by electrical cooperatives is very different that that in Philippine cities.  The rural electric cooperatives run a single hot wire to the transformer serving your house.  This “single wire earth return system” or “multi-ground system” is described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return.

From the transformer there will be two wires to your meter and then to your house and entrance panel, the 230 volt load or “hot” wire (black) and a neutral or ground wire.  This transformer-to-house wire is referred to as “duplex cable”.  The #6 AWG hot wire is insulated and is wound with a an uninsulated neutral or ground wire.  Both are aluminum.  We paid about P17 per meter for this cable.  At the bottom of each electrical pole is a ground rod which is connected to the transformer and to the line serving your house.  This theoretically provides a ground to your system, but it’s important to have your own separate grounding rod to ensure that your neutral wire is not carrying current.

Shopping for panel boxes and breakers was a learning experience. Every panel box we have seen is set up for urban-style systems with two load lines.  So they have two separate load buses and are set up to use double pole breakers.  The panel boxes we see in the hardware store chains are really poor quality, some with an aluminum bus.  We found much better and bigger boxes at electrical supply stores.  We bought an excellent twenty circuit panel box with a sturdy copper load buses for about P4,100 at Western Lamp in Iloilo City. This box uses GE plug in breakers.  We were able to buy very nice brass neutral and ground busses to add to the panel box. The maximum main breaker is 100 amps.  This is equivalent to a 200 amp box in the U.S.  Remember that a twenty amp breaker has a capacity of 2,300 watts on a 115v circuit and 4,600 watts on a 230v system.

There is some confusion over the right type of breaker to use in “single wire” areas served by electric cooperatives.  Some say that only single pole breakers should be used, that only the load circuit should be controlled by a breaker, but that the neutral/ground circuit should never be broken by a breaker.  The Philippine electrical code clearly states that the grounded line of a circuit should never be broken or fused.   However, our experience is that all breakers sold in our area are linked double pole breakers in which both the load and the neutral are tripped simultaneously.  This is probably because most people live in urban areas where  have two load lines which when combined provide 230v, so a two pole breaker is needed. These linked double pole breakers don’t really make much sense on single wire systems, but they may not present a safety problem in that there really is no way of disconnecting the neutral circuit without also disconnecting the load.

Here’s what we plan to do.  Because single pole breakers are not available in Iloilo, we plan to treat each side of a double pole breaker as a single pole breaker.  As far as we can see, the double pole breakers really are just two single pole breakers connected together.  The metal clip connecting the two halves can be removed allowing the breakers to operate separately. The neutral wires will not be connected to the breakers.  They will be directly connected to an unswitched, grounded neutral bus. Our box accommodates twenty double pole breakers, meaning that it can accommodate a total of forty single pole circuits, far more than we will ever have.  If we need more than the twenty circuits which can fit on one side of the panel box, our  double pole panel box can be converted to single pole by connecting the two load busses with a copper link.

If you have single wire service and single pole panel boxes and breakers are available in your area, just use those and things will be cheaper and simpler.

Most Philippine houses are not wired with three prong grounded outlets.  There is only a load wire and a neutral wire.  The quality of grounding of the neutral wire is uncertain.  If you’ve spent any time in the Philippines, you’ve probably been repeatedly shocked by your computer, refrigerator and so forth.   The metal parts of these either have no ground and when you touch them with bare feet on a tile, you become the ground.  Fortunately, grounded outlets are readily available and that’s what we intend to use.  We’ll run a separate ground wire to each outlet which will run to the ground bus in the panel box and will be tied to both the neutral bus and to a separate grounding rod.

Rather than using a grounding rod pounded into the soil, we attached a copper clamp to the rebar in one of the house’s main columns. This rebar leads about 1.5 meters underground to a mass of rebar in the base of the footer.  A heavy copper cable runs from the clamp to the panel box.  See comments below why this may not really make a good system ground.

In the Philippines, the load and neutral wires are generally run from outlet to panel box in plastic conduit.  When embedded in the floor or block walls, the conduit is 25mm rigid plastic.  In the space above the ceiling, the wires generally run in flexible plastic conduit.   The Philippine system of running conduit can be pretty horrifying when you first see it.  Basically the house, above the floor level, is built without much regard to electrical or plumbing runs.  Then, when it comes time to run wires, channels are hacked into the hollow block to accommodate the electrical conduit.  The house can look pretty massacred before the thick finishing coat covers all construction sins.  We plan to try to neatly cut the conduit channels into the hollow block using a masonry blade in a 4″ angle grinder.  The end result will be the same but we’ll just feel better with the neatness.  Ideally conduit runs should be anticipated and conduit should be cast into beams so that the beams do not have to be cut later to accommodate the conduit running to the lighting and ceiling fans above the beams.

Generally, conduit for outlets is run in or under the floor before the floor is poured. On the other hand, conduit serving switches is run upwards through those channels in the hollow block, through the various beams (hopefully in conduit cast into the beams) into the “attic” area above the suspended ceiling where connections to lighting fixtures and ceiling fans are made.

Electrical boxes

Above.  Utility boxes which will contain switches are half buried in the hollow block wall.  The walls will be plastered with a smooth 1/2″ to 1″coat of finishing cement which is then painted and forms the final finish for both interior and exterior walls.

We’ll have various circuits running outside the house; weatherproof outlets on the porch, circuits to the bahay kubo, circuits to lights on the perimeter fence posts, circuits for security lighting, circuits for porch lights, circuits for the carport, circuits for outdoor split air conditioning compressors and so forth.  All of these must be anticipated and conduit leading outside installed before the house floor is poured.

Conduit converge on panel box. All will be buried in concrete floor.

These electrical conduit will soon be buried in the concrete floor.  The genius of this system is that wires can be replaced (if necessary) by pulling them through the conduit embedded in the floors.  For this to work there can be no shortcuts.  The wide arc elbows must be used.  There are no electrical conduit tees.  The blue water system fittings can be used with the electrical conduit but such use may well defeat the ability to pull new wires as the bends are too sharp to pull through.  We used a tee and I regret it!

TV antenna installed

Before the garage roof is installed, we weld two 1″ schedule 40 pipes to the roof framework to host antennas.  Coax cables run to the house.

We’ll edit, correct and add to this narrative as work progresses.

Appendix:

Here’s an excellent essay on Philippine electrical systems reprinted by permission of its author Harry Morgan.  It appears in the excellent Living in the Philippines forum at: http://livinginthephilippines.com/forum/index.php Look under in the “building in the Philippines” classification under “it’s your money”.  We have not come to exactly the same conclusions as Mr. Morgan in every detail, but his is the best writing we have seem on Philippine electrical systems.

Harry Morgan <harry80020@yahoo.com> wrote:

Personally I enjoy the arguements about the electric service in the Philippines. I’ve been an electrician for 30+ years in  the USA and I totally rewired my father-in-law’s house in Sibonga, Cebu. I will try to address some of the issues about the  electric service you will find in most of the Philippines, although I understand there are small areas of American style  systems arround the old US military bases.

“IDEALLY”, here is what you “should” have in the majority of the Philippines: A transformer on a pole somewhere near your  house, it will be serving several houses in the neighborhood. It will have 2 lugs on the secondary with 220 volts between  them. There will be 1 wire from each lug going to each house. One and only one of the lugs “should” also have a second bare  copper wire connected to it with the other wire and this bare wire will run down the pole to a ground rod at the base of  the pole. The 2 large wires running to each house (service drop) will have the hot wire insulated and the other (neutral)  may be bare or insulated. After passing through the electric meter these wires go to your fuse or breaker box. The hot wire  will connect to the supply buss where the fuses or breakers are. The neutral wire will connect to the neutral buss which is  directly mounted to the metal box. There SHOULD also be a bare wire gioing from the neutral buss to a copper ground rod at  each house. From the fuse or breaker box there will be one black 220 volt hot wire from the fuse or breaker and one white  neutral wire from the neutral buss for each circuit. This is what you should have in the majority of the simple Philippine  2 wire systems, please take note of the above IDEALLY’s and SHOULD’s.

The Philippine system is a GROUNDED system because the neutral wire is/SHOULD be connected to a ground rod at the pole  where the transformer is and a ground rod and/or cold water pipe at each house. This keeps the transformer secondary from  floating: the neutral wire at zero volts and the hot wire about 220 volts, depending on the service company’s supply  voltage. The neutral wire will be at zero volts because it is connected to ground. If you have anything other than zero  volts, you have a loose, dirty, or missing connection to the ground rod; or you are using your volt meter incorrectly  (which is not unusual). The neutral wire is also called the “GROUNDED” wire and it should have white insulation throughout  the house.

AS for the 3rd green or bare wire, which is missing most of the time in the Philippines, It is called the “GROUNDING” wire.  It is connected to the neutral wire in the fuse/breaker box either in the same neutral buss mounted to the metal box or a  seperate GROUNDING buss, but they should be connected together and only in the fuse/breaker box, this is the one and only  time they should ever be connected together. Throughout the house this GROUNDING wire should connect to the 3rd round prong  of each recepticle, all metal electric switch/ recepticle boxes, green hex head GROUNDING screws, and eventually all metal  fromes of all electric appliances. This keeps the metal parts of the electric system and appliances at zero volts. The same  Zero volts your human body is, so no shocks.

Throughout the house the white GROUNDED wire is at zero volts and is a current carrying part of each circuit. The green or  bare GROUNDING wire is also at zero volts, is not part of the circuit, and does not carry current (except in a fault). It’s  purpose is to keep all metal parts of the system and metal parts of the appliances at zero volts, and to trip the breaker  or blow the fuse and shut the circuit down in the case of a fault.

As for fuses or breakers, there should be one, and only one, in each circuit and it should be in the hot wire. There should  NEVER be a fuse or breaker in the neutral white GROUNDED wire, usually you will find this mistake in the old 2 fuse boxes.  I have seen a fuse in the neutral a lot in the Philippines and some old installations in the US. If you find a fuse in the  neutral GROUNDED wire, please remove it and connect the neutral GROUNDED wire direct. If you disagree with me and that fuse  in the neutral ever blows, you may then understand why.

There is no magic electrical trick you can do to get 110 volts from the usual Philippine style 220 volt electric system.  The ONLY way is to buy a 220 to 110 volt transformer.

Yes you can ship an American style breaker box to the Philippines and it will work fine, if you know what to do. The 2 hot  busses will have to be connected together and tied to the one hot 220 volt wire in the Philippines. Yes, standard American  single pole 110 volt breakers will work just fine on Philippine 220 volt systems, they are good to 300 volts. You will only  need single pole breakers, NO/NONE/NEVER any 2 pole breakers. Also the same breaker on 220 volts will carry twice the power  it carries on 110 volts. A 15 amp breaker carries only 1650 watts on 110 volts, but a whopping 3300 watts on 220 volts. So  you will likely want/need the smallest breakers you can find.

I have no idea if an American style 110 volt ground fault or arc fault breakers will work on the Philippine system, I  imagine you would blow the test button when you try to test them. I contacted the American manufacturer with this question,  but they wouldn’t answer. I imagine because of legal issues. You will have no use for the Americam style 2 pole GFCI’s for  you hot tub heater, I imagine no use for a hot tub either.

Now for the American style 110/220 volt system you might find arround the old US military bases: The transformer on the  pole will have 3 lugs for the secondary. The middle lug is the “center tap” and will be connected to the ground rod that  should be at the bottom of the pole and at the ground rod that should be at each house. The second wire connected to this  lug and running to each house may be called GROUNDED, neutral, or common. The other 2 lugs are the hot wires. Each hot wire  will be 110 volts to the neutral/common/GROUNDED wire. And there will be also be 220 volts between the 2 hot wires if you  leave the 3rd neutral/common/GROUNDED wire out of the circuit. The American style system is a single phase system even  though there are 2 hot wires. One hot wire will be at +110 volts at exactly the same time the other hot wire is at -110 volts, thus they are in the same phase.

If there are any budding electrical engineers out there, please no arguements about American style 208 volt systems, I  already know they use 2 phases from a three phase system. If you do have a 3 phase system for the secondary in your area of  the Philippines, I think you will find it to be a 380 volt 3 phase “Y” tied secondary. Thus any phase to ground will be 220  volts. Besides, I thought engineers were supposed to drive trains?

If I can be of help or if anyone wants to argue (I enjoy both), you may contact me on or of the list.

Best always,

Harry Morgan

harry80020@yahoo.com

No room for concrete in this column

This photo shows the top of a 15cm column trying to accommodate eight 16mm rebar from the roof beams and four 12mm rebar from the column. There is practically no room for concrete.  I ended up welding this tangle of rebar in the hope of gaining some strength from the rebar even if the concrete was minimal.  The post should have been sized by the engineers to be large enough to properly accommodate the rebar.  I told the engineer I wanted to demolish this column.  The engineer talked me out of it, however it should have been demolished and replaced with a larger column.

Demolishing just completed work

The engineers left out a support column needed to support a beam which they also left out.  One of the workers looked at the plans and saw the problem early on.  The engineers left out support for one end of a main roof truss.  We could not build in that defect, so we had to demolish a just constructed wall and wall footer (shown above) to allow us to pour a footer for the added column.  The concrete in the demolished footer was satisfyingly strong and resistant to demolition.

A column error corrected.

Workers laid block right up to rebar cage for columns, leaving inadequate room for the concrete portion of the column.  The block (which was filled with concrete) had to be cut back throughout the structure — a big waste of time.

Splicing error in roof beam rebar

This shows a rebar cage for the roof beam.  The splicing was done incorrectly.  No splicing plan was included with our drawings so the workers followed their own ideas which proved to be wrong.  See http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-rebar-splicing/ for all the gory details.  This particular rebar cage was redone three times before it was done correctly.  I don’t blame the workers.  In our opinion, a splicing plan should have been provided by the engineers.

This column was demolished and replaced.   The concrete was too stony and dry, perhaps because I went too far in insisting that  not too much water be added to the concrete.  While almost everything one reads about concrete warn that water is the enemy of  concrete strength, as I learned, concrete should be wetter in hot conditions.  See the Portland Cement Association’s “Hot Weather Concreting” at http://www.cement.org/tech/basics_hot_weather.asp Many of the suggestions can only provoke a smile in the provincial Philippine situation, such as using liquid nitrogen cooled aggregates or cold water in mixing concrete, the suggestions about the importance of wetting forms and using a somewhat wetter mix make sense.  We also keep concrete beams wet for a few days.  It takes concrete thirty days to cure.

The effects of over vibration at the bottom of a column pour.

This defect was caused by my crew over-using the concrete vibrator.  The water and concrete slurry ran out of the bottom of the form, leaving behind the aggregate.  The crew tried to hide this from me by covering it with mortar.  I raked it out immediately.

Eight of the window openings were made 10cm too small and had to be chiseled so the windows would fit.

The welders were working at making the windows at the same time the window openings were being made.  Not great communication or oversight — including my own!

One step forward, two steps back

This is the aftermath of one of the more discouraging days.  The plans call for 12mm vertical rebar in the interior hollow block partition walls.  Since our walls are over ten feet high, this is especially important.  By the time I noticed (the foreman never noticed) that the crew had switched from using 12mm bars to the weaker 10mm bars, several courses of block had been laid.  I mulled this over and decided that I was not comfortable with the use of the 10mm bar and had all the work containing it demolished.  This amounted to three or four courses of block throughout the interior.  I could not get a satisfactory explanation of why the crew switched from 12mm to 10mm.  So we are paying for the original labor and materials , the demolition and new labor, block, cement and aggregate.  If I was not on-site, I never would have known about this problem.

It was amazing and a bit depressing to see how easy it is to demolish these walls with a hammer.  The 4″ block is weak, the mortar is weak.  If I was ever to build another house, I would use six inch block exclusively.

Column at edge of footer

This shows a column rebar cage way off the center of the footer. Imagine sitting on the edge of your chair.  Its tippy.  When this column is loaded, the tendency is for the footer to sag or tip.  The column was poured off center because the crew did not want to enlarge the footer excavation so that the column could be centered on the footer.  This thick concrete footer had to be broken up and repoured.

Clear span trusses

The engineers specified roof trusses which could span the house without supports — but why?   A simpler truss system using interior walls as mid-span support could have cost less.

"rebar chair" keeps floor and footer rebar off the ground and correctly positioned in the concrete.

Our workers did not understand the need to keep footer rebar positioned well up in the footer concrete rather than laying the rebar on the ground and pouring the footer over it.  We did not have any of the rebar chairs shown above so we used larger stones to raise the footer rebar above the ground before we poured.  Having the rebar on the ground in the bottom of the footer is a serious defect.

Nicely done footer and rebar cage but the footer rebar mat should be raised up so that it's in the middle of the footer concrete, not laying close to the bottom.

The carport forms come off showing yet more poor work.

How are such concrete problems repaired? We considered using epoxy but John Thede Joergensen’s suggestions seem right:

“I would use a thin plaster of fine sand and cement. 1:3 and wet, slam it on layer by layer thin layers at the time.The slamming is like blowing it on, and leave the sandcorn in the thin plaster, but like its vibrated in. It takes time and a good masonry hand to do it, but it is the same technique used when a concrete bridge is damaged by a truck, and the reinforcement is open. Then thin strong concrete is pumped and sprayed on to it layer by layer until its built up again. I don’t know if you can get the tool I think of there. I will find a picture and attached here. The floating plaster is balanced on the blade,and with a swing slammed on the surface. Practice on a plate first. Build it up, and let it dry in between till a point where you can “cut” remains away with the tool. Then use a sponge to make the surface smooth.”

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

A friends of ours in Iloilo had their casement windows made by:

Denis Jaleco, denisjaleco@gmail.com, 0929-772-8699

Here’s a photo of the Jaleco casement windows in our friend’s bedroom.  These large windows give a light, airy feeling to this fairly small room.

Bedroom window 2m high and 2.5m wide (on a 3m ceiling and 3.5m wall). Also note sliding screens. These windows were custom fabricated.

The Jalecos (Denis is an architect and his father makes the windows) gave us a quote for all of our windows (12 in all) of about P90,000 installed but not glazed.  We thought this was a very fair price but since we already had a welding shop set up, our welders said they knew how to make windows, and they were running short of welding projects, we decided to try to make our own windows.

In the U.S. we’re used to windows being pre-made with fancy insulated glass, plastic cladding, smooth opening and locking hardware and big prices.  In the Philippines it’s quite common to weld up windows at the job site, especially for less expensive homes.  Here’s a steel casement window in a big house in one of Iloilo’s swanky subdivisions. You can see the security grilles behind the glass panes.  Our windows will be just about the same, with three pairs of sash per window, each having three panes of glass.  Our windows are bigger so the glass panes will be quite large — about 50cm high and 35cm wide.

Our welders beginning the fabrication of casement windows

Because steel window-making is common in the Philippines, the larger construction supply outlets stock the necessary materials; Z-bar, T-bar, I-bar, hinges and latches.  The problem is that such windows usually go into cheaper houses, so the materials are aimed toward affordability rather than quality.  This is so often the case in the Philippines.  The z-bar is the main problem.  Standard z-bar is very flimsy.  It was hard to find better z-bar.  We found somewhat better z-bar at Far Eastern Hardware on Quezon Street.  The cheap z-bar is P189, the better is P520.  We bought the better stuff, but it’s easy to see why the cheap stuff is the best seller.

"Premium" 7/8" z-bar from Far Eastern.

The z-bar constitutes the main item in window construction.  It is used to make the exterior of each sash.

This is the quite heavy I-bar stock.  It is used as part of the frame, separating the sashes.

T-bar

This is the the T-bar which separates the panes in each sash.

Another key part of the window is the security bars.  Practically all windows in the Philippines are protected with security grilles. With casement windows, the bars forming the grilles are welded to the interior of the steel window frame.  They are spaced to create a grid which the smallest child cannot climb through. You can see the grilles in the photos above.   This is because children are sometime used as part of a break-in.  If the children can squeeze through, they can then make their way to an entrance door and unlock it to allow the rest of the team to get in.

The windows themselves are welded to reinforcement bars embedded in the concrete walls.  The windows are then mortared into the wall openings making a very secure window.

Handles and security bars

We were able to find good quality window handles at Far Eastern Hardware in Iloilo City.  They have at least three grades of handles for those making their own casement windows.  These are the deluxe models at P45.  This photo also shows the 13mm security bars.

The first window being installed 3-12-10

and adjusted....

and welded to the rebar in the wall.

This makes for a fairly secure window.

The building looks a little more finished with windows installed.

The security grill in each bedroom has a fire escape secured by a padlock.

COMMENT:  The materials available for window making, especially the z-bar — even if you buy the premium material, is still not that sturdy.  Perhaps heavier material is available in Manila, but I suggest welding up your own z-bar and t-bar from angle bar and flat bar.  This is going to involve more labor, but the reality is that labor is inexpensive in the Philippines.  Welding your own stock (say 3mm flat bar) means you can make really sturdy windows, something not really possible using the stock that was available in Iloilo City.  Our windows are fine, but if I had it to do over again, I would weld our own stock.

March 18, 2010.  The windows are now complete except for final painting and glazing which will be done as part of the finishing of the interior.  The two welders took 19 days to construct the twelve windows.  They were paid P280 per day each for a total of P10,640 ($US 230).  The welders sometimes had to help with other work so the real cost of labor is a bit less.  The materials were about P70,000 so the total cost of the windows before glazing is about P80,000 or $US 1,750.

Another great thing about making your own windows is the complete flexibility to choose whatever thickness, color, energy efficiency of glazing (glass) you want to use.

COMMENT:  June 6, 2010.  Now we are finishing (plastering) the interior walls of the house.  This includes making cement window sills.  Another thing we’d do differently is to add a slightly larger steel frame around the outside of the window assembly.  As it is, the cement finishing comes quite close to the sash.  More space would be better.  You can see the narrow gap between hollow block and the windows in the photo above.

Window installed and cemented in 6-11-10

Another coat of Boysen epoxy primer and a finish coat of Boysen “Mahogany” enamel got the sash ready for glazing.

Installing 3/16" glass.

We used about 27 tubes of Corning silicone caulk (made in Korea) to install the glass.

We bought the glass from Iloilo Glass Service, 439 Iznart Street, phone 033-335-0768.  They gave truly superior service.  There were some minor problems, partly our fault.  Iloilo Glass made things right with no hesitation.  188 panes of 3/16″ glass cost us P16,640.  The Iloilo Glass quote was one-half the quote we received from another Iloilo glass shop.

Completed and glazed (but not washed!) windows.

My estimate of the total cost of our eleven windows is about P120,000 or about P11,000 per window.  Aside from the size of the windows, we used more expensive, higher cost materials; 11mm security bars, the best Z-bar we could find, epoxy primer, brass hardware, thicker 3/16″ glass and Corning silicone.

More to come…..

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Ours is a one-story house, so a single standard six meter long rebar (about 20 feet) can extend from the footer (1.2 M deep) to the topmost roof beam without splicing.  That’s a good thing.  Our columns used 12mm diameter rebar. All columns and beams also include rings of reinforcing steel called “stirrups”.  The stirrups are held in position using “tie wire”.  Together the rebar and stirrups make up the rebar cage which will go into a plywood form, the form will be filled with wet concrete to make a column or beam.

Column footer. The vertical rebar at bent at the bottom and secured to the footer rebar. When the footer concrete is poured the base of the column is well secured 1.2M (about 4 feet) underground.

The beams are a different matter.  Since the room beam length for our house is 13.5M and 15M,  the 6M beam rebar must be spliced.  How and where is splicing is done affects the strength of the beams and of the house.  Disappointingly, our engineers did not provide a rebar splicing plan with the plan package.  They should have.  Our good, experienced workers could neatly make the rebar splices but really had no idea of how much overlap there should be at the splices or where the splices should be.  Splicing was done incorrectly and had to be redone, in one case three times.  This wasted time and money and caused considerable frustration.

Since our workers had worked on dozens of houses this leaves one wondering about the errors embedded in them.  On commercial buildings there will likely be a supervising engineer, but on residences — who knows?  In the case of our house, if Bob had not been there, the critical roof beams would have been already poured and the mistakes, hidden.

Splicing error in roof beam rebar

The above photo shows the completed rebar cage for our east roof beam.  The rebar is 16mm diameter.  At the top and bottom are two rebars spliced together at the center of the beam.  This is wrong in two ways.  The top splice is OK as it is over the center of the span.  The bottom splice is wrong because it should be over a column.  Both splices have far too little overlap at 30 or 40cm.  The minimum is 64cm for 16mm diameter rebar.

Although this splicing was done by a excellent, experienced worker he was just guessing about how to assemble the rebar because the engineers had given no instruction in the plans.  Their lame excuse is that the workers should have known how to do the splicing. Further, the engineers could have, should have suggested using longer rebar (9M) which would need less splicing.

Here are the engineering rules-of-thumb we garnered regarding splicing:

• Splice beam top bars at locations between support columns.
• Splice bottom beam bars at or near support columns.
• The splice overlap should be a minimum of 40X the diameter of the rebar.  So, for 16mm rebar the splice should be a minimum of 64CM, for 12mm rebar, 48cm.

So, the above splicing violates every one of these rules.  The splice overlap was 30CM, less than one-half of what it should have been.  All bars were spliced in one location.  This rebar cage had to be taken down and completely redone.  Without supervision this beam would have been poured and the mistakes hidden forever, or until the first earthquake.

Why were our experienced workers ignorant of these rules?  The answer is a little scary!

Here’s a pretty good article on rebar, and rebar cage fabrications: http://www.wikihow.com/Tie-Rebar

Rebar cage at intersection of roof beams and column. Little room for concrete.

While our attention to  these construction details may seem over-obsessive (they certainly do seem so to our construction crew!), the Haiti disaster and now the Chile earthquakes show that proper engineering and construction can make the difference between life and death or at least between being able to live in your home after an earthquake as opposed to being homeless and starting all over again.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

February 20, 2010. Construction cost report for our Philippine House Project.   Thirty work days so far.

Here’s what the house looks like after thirty days of work:

After thirty work days...

March 12, 2010 construction expense report. Covers 45 work days since beginning of construction on January 18, 2010.

House Construction Expense – YTD:2

1/1/2010 through 3/12/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Category Description 1/1/2010- 3/12/2010

House Construction 22,843.05

Equipment 2,350.47

Labor 3,658.36

Materials 15,908.79

Soft Costs 925.43

OVERALL TOTAL 22,843.05

House after 45 days of work and about one million pesos.

March 12, 2010 Total House Construction Expense to date  (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,350.47 (10.29% of total)

Labor 3,658.36 (16.02% of total)

Materials 15,908.79 (69.64% of total)

Soft Costs 925.43 (4.05% of total)

OVERALL TOTAL 22,843.05 (a little over one million pesos)

Current crew size: 11.  This is a fairly small house building crew by Philippine standards but we feel it suits the capabilities of our foreman.

Included in this accounting are stockpiled materials (especially roof trusses), P100,000 deposit on roofing and construction equipment (cement mixer, concrete vibrator) which will be sold once the project is complete.  So, the true cost of the work to date really is about $20,000.

We have had various problems caused by questionable engineering and some poor workmanship.  Because we are the general contractor and are on site almost every day, and because we buy all materials, we are able to correct problems, use quality materials and still and keep down the cost of construction.

Size of house: 150 square meters. Cost per square meter so far: P7,000.  Target total construction cost: P2.25 million or about $50,000.

Cement used to date: 350 bags at P212 or about P75,000 0r about $US 1,600.

______________________________________________________________________

March 27, 2010 Construction Expense Report. Covers 60 work days since beginning of project.

House after 60 days of construction. March 27, 2010

House Construction Expense Report

1/1/2010 through 3/27/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,484.79

Labor 4,783.31

Materials 18,039.56

Soft Costs 950.25

OVERALL TOTAL $26,257.91

Project after 70 work days 4-21-10. Shows carport framework.

House Construction Expense 1/1/2010 through 4/21/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,484.79

Labor 5,866.73

Materials 21,756.69

Soft Costs 972.16

OVERALL TOTAL $31,080.37

Crew size: 8. Cost per square meter so far: P9,324.

Roof completed

House Construction Expense

1/1/2010 through 5/22/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,545.19

Labor 7,095.75

Materials 30,251.73

Soft Costs 1,011.65

OVERALL TOTAL $40,904.32

Total includes stockpiled materials, almost all electrical and plumbing supplies and fixtures. Electrical work about 50% complete. Plumbing about 75% complete. Includes work on 35 square meter carport. Next step finishing the walls (cement plaster) inside and out.

Cost per square meter to date P12,271 (P10,226 including carport)

*************************************************************************

Carport, almost done!

Carport, big enough for delivery trucks

Carport from the road

House Construction Expense Report
1/1/2010 through 7/18/2010 (in U.S. Dollars)

Equipment 2,379.95
Labor 9,465.06
Materials 36,341.32
Soft Costs 1,023.19
OVERALL TOTAL 49,209.52

Total includes stockpiled material; tile, Hardiflex for ceilings, all plumbing fixtures and cost of carport.

House is 150 square meters

Carport is 36 square meters

Size of crew: 7

]]> http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-construction-cost-report/feed/ 11 http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-septic-and-drainage/ http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-septic-and-drainage/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:33:24 +0000 GOIloilo http://goiloilo.com/?p=3536 Our Philippine House project – septic system and drainage.

Septic tank excavation

One of our workers has been assigned the job of digging the pit in which the septic tank will be built.  The three chamber septic tank will measure 3.1 meters (10 feet)  by 1.9 meters (6 feet)  and will be 2.1 meters deep (almost 7 feet). The tank will have a concrete slab on the bottom, filled, steel reinforced hollow block walls and a concrete  top with clean-out ports.

During typhoons, the considerable water from the roof downspouts, will be collected in a series of concrete catch basins and directed outside the lot.

The soil, as is true with most rice fields (that’s why they retain water as “rice paddies”) is extremely heavy clay.  The water table really varies with the season from being more or less at the surface of the land during the wet season to about fifteen feet down during the dry season.  If one had to do a percolation test to check the absorptive capacity of this clay  – well there must be none during the wet season.  During the dry season the clay becomes cracked and very absorptive.

There are complications with wastewater disposal in our “neighborhood”.  Being flat, mostly undeveloped farmland there is no municipal or subdivision drainage system into which to discharge.  As is typical, only “black water” (toilet waste) will go into the septic system.  Rain water from the roof gutters, and water from washing, sinks and showers will not be treated but will just be discharged as is.  As our neighborhood develops, probably a drainage system or ditch will be installed to carry wastewater to the nearest stream bed.  Many local families live along the streams and have their dug wells in or near the streams. Outside of treatment in a septic tank, there is virtually no sewerage treatment in the Philippines.  Boracay is one exception we know of.

When you buy property in a formal subdivision, you’re supposed to have access to a formal drainage system provided by the developer, an advantage.  The waste will just be eventually discharged into a ditch, stream, river or the ocean, but at least it will be carried away from your lot.  I have not heard of on-site leaching systems as are typical in the U.S.

Reinforcing bar framework for septic tank

In the Philippines, septic tanks are built on-site, not delivered by a truck.

Setting the rebar cage into the septic tank excavation

Concrete floor of tank and beginning of walls and partitions

Lots of smiles, even in a septic tank!

Septic tank just about done and ready for 4" reinforced concrete top. 3-3-10

Septic tank lid ready to be poured.

Catch Basin under construction

A system of concrete catch basins and drain pipes surround the house, collect water from the gutters and downspouts and gray water from showers, floor drains, lavatories and kitchen sink and discharge all this into a exterior drainage ditch.  Our house has ten catch basins connected by 4″ pipe.

Finished catch basins sans covers

Downspouts temporarily in place

While our house is not large, the the area of the roof is over 300 square meters. During tropical rains the amount of water coming off the roof is impressive. We were forced to temorarily install our downspouts because the water pouring off the roof was eroding the fill and making a muddy mess around the house. The downspouts were not glued so that they can be removed to allow the finishing of the exterior of the house and then permanently installed. The plans called for twelve 3″ downspouts to drain the roof.

We had to relocate one of the catch basins - heavy!

I never gave much thought to the sysstem of catch basins and drains. We put them in because they were on the plans. Now I realize how critically important they are.

More details to follow.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Return to Building Our Philippine House main page

Splicing error in roof beam rebar

Our Philippine house building project: concrete roof beams.  This photo shows the 16mm rebar framework for the concrete roof beam which is supported by the columns and in turn will carry the considerable weight of the roof structure. For that see http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-welding/.

A visit by our engineer confirmed a problem with the arrangement of the rebar in the beam.  Rebar comes in six meter lengths.  As shown in the photo, the workers spiced all the rebar in the center of the span.  The engineer directed that splices be staggered with no splices at mid-span in the bottom rebar and no splices at the support columns in the top of the beam. Everything you see above will have to be taken down and redone.  Our plans lacked a rebar splicing plan.  This has caused endless required corrections and wasted time and money. Our foreman and workers just don’t know the engineering principles. We’ve asked the engineer to prepare a splicing plan so that the workers (and owners) will be sure that things are done properly.  We suggest that you insist that your architect or engineer include a splicing plan.

Here’s a few rebar splicing guidelines we learned.  They are only rules of thumb.

• The splices for reinforcing bars in the top of the beam should be between columns.
• The splices for reinforcing bars in the bottom of the beam should be approximately over the support columns.
• The reinforcing bar splice overlap should be 40X the diameter of the rebar.  For example the splice on a 12mm rebar should be a minimum of 48cm.  For a 16mm bar, the splice should be at least 64cm.  Longer splices are better.

This photo (above) shows 16mm rebar spliced with a 40cm splice. The minimum overlap should be 64cm. This rebar cage had to be disassembled and redone.

Lintel Beam 2-19-10

The forms shown above are for the lintel beam.  This beam is at the top of the window and door openings to carry the load above those openings.  In the case of our house, the lintel beam will go around the entire perimeter of the house.  Above it will be two more courses of block and on top of that will be the main roof beam.

Rebar cage at intersection of roof beams and column.

It’s hard too see exactly where there is room for concrete in this dense tangle of rebar.  We’ll have to use small aggregate (the rule of thumb is that aggregate should be one-fifth the size of the smallest rebar opening) and gently vibrate the concrete.

A forest of bamboo scaffolding

Bamboo scaffolding in Kowloon, Hong Kong, 2005

The roof beam is complete

The crew worked feverishly to finish pouring the roof beam.  This is the last structural concrete work.  It will take two weeks for the beam to cure, then the steel roof trusses can go on.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Our welders are paid P280 per day. Our equipment will be paid for in savings on the trusses. We are also considering constructing our own steel casement windows, steel door jambs, water tank tower, car port and lots of miscellaneous projects.  Welders and welding equipment are essential for just about any Philippine construction project.

Making roof rafters (trusses) in our new on-site welding shop

There will be five pairs of the roof truss (rafter) shown above.  Each half is 8.5 meters long, has a 2.5 meter rise and spans 6.5 meters. The total span is 13.15 meters.  The crew wanted to make each piece over-long, lift them up onto the roof structure and then cut them to fit the angle at the roof beam and at the cornice end.  This cutting and fitting of these heavy rafters high overhead did not make sense to me.  Coming from the U.S. and being a little familiar with pre-cutting wood rafters, it seemed to me that we had the necessary information to pre-cut these trusses on the ground. We did a layout on the ground to be sure our calculations were correct, welded up a rafter to use as a template and are making five identical pairs.  The crew will be watching to see if the Amerikano’s theory is correct!

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Return to Building Our Philippine House main page

A forest of bamboo scaffolding 3-10-2010

An index to posts about our Philippine house building project. A few of the links are not yet “live” but will become so as the project progresses.

Shopping for steel.  It does seem very difficult to save money on basic materials such as cement and steel.  While there are hundreds of construction supply firms, post-negotiation prices vary only by a few pesos.  There are some pitfalls.  Our specifications called for our roof trusses to be made of 2″ X 2″ X 1/4″ angle bar. Give this spec to construction material sellers and you’ll be excited by the price variations, hoping for a bargain.  Look deeper and you’ll see that there is no 1/4″ thick angle bar available.  After looking at angle bar from various sellers, I decided to buy a vernier caliper so that I could measure the thickness of various items.  It turns out that the prices varied because their response for a price on 2×2x1/4 included material not even remotely meeting the specification; 4mm, 5mm, 5.5mm and 6mm angle bar.  One-fourth inch equals 6.35mm.   The caliper is also useful for detecting undersized rebar.  Not surprisingly, it turns out that, once again, price differences are minor once you’ve finally managed compare products with similar specs.

There’s another complication.  It turns out that steel is sold by kilograms per meter.  This may be a fair way to price steel products but a difficult translation when your engineering specs call for 2″x2″x1/4″!

Welding. The angle iron in this load will be used to make roof trusses.  They will be constructed on-site by our crew, two of whom are experienced welders.  Setting up our own welding shop makes economic sense.  The 300 amp welder and AEG cut-off saw cost about P25,000 or about $500.  Our welders are paid P280 per day.  Our equipment will be paid for in savings on the trusses. We are also considering constructing our own steel casement windows.

My ambition to have top quality concrete quality concrete in our house project has sometimes led to frustration.  My crew are hard workers, but accustomed to their ways of concrete work.  The local gravel contains so much sand that the mix probably ends up being 1-3-2 (one cement, three sand and two gravel).   The workers like this sandy gravel because it’s easy to work with, flows easily into forms.  I pushed to use the washed 3/4′ gravel as the only aggregate, but I learned that the 3/4″ gravel in fact has larger stone which can lodge in the rebar cages.  Our most recent solution is to screen the supposed 3/4″ gravel with  a 1″ screen.  About half of the material passes through the screen.  The smaller material should work better in the columns and beams.

Trying to keep workers from adding too much water to concrete is a legendary Philippine construction problem.  They like to make soupy concrete because it flows easily and does not set-up quickly, it remains “workable”  for a much longer time than proper concrete.  It flows easily into forms.  Once the soupy concrete sets, it looks fine but really is weakened.  When I mange to get proper concrete made, the crew is horrified at at how quickly it sets.  It disrupts the way they are used to working.  I had read that some on-site supervising engineers have been so frustrated with this problem that they just disappeared from the project site.  I now understand their problem. Another problem is keeping workers from “tempering” (adding water and remixing) the already mixed concrete or mortar.  This is a definite NO on our project.  My insisting that concrete be mixed my way is resented by some crew members who have been working with concrete all their working lives.

The above photo is from the end of week three.  About $12,500 has been spent, but a good part of this is in materials stored on site but not yet used, including cement, block, and the load of steel shown above.

With some help from El Nino we have had perfect construction weather.  We have not had any rain since October.  This has been terrible for farmers but good for us. One continuing worry about the dry weather is that our well will run dry.  We use so much water for making concrete, cleaning tools and equipment, watering plants, and for our crew’s personal needs — washing, laundry and so forth.  So far the well has held up.  We had it redug deeper last year.  See http://goiloilo.com/digging-water-well-tigbauan-philippines/ From this point it should be about a month until we have our walls up and roof on.  After that, rain is not such a problem.

Walls, Feb. 13, 2010 (24 work days)

Wetting hollow block

Once you receive delivery of your hollow block, you must constantly keep them wet.  If they dry out they lose strength and eventually crumble back into the sand they were made from. 2-16-10. Day 26 of project.

Lintel Beam 2-19-10

Overview 2-19-10

The building looks a little more finished with windows installed.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Excellent new construction on plaza in Lucban, Quezon Province, Philippines

When we added some elements we wanted like a second floor verandah, this is what we got:

Perspective Drawing for our Tigbauan House

But we reluctantly abandoned these plans for a rather basic one story design similar to to a plan we had seen at SOS Children’s Village in Zarraga, Iloilo:

Cottage - SOS Children's Village, Iloilo

Here’s what we have ended up with:

A perspective drawing of the house we'll build

Here are some of the reasons  for our change of of heart as we gave them to a goiloilo.com reader:

Thanks for you appreciative comments about the house design. We had been working on it for three years, ever since we saw a similar design in historic Lucban, Quezon but we have to break the news that at the last minute we have abandoned this design and have decided to build a one-story house. I suppose our decision is really a triumph of practicality over aesthetics.

We had lots of good reasons for wanting a two story house. We wanted a perch where we could have an unimpeded view of the mountains and surrounding rice fields. We wanted to reach up to the cool night time breezes. We wanted to have a second floor refuge from any flooding, especially after experiencing Typhoon Frank in Iloilo City. I wanted an upstairs refuge from the family hubbub downstairs. An upstairs bedroom seemed more secure from robbers. Those were the advantages we saw, on top of the instinctive aesthetic appeal of the two story house. Psychologically, it was perching above rather than crouching below. My mother-in-law says there are two types of homes and home owners, “perchers” and “nesters”.

The building of our bahay kubo helped change our mind. As is traditional, the floor of the bahay kubo is about one meter above grade. This makes a standing adult above the level of the top of our eight foot fence. We are surrounded by land which either has already been subdivided or in in the process of subdivision. The pace of development in the Philippines is such that land around us will be developed, sooner or later. Our lot is only twenty-three meters wide. Our second floor would give us a ring side seat to whatever was going on a few feet away, karaoke, TV, crowing roosters and all the other aspects of exuberant Filipino life. If we built a single story house, our eight foot high concrete wall will provide a considerable buffer from whatever noisy chaos eventually surrounds us. I’m a little embarrassed to show how shallow or thinking was, but there you have it!

There are other advantages to the single story design. This is earthquake country. Panay had an 8.5 earthquake in 1948 which destroyed many buildings. Proper engineering for a two story concrete house (most are NOT properly engineered) calls for lots of very expensive 25mm rebar and steel decking to support the second story floor. A one story house is simpler, more or less like our fence with a roof. Our property is unusually exposed to typhoons. We are one kilometer from the sea on a flat, exposed, treeless plain. That gives us good breezes when it’s hot, but the typhoons will really blast us.

We came to realize that our experience with flooding in Iloilo City was not very relevant to our Tigbauan property which is about
fifty feet above sea level and did not flood during Frank. Certainly the two story house would survive, but maybe we’d be a bit more comfortable hunkered down in a one story house.

More importantly, we are enjoying having Carol’s niece in Tigbauan, sending her to school here and generally trying to give her a better future. Carol’s sister has also been staying with us. The only story house is less elegant, but gives us another bedroom for another niece or two. Eliminating the stairway and second floor complexity allows us to have a four bedroom house for less money than the three bedroom two story house.  In the end practicality ruled.  We knew the room sizes we needed and basically our home is a box containing these rooms.

We did have a few other design preferences.  We don’t use much air conditioning so we want our house to be comfortable without it. We wanted big windows to let in lots of light and breeze and also to reduce the thermal mass of the cement and block.  Our ceilings will be three meters (almost 10′) high and will have ceiling fans.  We have unusually big windows (2.4M wide and 1.6M high) and hence bedrooms may be hot during the day, but should cool off quickly in the late afternoon.  Three of our four bedrooms have cross ventilation, that is they are corner rooms with windows in two directions.  We wanted a big roof overhang to provide as much shade as possible.  Our overhang is 1.5 meters.  Our porch face north and so will be in the shade most of the day.  The location of our lot in open farm country means it’s very breezy, sometime excessively so during the dry NE monsoon.  We have already planted shade trees to the south of the house – Mango and Acacia.  We will put split air conditioning in two bedrooms.  Sometimes aircon is nice when you’re taking an afternoon nap on hot day.  We are pretty acclimatized to the heat but an air conditioned bedroom is an essential courtesy to for visiting friends and family.

Back to the one story design.  It also can’t be overlooked that the old foreigner who will occupy the house will turn 66 this year and intends to spend the remainer of his years in the house we build.  While one hopes to stay healthy and die peacefully in one’s sleep at a ripe old age, the reality is often grimmer.  The climb to our second floor bedroom might become impossible.  I recommend The Denial of Aging by Dr.Muriel Gillick.  It’s subtitled “Perpetual Youth, Eternal Life and Other Dangerous Fantasies”.  This book gives a good dose of reality about aging, but does it in a way which leads to clear thinking rather than depression.  By the way, my father died more or less instantly at 80 of a heart attack on a Florida golf course surrounded by his golfing buddies — so there are happy endings.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

We looked at mixers at several locations.  The best we saw was at “New OK Marketing” on Ledesma Street in Iloilo City.  New OK impresses as one of those frantically busy businesses which move a large volume of product out of a small storefront. They seem to know their product, have a good stock of spare parts and can service what they sell.  So far, we are impressed with “New OK”.  They sell and repair all sorts of gas and diesel equipment including generators, brush cutters, chain saws, agricultural and construction equipment.

We also bought a more exotic bit of equipment, a gas powered internal concrete vibrator. One of the challenges of building with reinforced concrete columns, is getting the concrete to flow around all the rebar in the relatively small column forms and thoroughly fill all the voids without making the concrete so soupy that it is weak.

We decided to buy a Chinese-made gas powered internal concrete vibrator to ensure the quality of the columns.  This consists of a Robin 5 HP gas engine with a coupling for a six meter long flexible shaft.  At the end of the shaft is the vibrator mechanism. It bears a frightening resemblance to the equipment used in a colonoscopy! The vibrator is inserted into the wet concrete filled column to ensure that the concrete fills every void.

After considerable use of the vibrator, our conclusion is that it’s more suitable to commercial situations with trained operators and bigger pours.  Some of our workers over vibrated concrete in columns.  The result was that a slurry of water and cement ran out of the form leaving voids in the bottom of columns.  For us the vibrator probably did more harm than good.  See the photo below as an example:

The price of the mixer was P48,000 with a 6.5 HP Briggs and Stratton engine.  A Robin or Honda engine would have added P7,000.  Once proud Briggs and Stratton is now the economy option. We had a choice of a light duty mixer with a Robin or Honda engine or a heavy duty mixer with a Briggs and Stratton engine.   The heavy duty mixer looked 100% better than the cheaper model so we opted for it.  The price of the vibrator was P17,000.   As it turns out, both the mixer and the vibrator required repair.  The Robin engine had a defective ignition and had to be returned for repair.  Both times a problem getting repairs would have been caused vexing delays in the project, but were delighted to report that New OK has really stood behind the equipment they sold us.  The Robin engine on the concrete vibrator was fixed while we waited under warranty, at no charge.  We ran the cement mixer for one day and our foreman sensed that all was not well.  He removed the mixer bucket and found that  the main bearing roller bearing was frozen.  He hopped on a jeepney to Iloilo City and later the same day a technician from New OK appeared at our job site in a New OK truck with all the tools and replacement parts needed to replace the faulty roller bearing — and the new bearing was a USA-made Timken.  The entire repair was done so promptly and at no charge, so we happily recommend New OK if you need power equipment including generators, brush cutters, pumps, compressors, welders and similar equipment.  New OK, 29 Ledesma Street, Iloilo City.  033-337-1023, 335-0509, 337-6931.

Concrete vibrator in action

The business end of the concrete vibrator

Based on the first two weeks on the project, we can’t imagine not having the mixer.  It makes better concrete much, much faster.  We are less convinced about necessity of the vibrator.

Rebar cutter in action

This is a reinforcing bar “rebar” cutter.  Cutting and forming rebar is a big part of building in the Philippines.  On our fence project all rebar was cut with hacksaws.  For the house we invested in this rebar cutter.  It speeds up the work at little incremental cost.  I can’t say the number of “Lenox” hacksaw blades we bought on the fence project but it was dozens.  This cutter cost P4,300 and will be sold at the end of the project.  We bought our at Far Eastern hardware in Iloilo City.  Far Eastern is nirvana for the builder with every type of tool you can imagine on display.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

A ponke in action

Building our house in the Philippines.  Ensuring concrete quality.  This photos shows the workers adding material to the cement mixer using a “ponke”.  The ponke is a wooden box with handles.  The inside dimensions of the ponke are 40cm x 40cm x 40cm.  The ponke is sized to hold one sack of cement.  I asked that the ponkes be built and used as a means of controlling the concrete mixture. After research,  we decided on a mixture of one part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel – a 1-2-3 mix. The use of the ponkes makes it easy to get the mixture right.  Ponkes are rarely used in the Philippines now, but formerly were the norm .  Now materials are more commonly measured using empty cement sacks refilled with sand or gravel.  I wanted the ponkes and my ever patient crew accommodated another whim of the kano.

Our quest for construction quality led us to buy a cement mixer, an internal concrete vibrator and to used washed screened gravel for the columns and beams rather than ordinary unscreened gravel.  We paid P700 per cubic meter for the screened gravel versus P420 for regular gravel.  More on the mixer and vibrator at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-house-getting-started/

One of the crucial advantages of being you own contractor is that YOU have some control the quality and quantity of concrete and reinforcing bar.  If you don’t think this is important, study the photos of the Haiti earthquake.  While there was widespread destruction, many building survived with little or no damage.

Our 1-2-3 mix is almost considered to be an extravagance.  The house you buy already built probably won’t have such strong concrete.  1-3-5 is in common use.  I have seen deliveries of substandard reinforcing bar.  A poorly built house may be built with a “class B” or “class C” concrete mix and not enough rebar.  You’ll never know what’s in your house unless you build it yourself.  It might never matter, but here’s a photo of the church in nearby Oton, Iloilo which was destroyed in the 1948 Panay Island earthquake.

Magnificent Oton Church, destroyed by 1948 earthquake. About 8KM from our building site.

The plan of our house was designed by a structural engineer.  We’re trying to be quite strict in following the plans.  We see quite a bit of good engineering in the plans as we build.  Lots of reinforcing steel is used in critical areas, but much less in columns not carrying much load.  Sometimes good Filipino builders use traditional rules of thumb not based on engineering basics.  This can mean too much steel in places which really don’t need it and not enough in places that do.

At least in the provinces, the ambition to have quality concrete for your project can lead to frustration.  My crew are hard workers, but accustomed to their ways of concrete construction.  The local gravel contains so much sand that the mix probably ends up being 1-3-2 (one cement, three sand and two gravel).   The workers like this sandy gravel because it’s easy to work with, flows easily into forms.  Using 3/4′ gravel makes stronger concrete, but my workers hate it.  Even more importantly, trying to keep Philippine workers from adding too much water to concrete is a legendary problem.  They like to make soupy concrete because it flows easily and does not set-up quickly, it remains “workable”  for a much longer time than proper concrete.  I had read that some on-site supervising engineers have been so frustrated with this problem that they just disappeared from the project site.  I now understand their problem.  I have pushed so hard that it has caused real friction with my crew.   In my mind I know that when the forms are removed the columns and beams look great, impressively solid, the strength of good concrete may have been seriously compromised by my workers ingrained habits.

On a less technical note, I have to observe that this quest for perfection in construction is an obsession shared by many old foreigners building in the Philippines.  There is something a bit irrational about it. They spend too much money on the dream home of their autumn years — their last big enterprise.  Often they don’t end up living in the house for very long.  You’ll see lots of them for sale on the Internet.

Some build and find they don’t like living in the Philippines.  Most foreigners are retired and old.  Many become ill and return to their home countries. The houses they are building really don’t belong to them, as foreigners can’t own property in the Philippines.  The foreigner is dependent on the goodwill of the wife and her family.  This does not always work out.  The foreigner wants a building which will last for generations but it’s likely his residence will not be for long.

The Haiti earthquake comes as we have just finalized plans for our new house in Tigbauan, Iloilo in the Philippines.  Looking at the photos from Haiti, one sees construction that has much in common with that in the Philippines — reinforced concrete beams and columns with a soft block infill.  I have been concerned about some building practices I see in the Philippines; cement blocks that are mostly sand — so soft they can be crushed in ones hand, unwashed sand and gravel from rivers, soupy concrete with far too much water mixed by hand and used for support columns, concrete which starts to set but is revived with even more water so it “won’t go to waste”.   Comments I read about problems in Haiti seem so similar:

“There are also significant problems with the quality of building materials used, says Peter Haas, head of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, a US-based non-profit group that has been working in Haiti since 2006.

“People are skimping on cement to try to cut costs, putting a lot of water in, building too thin, and you end up with a structure that’s innately weaker,” said Mr Haas, who was on his way to Haiti to help assess the safety of damaged buildings.

“Concrete blocks are being made in people’s backyards and dried out in the sun,” he said.”

Roger Bilham writing in Nature says, “In my visit to the region in the weeks after the earthquake, the reason for the disaster was clear in the mangled ruins — the buildings had been doomed during their construction. Every possible mistake was evident: brittle steel, coarse non-angular aggregate, weak cement mixed with dirty or salty sand, and the widespread termination of steel reinforcement rods at the joints between columns and floors of buildings where earthquake stresses are highest.”

One writer called these buildings, “rubble in waiting”.

In my own experience with building in the Philippines, non-angular dirty aggregate and dirty sand dredged from rivers is in very common use in Iloilo.

Also this from the Los Angeles Times:

Tectonics And Poor Construction Conspired To Create Devastation In Haiti – Latimes.Com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-me-quake-science14-2010jan14,0,1587916.story

The catastrophic quake that struck Haiti on Tuesday involved a collision of lethal circumstances: a massive, shallow eruption below a densely populated city with few, if any, building codes.

The magnitude 7.0 quake occurred near the boundary between two major tectonic plates, the Caribbean and North American plates.

Most of the movement along these plates is what is known as left-lateral strike-slip motion, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward in relation to the North America plate.

Kate Hutton, a seismologist at Caltech, said the quake was similar to those seen along the San Andreas fault: It was shallow, a fact that enhances the intensity and makes it more localized to the region right along the fault.

“We are not surprised by any of it,” Hutton said.

The Haiti quake had many similarities to the 1989 Loma Prieta quake in Northern California. That quake, said Tom Heaton, director of Caltech’s Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory, “caused a lot of damage, but it wasn’t a disaster like this in terms of the number of people injured and killed.”

For engineers and others well versed in the strict guidelines that California, Japan and other quake-prone zones mandate, the devastation seen in Haiti — and other developing countries that have been hit by similarly sized temblors — is horrifying but understandable. They blame the high numbers of earthquake fatalities in developing countries on poor building construction and rapid urban growth.

Before about 1950, a given-sized earthquake would do about the same amount of damage in the developed and underdeveloped world, said Ross Stein, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. Now the loss of life is typically 10 times higher in developing countries and the damage can be as much as 100 times higher, he said.

When a magnitude 7.9 earthquake rocked China’s Sichuan province in 2008, schools, hospitals and other public buildings collapsed, contributing to the huge toll — about 87,000 dead and missing. Shoddy school construction was blamed for the deaths of about 5,000 children.

The Chinese government was criticized for failing to impose strict building regulations, which it pledged to remedy.

Farzad Naeim, president of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, said that the quake in Haiti demonstrates “the same bad history, the nightmare, being repeated over and over again.”

Naeim said that older construction in the region was built at a time when “people didn’t know better.” And new construction, he said, has not kept pace with advances in earthquake engineering, including reinforcements that are standard for new construction in California.

Turkey had a “very advanced code” in 1999 when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake killed at least 17,000 people, said Stein, who has worked extensively in the country. But the government left it to contractors to do their own inspections, he said.

In a city like Istanbul, “you are not really going to get anywhere by making rules,” he said. “Many, many people are just pouring into the area without anything, and they knock down some trees and put a tent up. And the next year it’s a shack. And the next year it’s kind of a building. And the next year they start adding a floor as their family grows or other relatives come into the area.

“So here I am worrying about construction standards, but in reality so many of the buildings are built without any ownership, without any architect or engineer or anything,” Stein said.

“What you have to do is train people to build stronger buildings with the means at their disposal.”

Brian Tucker heads a Palo Alto-based group, GeoHazards International, that works with communities in developing countries to do just that. But he said that people “tend to treat earthquake disasters as God-given and controlled by God,” especially in countries with many other pressing problems.

“I try to respectfully tell people that the earthquake disaster is in our hands,” he said. “It’s not like a comet coming from out of space that you have no way of anticipating.”

Stein, of the USGS, said that part of the problem is that scientists have spent much of their time trying to understand the earthquake risks in California, Japan and other well-off parts of the world with high seismic hazards, while ignoring poorer and more densely populated parts of the world.

That’s why the United Nations Development Program and other international agencies have been helping vulnerable countries — including Jordan, Bhutan, China, Fiji, India and Iran — to improve planning for earthquakes. The U.N. advises governments to upgrade schools, hospitals and other public buildings to better withstand earthquakes; to impose stricter building codes; and to develop evacuation, rescue and contingency plans.

Jordan Ryan, director of the UNDP crisis bureau, said his agency estimates that 60 million people have been affected by quakes in the last 10 years.

Ryan said there had been progress in getting the issue onto the agenda of some governments. “It’s a very difficult argument to make,” he said.

“It’s like the old insurance argument: ‘Who cares about prevention? We don’t have enough money. We’re a poor country.’ ”

More reading:

Flawed Building Likely a Big Element – New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14construction.html?scp=4&sq=construction&st=cse

Haiti’s Buildings Weren’t Fit To Withstand Quakes NPR

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122547242

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

This is the design we’ve settled on.  More detail on how we chose this design at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-design-devolution/

A perspective drawing of the house we'll build

Beginning the layout

The first glitch occurred when the foreman doing the layout assumed that the front of the house faced the road to the south. The house actually faces north toward the mountains. As a result, much of the layout was reversed and had to be redone. Fortunately, no concrete had been poured and the corners were correct.

Rebar cutter in action

Our first load of rebar was delivered — 450 six meter long pieces.  All of these need to be cut and formed.  We bought a rebar cutter to speed the process, being shown here snipping 16mm rebar.  On our wall construction project we cut all the rebar with hacksaws. The rebar cutter really speeds the work.

This photo shows foreman Tatoy performing part of the big job of fabricating rebar cages.  This one is for a house corner column.  It six meters long.  The long vertical bars are 12mm and the stirrups are 10mm.  The rebar seems to have been made at Qian’an Jiujiang Wire Rod Co., Ltd. in China.  They claim to make 16 millions tons of steel products per year.  We paid (Jan 2010) P288 for 16mm rebar, P163 for 12mm and P113 for 10mm.  We are paying P209 for a bag of cement, P300 per cubic meter of sand and P420 for stone.  Sorted, washed 3/4″ stone is much more, P700 per cubic meter.

Excavating for column footers 1.2M deep

Column footer

This is a good overview shot showing how most construction is done in the Philippines.  This shows a column footer excavation which is 1.2 meters (about 4′) below natural grade.  The footer is one meter square.  A 8X8 mesh of 16mm rebar is at the bottom.  The column rebar core rises almost six meters (about 20′) above the bottom of the footer.  This rebar core will be encased in a plywood form into which concrete will be poured and then vibrated in an effort to ensure that there are no voids.   Easier said than done!   This is what greeted us when we removed the form from our first column.

The complicated rebar framework devised by our engineer is much more demanding than the usual square column with a vertical rebar in each corner.  Getting the wet concrete to flow through the multiple rebars is a challenge, especially when trying to avoid over wet concrete.  It’s a perpetual struggle to keep the workers from making the concrete too wet.   Another factor,  we were using 3/4″ gravel rather than the sandier gravel which is typical here.  The gravel “hung” in the rebar framework leaving big voids.  We demolished this column.  You can be sure that this kind of a problem wold be quickly hidden away if you are not on-site supervising.

Editorial comment. If we had it to do over again,  we’d use plain square columns rather than the complex design devised by our engineers. While there may be advantages to the design our engineers provided, the practical problems of building them correctly in the provincial Philippines are several.  Our good, experienced workers had no experience with such columns, or generally such complex rebar configurations.  The aggregate generally available in our rural area contains larger stone which tend to hang up in the small openings.  We had the advantage of a good crew who wanted to good work. a concrete vibrator and screened gravel.  Still we had continuing problems and wasted lots of time trying make good columns using the design we were supplied with. In a situation where supervision was lax the situation would be worse.  Trying to fill the complex framework, the workers would use soupy concrete.  Any voids and defects would be plastered over.  The real world end result could easily be a significantly weaker column than employing the usual simple  square column with four vertical rebar.

Practice makes perfect - an almost perfect corner column.

The rebar at the top of the columns will be tied into the reinforced concrete beams which top the walls of the house.  These elements make a strong, well-anchored frame which is filled in with weak hollow cement blocks which are also filled with rebar and concrete and then parged with a thick coat of stucco-like concrete.  Metal roof trusses are also anchored into the concrete room beams.  The trusses will support long span steel roofing.  We decided to use 6″ hollow block for the exterior walls and four inch block for the interior partitions.  We are purchasing our block from Damasco in Pavia, Iloilo.  We used Damasco block for our perimeter wall.  In our view Damasco is the gold standard for block in Iloilo.  One does pay a premium. Local four inch hollow block costs P9, delivered.  Damasco 6″ block costs P13 delivered, 4″ Damasco block costs P12.   Using better block is a minor extravagance as the cost of block is a surprisingly small part of total construction cost.  More on hollow block shopping at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-cement-blocks/

At the end of our first week of construction the first concrete is poured

2″ X 2″ lumber is a staple of construction in the Philippines, used for layout as seen above and with 1/2″ marine plywood for building forms.  Typically the 2X2 is “coco” lumber – lumber from the coconut tree.  My foreman insisted that we buy mahogany instead, saying the coco is dangerously weak.  I reluctantly agreed – coco is P55 for a 2×2x8′, mahogany is about P75 and we needed a few hundred pieces.  Now I’m a convert.  The mahogany is stronger and more durable.  Coco lumber in forms under under pressure from wet concrete does give way more easily.  I do feel guilt.  Much of the mahogany is beautiful furniture grade material.

A ponke in action

This photos shows the workers adding material to the mixer using a “ponke”.  The ponke is a wooden box with handles.  The inside dimensions of the ponke are 40cm x 40cm x 40cm.  The ponke is sized to hold one sack of concrete.  I asked that the ponkes be built and used as a means of controlling the concrete mixture.  We decided on a mixture of one part cement, two parts sand and three parts gravel – a 1-2-3 mix. The use of the ponkes makes it easy to get the mixture right.  Ponkes are rarely used in the Philippines now, but used to be common.  Now materials are more commonly measured using empty cement sacks refilled with sand or gravel.  I wanted the ponkes and my ever patient crew accommodated another whim of the kano.  (Anyone with information on the correct spelling and etymology of “ponke” please leave a comment.   It sounds like it may have a Chinese origin.  This makes special sense as Chinese workers were prominent in the Philippine construction trades.)

One of the crucial advantages of being you own contrator is that YOU control the quality and quantity of concrete and reinforcing bar.  If you don’t think this is important, study the photos of the Haiti earthquake.  While there was widespread destruction, many building survived with little or no damage.

Our 1-2-3 mix is almost considered to be an extravagance.  The house you buy already built probably won’t have such strong concrete.  1-3-5 is in common use.  I have seen deliveries of substandard reinforcing bar.  A poorly built house may be built with a “class B” or “class C” concrete mix and not enough rebar.  You’ll never know what’s in your house unless you build it yourself.  It might never matter, but here’s a photo of the church in nearby Oton, Iloilo which was destroyed in the January 28, 1948 Panay Island earthquake.  You can still see damage from this earthquake at the Alimodian church, only a few KM from our Tigbauan site. Also see http://earthquake.phivolcs.dost.gov.ph/update_SOEPD/Earthquake/1990PanayEQ/index-panay.html regarding the 1990 7.1 Panay earthquake which collapsed buildings in Culasi and elsewhere.

The plan of our house was designed by a structural engineer.  We’re trying to be quite strict in following the plans.  We see quite a bit of good engineering in the plans as we build.  Lots of reinforcing steel is used in critical areas, but much less in columns not carrying much load.  Sometimes Filipino builders use traditional rules of thumb not based on engineering basics.  This can mean too much steel in places which really don’t need it and not enough in others.

Magnificent Oton Church, destroyed by January 28, 1948 earthquake. This is about 6KM from our house site.

Concrete vibrator in action

Look closely and you’ll see the worker using a length of rebar as a probe.  They’ve learned that large pieces of gravel can become lodged in the rebar preventing the flow of concrete down the column.  The internal concrete vibrator (more info at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-equipment-shopping/) makes the concrete flow better but can’t be depended on to dislodge stuck gravel.

Our latest response was to screen our gravel exclude larger stone that could hang up in the columns or beams.  We built a simple screen for our gravel using hardware cloth with a 1″ x 1″ mesh.  About one-half of our supposed 3/4″ gravel makes it through this mesh. We will use the smaller material for critical uses such as columns and beams, the larger stone is used in footers and fill for the hollow block.

Our conclusion is that the concrete vibrator caused more problems than it solved.  Most this is because most of our workers had never used a vibrator before and over used it.  In the case of columns, over vibration caused a slurry of water and cement to drain out of the bottoms and sides of the forms.  Left behind were the aggregate but not enough cement to hold it together.  This is shown in the photos below.  Probably with trained workers and larger projects, concrete vibration results in higher quality concrete but for us that was not the case.

The effects of over vibration at the bottom of a column pour.

A column error corrected.

Here’s another worker error caught by our engineer.  Generally the column rebar goes up first, then footers for the hollow block walls.  Then the walls go up around the column rebar. The pouring of the column is the last step.

Here the workers put the hollow block almost against the rebar cage for the column, leaving no room for the concrete forming the column.  This would have resulted in a much weaker column because the block has little strength.  The solution was quite time consuming, chipping or cuting back the block to give one inch of clearance between the hollow block and the column rebar.  With hollow block filled with concrete, this took quite a bit of time.  My foremen, who have built many houses, allowed this to happen, suggesting that it was their usual practice.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Galphimia Vine (Tristellateia australasiae)

We could not resist starting to plant trees and shrubs on our lot even though a final site plan has not been done or even the final amount of filling determined.  This is because we pass through Villa, Iloilo every time we travel from Iloilo City to Tigbauan and Villa is the garden of Iloilo.  Villa is blessed with superb soil.  This has resulted in  thriving, pervasive plant, shrub and tree growing vendors practically everywhere in Villa.  How can one drive past all these beautiful flowering plants and not want to take some home?  We could not.  Here’s a tally of what we’ve planted so far.

Manila (Christmas) palms

Royal palms

Bougainvillea (lots!)

Batuan http://www.marketmanila.com/archives/fresh-batuan

Allmanda aka Golden Trumpet, Yellow Bells

Indian Mango (from a pit left by workers)

Carabao Mango.  We bought three grafted mangos and planted them July 9, 2009.  Now in May, 2010 we had blossoms and tiny mangos.

Ten months after planting, we have tiny mangos.

Flame Tree (Delonix regia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Poinciana Ours is tiny.  We are sad to note that most of the beautiful flame trees which graced General Luna Street in Iloilo City have been cut down to make way for a “flyover”. Update.  Our flame or fire grew grew like crazy but unfortunately we had to transplant it due to construction.  We worried that the tree would not survive but we babied it and it’s now growing vigorously.

Transplanted fire tree is thriving

Malunggay (Moringa oleifera) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malunggay

Pomelo (similar to grapefruit)

Calamansi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamansi

Gardenia

Coconut, Dwarf

Papayas grown from seed saved from a papaya we liked

Tomato, Roma (seems to be doing well)

Tamarind, Chinese http://www.uni-graz.at/~katzer/engl/Tama_ind.html

Banana, Lacatan. Many think this variety is the world’s best banana.  The common banana avialble in the U.S. is the Cavendish, a large and comparatively tasteless variety.  See http://www.marketmanila.com/archives/lacatan-latundan-senorita-bananas

Talisay (Umbrella Tree)  This came as a “weed” in another plant we were given.  We planted it and it’s growing like crazy! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminalia_catappa

Camote (for greens)

Avocado

Acacia (2″ in March 2009, 12′ in April 2010!)

Galphimia Vine (Tristellateia australasiae)

Madagascar Periwinkle (Vinca rosea)

Madagascar Periwinkle

Keffir Lime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaffir_lime and http://www.thaitable.com/Thai/Ingredients/kaffir_lime_leaves.htm

Lemon Grass

Kang Kong – grows everywhere!

We were quoted a price of P250 per cubic meter.  We happended to know that another major buyer of this same material paid P160 per square meter so we offered P170 for 150 cubic meters.  Our offer was accepted.

The truck drivers and helpers ham it up for the camera. Bahay kubo in background.

Four or five trucks delivered the fifteen ten cubic meter loads in one day.  The truck were constantly getting stuck in the clayey soil of the lot.  The workers were pretty good natured about that even though digging the big trucks out was a lot of work.

Comment.  In total, we’ve placed over 100 loads of fill in our 1,500 square meter lot.  Keep in mind the expense of fill when you shop for real estate.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Perspective Drawing for our Tigbauan House

All about choosing an architect and builder for your Philippine house — our experiences and recommendations.

We spoke with many architects about our Tigbauan, Iloilo house project.  It seems to be the norm for the architect to either have his own construction crew or to have favored construction outfits they work with.  Most Philippine architects will just do the plans for you if you insist, but since most of the profit is in the construction, they are more eager to be involved in both design and construction.  Here are some of the options for the foreigner wishing to build his Philippine dream home.

1. Pay for design services and hire your own crew to do the construction work.   This approach can have major advantages if you have the time, skills, patience and confidence to use this approach.  If you don’t have experience with contracting and construction don’t try this.  Running your project will be a full time job with considerable frustration.

The advantages. You cut out the substantial profits which would go to the architect/general contractor.  You buy your own materials.  If things go well, you get the quality you want and avoid the cut the architect/contractor would have almost certainly arranged for himself — perhaps 20 or 30%.  As construction progresses, you are free to make changes without dealing with a contractor trying to get extra pay for change orders.  You are paying your crew by the day so you are in control of any modifications or added expense. Since the architect has no business relationship with the construction crew, the architect can be on you side, looking out for your interests.

Agree in advance that the architect is to make regular site visits, at times when there are problems you don’t feel competent to assess or resolve.   This has been a problem for us.  Once she was paid for her work, the engineer who did our plans was not especially interested in continued involvement with the project.

The key person in this approach is the construction foreman.  An honest and competent foreman is essential. The plans were provided by our engineer were lacking in detail.  Evidently, architects and  engineers assume that many of the construction standards and details will be worked out by the construction crew, or that the project will be overseen by an engineer.

2. Hire an architect to do the design work and put the project out for bid. Shop your project to several contractors.  As in the U.S. this approach invites contrators to low ball their bid and then to cut every corner and seek additional pay for the smallest change or ambiguity in the plans and specifications.   There is little possibility that this approach will work unless the plans and specifications are very detailed. Establish strict mile posts and a corresponding payment schedule.  Be very careful about requests for a large “mobilization” initial payment.  Do not let payments to your contractor get ahead of work actually completed.  This will be a constant struggle.

3. Hire an architect to design and build your house. This is not the least expensive option, but may be the best for property owners unwilling, unable or unavailable to hire a crew of workers and supervise the house construction project.  Here, everything depends on the integrity and competence of the architect-builder.  You must do a comprehensive background check.  Find out what he’s built and not just from him. Look at the houses he’s built.  Talk to owners.  Usually they’ll be glad to show off their houses, or share complaints.  We used this option to hire a talented and personable young Iloilo architect to design and build our perimeter fence.  I did everything wrong.  I only looked at one of his projects.  He drew up the contract and I did not review it critically enough.  I advanced too much mobilization money.  The money must have been spent for other purposes because work slowed to a crawl.  I had to take over the project.  It went well after that, but we lost a lot of money which we were never able to recover. You can read all about it in a separate account here.

With the usual trepidation,  can suggest an Iloilo design-build outfit. Joemarie Yao is a talented designer and an experienced builder.  We’ve seen a number of his buildings and spoken to satisfied clients. As with many sucessful architects, he’s a bright, articulate and charming salesman for his firm.  Once your contract has been signed, your project will probably be turned over to his staff.  The only complaint that we’ve heard is that things do not progress quickly enough for some clients.  If we were going to hire a design-build firm, it would be that of Joemarie Yao, mostly because we appreciate his design talent which tends toward simplicity rather than ostentation.  We have no business association of any kind with him.

4. Buying a lot and house package in a subdivision. Many buy their homes as a lot-house-financing package from a subdivision developer.  There are many such heavily promoted subdivisions in Iloilo City, some run by large Philippines development companies.  They buy large tracts of land cheaply, make improvements (especially lavish gate houses), and make money multiple ways;  selling the lots, building the houses and interest from installment payments.  You’ll be shown a prettily furnished model home.  The base price can seem reasonable, but often not much is included — maybe not even kitchen counters.  By the time you add in all that’s needed to make a livable home you may find that you’re paying a high per square meter price for a house of mediocre quality.  I have heard so many complaints about the quality of such houses and the unwillingness of developers to correct after sale problems.

Buying a house and lot package is an easy option, but we believe it is better to buy a lot and build your own house on it.  Most of the high-end subdivsions only sell lots and leave it to the purchasers to build their own houses. The house lot packages are mostly sold in the lower and mid-range subdivisions.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

We build a “bahay kubo” bamboo guest house.  We’re planning on building our conventional concrete house in early 2010.  The plans are just about complete.  More on that later. We decided we’d build one of the pretty native houses, a “bahay kubo”  as a first step.  We selected the above photo of a Panay Island home  to guide the local workers as to what we wanted.  The photo is from the wonderful book “Folk Architecture”, published by GCF Books, Quezon City, 1989.  This book not only has hundred of photos of bahay kubos and other vernacular Philippine architecture but also measured drawings of many of them.

Our rationale for building this now is that we can use the building as “barracks” for our workers from Iloilo City while they work on our house.  It’s likely that we’ll use the same Iloilo City foreman and key crew members as built our fence.  We’d like to give them a little better accommodations than they had for the fence project.  They will stay on-site from Monday to Saturday pay day.  Saturday evening they take a jeepney into Iloilo City to see their family and give their pay — or most of it — to their family. So they spend five nights per week at the site.

Once the house project is complete, the bahay kubo will be used as a very atmospheric guest house.

The bahay kubo is 23′ x 12′ including the porch.  We decided to build using four concrete corner posts or columns which will extend all the way to the top plate.  The columns contain four 10mm rebars which extend above the top of the columns and which will be bent over the top plates to secure the roof strucure from being blown away.  The columns will be one part of the structure the termites can’t eat!  The rest of the building will be built entirely from bamboo and coco (coconut) lumber.  The roof will be of nipa — the thatched leaf of the nipa palm.

Construction began on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 with a crew of four on site.  Here’s a few photos:

The standard Filipino column footer and four 10mm rebar column reinforcement.

This photo shows the location on the lot and the surroundings.

The columns going up.  They will be hidden in bamboo cladding.

Day 9 of project, total expense so far $510

Excess rebar coming out of column tops is bent over top plate to try to stop the roof from blowing off in a typhoon. This is standard practice.

The roof will be thatch from the Nipa palm. We paid P360 per 100 panels of thatch.

Nipa thatch being laid. It is tied on to the roof structure with thin nylon rope. We are laying the nipa with a 3" exposure.

The split bamboo floor being laid over the coco lumber joists.

Our bahay kubo will be sheathed in tad tad.  Tad tad (which means chop-chop in Tagalog and Ilonggo) is bamboo which is unrolled into a flat panel using a bolo to make many cuts in the bamboo until it lies flat.

Marlo is using his bolo to split open bamboo to form a flat panel

The finished tad tad panel ready to be installed as wall sheathing

Tad tad is supported by a bamboo framework

Mortises are chisled into the bamboo studs

Wall framing. The short studs are for window openings.

More progress

Making Shutters

Installing shutters

Porch added, also bamboo shutters

Inside the bahay kubo. We project the final cost to be about $1,500 USD.

Sunset light on bahay kubo.  Note  ”security” light on right.  As is traditional, the globe is the bottom of a plastic bottle, in this case a water bottle.  Vinegar bottles are also popular.  Inside is a 26W compact fluorescent bulb.  These lights, as well as lights and outlets inside the bahay kubo, were installed over the weekend by a neighbor who does electrical work.  Next steps will be adding a porch railing and bamboo strips to hold down the nipa roof.

It’s been hot and dry lately but the bahay kubo stays cool.  The windows set high on the walls and the wide roof overhang keep the sun out of the house during the day, even though there is no trees or shade.  The very open breezy site also helps.

The completed bahay kubo. Thirty five days labor and $1,500.00

Interior with Christmas decorations

Happy homeowner!

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/ and how we’ve tried to incorporate the feel of a bahay kubo in our permanent house at http://goiloilo.com/our-philippine-house-project-roof-design/

Our Tigbauan land is surrounded on all sides by what seems to be flat rice fields, sort of a tropical Kansas.  Fortunately, we have a nice vista of the mountains of Iloilo and Antique Province.  One feature of Google Earth is that it shows the elevation of any location that your mouse cursor  hovers over.  Flooding is a real problem for Iloilo property owners. So, if you locate the property you are considering, you can “cruise” your neighborhood to see if the property you are considering is in a low spot relative to surrounding properties and relative to rivers, fishponds and other water bodies which could present a flood hazard.  I’m not sure how accurate the Google Earth elevations are, but they are well worth adding as one more way to investigate property you are consider buying.

So, how did our Tigbauan property fare? It turns out that our property is the lowest spot in our general neighborhood at 38′ or 39′ above sea level.  Much of the surrounding terrain is 40′ to 42′ above sea level.  Since we are far from any water bodies, we don’t feel we face any real problems but this information will lead us to put a bit more fill on our lot to be sure that it does not continue to the neighborhood’s low spot. So, Google Earth has already helped us with our real estate project!

View into lot through gates.

Property Taxes — a welcome contrast.  When we lived on a farm in Upstate New York, our local real estate taxes were about $4,000 per year.  The annual property taxes of our Tigbauan, Iloilo property are P129.04, however since we paid them early we received a discount.  We paid P98.24 for 2009.  This is for a 1,500 square meter lot.  Of course this will go up when we build a house but still low property taxes are a big benefit to life in the Philippines.

In order to make concrete, the basic building material of the Philippines, water is a necessity.  That’s why a well is the first order of business when building a house.  Most of these wells are what we’d call dug wells but Filipinos usually call deep wells.  Drilled wells are rare here but the Iloilo Municipal Water District does have some drilled wells in Oton.  American colonial authorities and geologists gave up on wells to supply water to Iloilo City and instead built the reservoir on the Tigum River.  It’s still in use today.

We had bought a lot in Tigbauan, Iloilo in the Philippines.  Our plan is to eventually build a house there.  The first step was to build a perimeter wall around the lot.  This is usual in the Philippines and most developing countries.  We hired an Iloilo architect to design and build the wall because we had never managed such a project in the Philippines on our own.  We were a bit intimidated at the thought of hiring and supervising a crew, buying materials and so forth.

Making culvert/well tiles at Damasco, Pavia Iloilo

Philippine wells almost always use precast concrete well tiles.  Since we wanted our well to be good and to have a big capacity we specified that big tiles be used.  We shopped around and found good well tiles at Damasco in Pavia, Iloilo.  More about that at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-cement-blocks/

We ended up using tiles that were 36″ in diameter on the inside at 18″ high.  These tiles are very heavy, perhaps 500 pounds each. They are much larger than the tiles most property owners use.  Our theory was that the large tiles would give us a bigger reserve for peak water usage such as garden watering. Our architect-contractor brought in some workers to dig the well.  Locals had told us that wells should be 25 feet deep to ensure a reliable supply of water.

Hauling up dirt from the bottom of the well where another worker is digging.

The actual digging of the well was less drama that I had imagined.  Basically, the first tile is set in place and then workers dig under the bottom tile causing it to settle into the well hole.  When the tile has sunk to ground level another tile is rolled into place on lifted on top and the digging continues.  Since we had a big crew in site for the building of the wall, there was plenty of manpower available to wrestle with the tiles.

Carol and I left for a few days and when we came back we were dismayed to find that the well had been dug so that ten tiles were in place below the surface with two tiles above ground.  This meant that we had a fifteen foot deep well, not the twenty-five foot depth we had been told was necessary.  The well-digging crew had disappeared.  The well tile joints had been sealed with concrete mortar and the exterior of the well back filled.  I was not happy but the architect assured me that the well would be made deeper “later”.  This turned out to be wrong.  The sealing of the joints, and especially the backfilling meant that the tiles were fixed in place and digging under the bottom tile to deepen the well would not work.  Since this was in January, before the hot, dry weather set in, we had plenty of water for the time being — about six feet of water in the fifteen foot well.  The question was would we have enough water for our wall building project as the water level dropped during the hot and dry months of February through May.

Fast forward through almost three months of hot, dry weather to April.  The architect and his crew have been given walking papers and a new crew is on site and making good progress on the wall.  There is only two or three feet of water in the well and we decide we have to take action.  The father of one of our crew members, Juanito Trogani, is purportedly the ace well digger in the Tigbauan, Iloilo area.  This proved to be true.  Trogani came to the site to evaluate the well.  He said all the tiles have to be removed and the well redug.  He agreed to do the work for P800 pesos per tile.  We had more tiles delivered and Trogani appeared with his crew and a few simple tools carried in rice sacks.   We document the work below.

All the tools (rope, a couple of lengths of pipe) arrived in rice sacks over the digger's shoulders. We supplied the bamboo for the tripod.

Bear in mind how much more difficult a job rebuilding the well was than was digging it in the first place.  All of the 500 pound concrete tiles had to be hoisted out of the well using almost medieval technology.  I was really appalled at the risks being taken.  Young men were lowered into the well to tie a rope around the wet, slippery tiles which were then slowly hauled out of the well, mostly by brute force.  I shuddered to think what would happen if a tile came loose while one of the men was in the well.

Hauling the 500# tiles out of the well

This was the brake which regulated tension on the line

The tiles are out and waiting to go back in once the digging is done.

All the old tiles had been wrestled out of the well by the second day and the process of digging the well deeper started.  The well was dug to about 16.5 or 17 feet deep and then two tiles were lowered in.  Digging under the tiles continued.  The crew had to constantly bail water out of the well.  As work progressed the young diggers had to dive to the bottom of the well to continue the digging.

Diggers in the bottom of the well using the tool shown below.

This is the tool used to dig in the confined space at the bottom of the well

So far the digging had been through a very dense clay (probably a vertisol) but at 19 feet we came to a layer of pure gray sand.  It appeared to be almost identical to the volcanic material deposited across Washington State when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980.  We lived in Washington at the time and remember the snow plow trucks plowing this material off the highways.  Certainly this layer must have been deposited from an ancient volcanic eruption.  It was subsequently overlaid with twenty feet of clay, probably deposited when the area was a seabed.  The sand layer was considered to be very auspicious and digging was ended and sealing of the joints and backfilling undertaken.

Good news - layer of volcanic sand at 20'

The tiles go back in

Total cost was P13,600 or about $285.  Of course this did not include the well tiles which were P870 ($19) each nor does it account for the fact that I had previously paid for the original well digging.  Still the redigging was a success.  We ended up with almost nine feet of water in the well instead of two or three feet.  We went on to add a concrete platform and Dragon hand pump.

"Dragon" brand water pump

Now, after several months the water is still slightly milky.  This is pretty much unavoidable in a well dug in clay, which is the finest of soils.  The particles are so small that they remain suspended in the water rather than settling out.  The heat, the slightly stagnant and swampy nature of the surrounding rice fields promotes algae growth.  Our solution is to treat the well with chlorine powder — or one can just use liquid laundry bleach.  This is a standard well treatment practically everywhere.  Chlorine powder in small packets is sold in grocery stores and given away by government to help residents keep their wells safe.  When we lived on our New York farm our fabulous water came from a mountainside spring.  Our Iloilo water is nothing like that. Filipinos struggle to find and afford safe drinking water and the situation is only likely to get worse as forests disappear and population and pollution grow.  We are fortunate to have a good supply of water from our well but we’ll likely keep buying bottled water for drinking and cooking.

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

Newly planted Malunggay tree

Planting Malunggay is accomplished by hacking off a branch of sprout of an existing Malunggay tree and sticking it in the ground.  I came back to look the next day and here’s what I found:

Malunggay sprouts leaves in one day!

It looks like we may be harvesting Malunggay leaves in a few weeks or months.  Malunggay is thought to be very nutritious and it’s cultivation and consumption in promoted by the Philippine government.  It seems to have been a native of India.  Lots more information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malunggay

Also note the kangkong (water spinach) spreading on the ground below the Malunggay.  This edible plant is also widely eaten in the Philippines and has virtually taken over our lot without any effort on our part.  I especially like it in the sour soup sinigang.  For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_aquatica

Building a hollow block perimeter wall around our Philippine lot.  A first step in our Philippine house building project.

Katherine Boo, writing in the February 23, 2009 edition of the New Yorker magazine makes what I feel are over-politicized theories on fences in the developing world.  Basically she says that electrified fences, walls jagged with broken glass and security gates have gone up as inequality grows, “that however the rich wished to consider the details of the poor, the poor might fully consider the details of the rich.”  The idea is that the rich build walls to protect themselves from a growing revolutionary consciousness on the part of the poor.   In the Philippine context, everyone wants a fence, not to protect themselves from a revolutionary mob, but rather to protect themselves from pervasive ordinary crime.  The poor have as good a fence as they can afford and always a dog to raise the alarm.  If a relative goes overseas and sends money back, a hollow block house and glass-topped concrete wall, may well result.  Read an abstract of Boo’s article (you have to be a New Yorker subscriber to get the entire article) at:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/23/090223fa_fact_boo

Now that we’ve defended ourselves and the fence project from political incorrectness, here’s a continuation of our posts on our house building project in Tigbauan, Iloilo in the Philippines.  In this segment we describe building a hollow (concrete) block perimeter wall and digging a well on our lot in Tigbauan.

We described shopping for hollow blocks and well tiles in an earlier post.  View it at http://goiloilo.com/our-house-project-cement-blocks/

Earlier we described buying our property, why a wall is needed:

http://goiloilo.com/our-tigbauan-home/

This narrative will continue until we’ve moved in to our new house.   This post is about building the hollow block perimeter wall itself.  We’ve reconsidered our ideas regarding the kind of fence we want.  In urban areas of the Philippines, high solid block fences topped with broken glass or barbed wire are the norm, but in rural places such as this, we just don’t feel that such a fence is appropriate.  When we traveled through Antique Province we saw that most non-bamboo fences were built with concrete posts about three meters apart, with perhaps one meter of concrete block above grade and the rest of the fence being cyclone wire.  This keeps animals in (or out), allows breezes, does not make you feel as through you are in a penitentiary and, in our case preserves views of the surrounding rice fields and mountains.  However, we’ve recently learned that the land around our lot will be subdivided for residential development we’re going to compromise.  Our wall will be seven feet high.  The first three feet will be hollow block topped with four feet of cyclone fencing.

Job site office and lounge

A first step was building this bamboo “office” for my visits to the job site.

Digging the well

In the U.S. wells are almost always drilled.  Dug wells are a remnant from an earlier era, considered prone to contamination by surface water.  Public health officials generally will not approve their use.  That said we had dug wells at our farm in Essex, New York.  There was a well which must have been dug around 1810.  Then I put in a new dug well using concrete well tiles very similar to those shown above.  In Iloilo dug wells, sometimes referred to as “deep wells” are standard.  Many of them are contaminated and are only used by the affluent for laundry and washing.  Of course the poor have to drink well water.

Down in the well

I was not exactly sure how a 25′ well could be dug by hand, but it’s really not that complicated, at least until water is struck. A shallow hole is dug and the first tile placed in the hole.  The digging team consists of the digger in the bottom of the well, and his helper who manages a pail on the end of a rope.  The digger digs around the bottom of the bottom well tile, putting the dirt in the pail.  Gradually the tile is undermined and the well tiles settle downward.  As the top of the tile approaches ground level, members the other members of the construction crew pitch in to put a new tile at the top and then the digging continues.

We used reinforced concrete well tiles (which are actually culvert tiles) 36″ in diameter and 18″ high.  These are larger tiles than are usually used in the Philippines. The tiles cost P885 each, delivered. We bought ours from the same supplier as our hollow block, Damasco Marketing in Pavia, Iloilo (phone 329-6461). We have been very pleased with Damasco.  So far we have received 4,200 6″ block.  The count of blocks delivered has been accurate and very, very few defective blocks.

As of Jan. 30, 2009 twelve tiles were in place, ten below grade and two above.  There was six feet of water in the well.  The well diggers seemed inclined to stop digging, but January is just the start of the dry hot months.  The water table can be expected to fall further.  The original plan, based on local recommendations, was to have a 25′ deep well, with another 5′ above grade but the well diggers stopped digging, cemented the joints, and back filled around the tiles and left.  By April we only had three feet of water and the level was still falling.  We had to bring in a new crew to completely redig the including removing all the tiles which had already been placed.  I’ve made a separate photo essay on the amazing and terrifying work of the new crew.  See http://goiloilo.com/digging-water-well-tigbauan-philippines/

Digging the trench for the hollow block perimeter wall

At the same time as the well is being dug, the foundation trenches for the hollow block perimeter wall are being dug.  As you may be able to see from this photo, our rice land soil is unbelievably heavy clay.   The mountains in the distance are in Iloilo Province, in the Bucari area.  We decided to back fill the trenches with gravel fill so that we could save the soil from the trenches for use a lot fill.  The gravel fill is better for the fence and the clay soil is better for our future gardens and landscaping.  Later we found out that the heavy clay soil cracks so badly during the long dry season that the crack can cause structural damage to fence and house foundation walls.  The photo below was taken in March of 2010.  There had been no rain since late October of 2009.  Backfilling with gravel can create a barrier or buffer keeping the cracking clay from damaging foundations.  This is a growing problem in the U.S. also as reported in a New York Times article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/garden/04foundation.html

Cracking earth near hollow block wall. 3-9-10

Four foot deep fence foundation trench

It’s been a surprise to me that such extensive foundation work is needed for a simple hollow block wall.  The trenches are four feet deep.  One reason may be that the wall will be retaining up to one meter of fill, so it has to have considerable strength to resist the outward pressure of the fill.  Many poorly built walls tip.  They are everywhere.  When we were in Cebu City we saw a huge section (100 feet?) of concrete boundary wall collapse into a stream during a rain storm.

Pancit Break at the job site

On my way to the job site I stopped at Bong’s Eatery in Oton and bought saipao (steamed pork buns) for the worker’s merienda (afternoon snack).  I was completely upstaged by a this neighborhood woman and her son who arrived with an afternoon meal for the workers.  For ten pesos (about twenty cents) the workers get a plate of pancit (noodles with meat and vegetables) along with two or three small pan de sal (wheat rolls).  She and her family live nearby, “over behind the coconut trees”.  She keeps an account book on collects for the meals on each Friday payday.  Eventually I stopped bringing snacks for the workers as I did not want to compete with Mercy.

Rebar columns for fence

This worker is fabricating steel reinforcing for the concrete fence columns.  The columns are 30cm x 30 cm.  Each contains four 12mm rebar vertically, wrapped with 9mm or 10mm stirrups.  Although the fence will end up being seven feet above the final grade, each column is four meters (12 feet) high –  (a four foot foundation, two feet of fill and seven feet fence height = 12 feet).    The columns are spaced three meters apart.

Rebar column and column footer. The heavy concrete column footer is 80cm (32") square. It is further reinforced when the wall footer is poured across the column footer.

Vertical rebar is 12mm.  Also shows column footer.

It looks a little like a state prison construction site!

February 22, 2009 Update.  A litany of disasters.  The workers had done a great job digging the trenches.  Then a typhoon arrived two weeks ago with very heavy rain.  The walls of the trenches collapsed back into the trenches, almost filling them with mud and clay. They have to be re-dug.  The muddy soil is not a promising base for the footers.

Collapsed trench

Lesson: it was unwise to dig all the trenches in advance.  One side of the fence should have been dug, the footers poured, the block laid and the trench back filled.  That would have limited the trench collapse problem.  Why was it done this way?  I suspect (see below) that digging trenches is cheap because it requires only labor — not expensive rebar and cement.

We made other mistakes.  We advanced too much money to the architect-contractor at the beginning of the contract for “mobilization”.  Although we had advanced nearly 50% of the project funds by the fifth week, work was not commensurate and then almost stopped when there were no materials being delivered by the architect-contractor.  The workers had no materials to work with. We suspended payments to the contractor and had to pay the workers ourselves.  We should have known better than to let payments outstrip actual work completed.  This is unwise anywhere.  Mindful that the rainy season is not far off, we have had to start paying workers and buying material.

Because we had to pay workers directly, we became privy to what wages were being paid.  Wages ranged from P170 per day for laborers to P280 per day for the most experienced worker.  Payroll for the week was P9,320.00 for eight construction workers and one supervisor.

Feb. 23, 2009 a basic materials list for our fence project.  This is for a fence of about 180 lineal meters.  The wall height is about 10 feet, four feet below grade and six above.

• 6″ hollow block – 8,475 pcs – paying 13 pesos delivered.
• Cement – 1,299 bags – Apo brand, paying P209 delivered
• 10mm rebar, 6m length – 1,446 pcs – paying P111 delivered
• 12 mm, 6m length rebar 252 pcs – paying P161 delivered
• Sand 90 cm – paying P290 per cubic meter
• Gravel 111 cm – paying P340 per cubic meter
• Ordinary fill material for back filling the trenches was P170 per cubic meter, delivered in six cubic meter loads.. This is a stony, sandy gravel.  We’ll also use the material for the driveway and underneath the carport and house.

Some of these prices are a bit high for the Iloilo City area but the job site is about 30km outside of the city so transport adds to the cost. The sand and gravel costs seem high.  Soil fill is about P225 per cubic meter.

We have a watchman sleeping on the site along with his family.  Yesterday we had a big delivery of hollow block.  Our watchman, who works as one of our laborers during the day, could not work today because he was kept up at night by people trying the steal block and escape with them across the fields on foot.  They must have cursed us for the heavy six inch block!  No block was lost.  He requested a big flashlight.  I happened to have a five battery-D-cell Mag-Light that I bought twenty years ago, so I gave it to him to use.  This type of theft is routine in the Philippines.  Any more questions why a wall is necessary?

March 2, 2009.  We take our son to Boracay, leaving behind instructions that no concrete be poured until we get back.  We want to inspect the placement of the gravel, the rebar and so forth.  We return the following day to find that about sixty meters of footer have been poured.  Explanation of site supervisor, “I forgot what you said”.

The block sits on a rough pile of concrete. Somewhere underneath is the footer.

March 4, 2009.  I return to the site to see that block is being laid atop that new footer, but the block is not on the footer itself but on a hump of stony mortar several inches high.

Detail of how a badly out of level footer is "corrected". The footer is about 6" below the block.

I’m furious. A fence which will be nine feet high is teetering on a hump of mortar!  The explanation — the grade of the newly poured footer was not right and the “hump” is to correct the level.  Finally it becomes clear that this crew lacks proper supervision.  Perhaps this is the way of ordinary Filipino building, that all of these problems will be adjusted away, hidden away and that the completed fence will look fine.  The “hump” will be buried with the footer back fill.   If I had not been on site every day, the trench would have been back filled and I’d have never known about this bit of creative construction, unless the fence failed.  When you buy a already built house, or if you are not present during construction of your house, you have no idea how many sins are hidden beneath the finishing.  This could have just as easily been the foundation of a house as a fence.At least we’re learning these lessons on our wall and not our house!

We decided that we had to terminate our contract with the architect-contractor.  Although we had paid advances of almost P350,000, the project was being stalled for lack of material and inadequate attention and supervision by the architect.

We hired a new crew who began work on March 13.  So far we’re very pleased with the work.  Bob and Carol are responsible for buying and arranging for delivery of all materials.  Given the rate at which this big, hard-working crew consumes cement, rebar, sand and gravel, keeping them supplied is a real job.

This shows the column and the .8m x .8m column footer ready to be poured

Concrete being mixed. The amount consumed is prodigious!

This shows the wall footer being poured over the already poured column footer.

Pouring the footer, and unending line of buckets of concrete fill the trench.

The new supervisor and crew have made a dramatic improvement in the pace and quality of the work.

Steel and concrete stream into the project site

I am starting to feel guilty about the environmental impact of the wall project.  The amount of concrete and steel being used to fence a small lot seems really excessive.  Perhaps this concrete overkill is to compensate for local construction methods. Materials and mixing are not always up to proper standards.  Sand and gravel can be dirty, mixtures impromptu, and mixing done with a shovel. Filipino concrete construction often seems overbuilt in this way, as though the buildings are designed to last forever.  In reality, the buildings are transitory and are often knocked down in a few years.  The New York Times has an excellent article on concrete at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/science/earth/31conc.html?_r=1&hpw

The new crew built a "bodega" to store materials, especially sacks of cement.

The bodega is sheathed in "hamakan", thin strips of bamboo woven into panels. In Tagalog areas it's called sawali. This is taken from the inside of the bodega.

Tall post to receive electric power built into corner of fence

Detail showing electric cable attachment at corner post.

At long last, real progress on the fence project!

The east wall (above) will be eight feet above the preexisting grade.  If we add two feet of fill, the wall height will end up at six feet.  Th east wall is the only wall which will be solid block.  The others will be two or three feet of block topped with four feet of diamond-mesh (”Cyclone”) fencing suspended from a 1.5″ schedule 40 pipe embedded in the top of the columns.  This will allow air circulation and views of the surrounding rice fields and mountains in the distance.

The east wall will be all block because we adjoin an undeveloped subdivision on the east.  There are five five 300 square meter lots along our 65 meter long east boundary so we eventually have neighbors, very possibly owning roosters and karaoke machines.  Unfortunately we’ll lose some of the cool breezes during the northeast monsoon — the Amihan.

The construction of the wall consists of panels of hollow blocks between 30×20 cm concrete columns.  The columns rest on 80cm x 80 cm reinforced concrete footings.  The blocks rest on a slightly shallower reinforced concrete footing.  The columns are spaced about three meters apart.

Above the footing there are nine rows of filled, reinforced hollow blocks topped by a horizontal reinforced concrete tie or banding beam running the length of the wall.  The rebar for the banding beam can be seen in the photo. Then will come six more courses of block topped by a final tie beam.

Perspective problem

The above photo should show an engineering problem with the fence.  The lot slopes up about two feet during the 65 meters from the road to the rear of the property.  The footers must be level so the footer trenches so they get progressively deeper as the grade rises.  This means the fence will be lower in the rear than in the front.  Is this a problem?

Heavy traffic on the road into our lot. Barangay Namocan is dairy cow country.

Our electric utility is ILECO, the Iloilo Electric Cooperative.  Ileco’s power lines run right by our property.  We wanted to get temporary power installed.  Our crew was mostly from Iloilo City and stayed overnight at the project site.  Lighting would make their evenings more civilized — they could see the food they were eating. Power will be essential for welding.

As a temporary measure we bought a kerosene-powered pressure lamp — similar to the Coleman lamps in the U.S. and widely used in the Philippines for night fishing. Lamps and parts available from Senor Hardware, Iznart Street, Iloilo City.

A neighbor suggested we hook up to his power connection and that we could pay him for the power we use.  We preferred to have our own temporary connection so we asked our architect to apply for a temporary electrical permit to the Tigbauan Municipal Engineer’s office.  Although the Engineer’s office had a form for a temporary permit, actually getting the permit approved devolved into an endless, frustrating bouncing back and forth between the ILECO office and that of the municipal engineer’s office.  Of necessity, we capitulated and accepted our neighbor’s offer.  We had power the next day.  It seems that you get your electrical hookup when your building is complete and that ad hoc hookups are normal for construction projects.

Relaxing with some of the construction crew - Barangay Namocan, Tigbauan Fiesta April 18, 2009

We make access road repairs

Like dumb novices, we did not pay too much attention to the quality of the road leading into our bit of paradise, other than ensuring that we had the legal right to use it. We saw the property during the dry season.  The road was rough but very passable.  Of course, that all changed when the rains came.  Access to our property was just about impossible.  Fortunately, it’s only about 500 meters to a fairly solid barangay (municipal) road.  As is typical, our road served dozens of families traveling mostly by foot, motor bike or tricycle.  The road also served a dormant subdivision just beyond our property.

The seemingly inexorable pace of development in the area helped save us from our road problems.  Owners of lots in the subdivision just beyond us complained that they could not access their lots and road improvements resulted.  The improvements consisted of truck hauling in loads of rough sandy-gravel fill and dumping it on the muddy road.  The trucks appeared and then disappeared, the job only partly done.  Still we were grateful and learned how easy it was to improve the road.  We decided to continue the work in a small way.  We filled bad spots with a total of about 25 cubic meters of sandy gravel, using our worker to spread the fill.  This cost us about P6,000 and made our access (and that of our neighbors) better.

We bought this “Dragon” brand pump at Senor hardware on Iznart Street in Iloilo city for P2,500.  For many Filipino households, this would serve as the all-purpose wash area; for taking a bath (while dressed for modesty’s sake), doing laundry and dishes.  Even some rich households make their help use hand pumps to save money on electricity and to avoid using “NAWASA” — municipal water which costs money.  Most Filipinos must use ground water, whatever its quality.  They have no other option.

The water level -- a key tool

The water level is nothing more than a length of plastic pipe filled with water.  It allows builders to keep projects level.

Neighbor Mercy and her daughter arrive with lunch for the crew

Initially neighbor Mercy sold merienda to the crew but later we hired her to cook a lot lunch for them each work day.  We paid her P200 per day to buy food in the market and P100 to cook and deliver the lunch.  We also bought rice for the crew, a 50 kilo sack lasts about two weeks and costs P1600.

Filling column form with concrete

We put a short length of pipe in the top of each fence column

We put a short length of pipe in the top of each fence column.  The purpose is to allow us to easily add barb wire to the top of the fence if needed.  A length of rebar can be inserted into the top of the pipe and the barb wire welded to the rebar.  We don’t really like the idea of barbed wire but neighbors tell us we should have it.

Almost done!

This photo shows the fence nearing completion.  The north and west walls are mostly cyclone wire so that we can keep views and breezes.

A last step - installing the gates

Gates are installed by chipping holes in the newly-constructed gate posts to expose the rebar in the post.  The gate hinges are then welded to the rebar and the damage repaired with cement mortar.

Gate hinges welded to rebar in posts.

Truck leaves through new gates after leaving a load of fill.

We put more than 100 truckloads of fill.  We wanted to be sure the house, driveway and carport would not flood.

Concrete molding workshop

The workers decided that such grand gateposts were not compete without “capitals”, decorative moldings at the top of each post.  An impromptu workshop was set-up to make the moldings.

Finished concrete moldings - made on site

Filimon Asonada and crew install moldings on front gate post

Saintly project foreman Tatoy checks the work

COST OF THE FENCE: While the fence is not quite complete we can see that the total cost will be about one million pesos including the fence, three gates (two vehicle, one pedestrian), well, pump and fill.  This comes to about P5,500 pesos per meter of fence.

Several factors drove up the cost.  We used better quality six inch block rather than the crumbly four inch block usually used.  The six inch block required more concrete to fill the larger cavities.  Our footers were deep and strong, our columns 30 x 30 cm., our well had to be completely redug because the first construction crew did not make it deep enough for a reliable water supply, and our large downpayment to our first architect-contractor was never recovered.  In general, we erred on the side of doing things right rather than cheaply.  We are well-satisfied with the result.

Still, there is a danger in our approach, especially when it comes to building a house. Being so perfectionistic, choosing the quality  (and more expensive) option for each of the hundreds of decisions when building a house can really drive up the cost.  Speaking for myself, building can be an addiction or compulsion, especially in a place where labor is cheap and the foreigner can indulge every building fantasy.  The foreigner builds his dream home but, if circumstances change, he can be imprisoned in it because he has too much money in the house and cannot sell it except at a big loss.  He more have spent more of his savings than he really could afford leaving him (and his widow) short of money.

Using 20-20 hindsight, we could have done things quite differently.  Consider this.  We could have brought in fill to raise the level of the footprint of the house, the driveway and the carport and surrounded the property with a simple, durable fence of concrete posts and barbed wire, or we could have used bamboo for fencing.  These approaches would have saved a great deal of money.  The environmental and aesthetic impacts would have been much smaller.  From an investment perspective the fence we built probably is OK.  Buyers appreciate strong fences and filled, ready-to built lots.  Our fence gives us a level of privacy and security.  We learned a hundred lessons about building in the Philippines — that’s invaluable!  Anyway, we hope that others can learn from our mistakes, our choices, experiences, as we have.

Finally, Carol and I would like to pay tribute to our construction crew.  Over the years we have read various complaints about Filipino workers.  We were so fortunate.  Our crew consisted of the amazing and indispensable foreman “Tatoy” Fortunato Pornel, 73 years old, and nine to fifteen other workers.  Tatoy has worked construction all his life, all over the Philippines and in Saudi Arabia and Guam as well.  He’s a natural leader and a gentleman who had the respect of the crew and enforced a discipline through example, high standards and constant and good-natured exhortation to the crew.  The rest of the crew consisted of local workers from Tigbauan and workers brought by Tatoy from Iloilo City.  They were a great bunch of workers; good humored, hard working, honest and intelligent.  Nothing was stolen.  When I miscalculated and overpaid a worker.  He came to me to point out my error and return the money.

Carol and I tried to treat our crew well.  We provided a sack of rice every two weeks.  We hired a local woman to cook a hot lunchtime meal for them and paid them a nice bonus at the end of the job.  We endeavored to treat them all with respect.  Carol and I both felt sad when the job was over and these great guys left the site for the last time.  I have overseen numerous construction projects in the U.S.  Our Filipino crew measured up in every way.

Almost done...view into lot through gates.

Now on the the next steps, drafting plans, getting permits and building our house……

Read all about our Philippine House building Project at http://goiloilo.com/building-our-philippine-house-index/

We’re fencing the lot we bought in Tigbauan with a cement block wall.  Why?  To keep out roaming carabaos, but mainly because we will be filling the lot to raise its level so that our house won’t flood during typhoons.  Since we’ll be putting in up to one meter of fill, a wall to needed to retain the fill.  The wall may add to our security to some small extent.

Carabao "helps" our surveyor at our Tigbauan lot.

Why do we need to fill our lot before building a house? This photo is just after typhoon Frank left Tigbauan.

The above photo shows usual flooding conditions in Philippine rice growing lands.  The soils are very heavy clay and tend to retain rain water — perfect for growing rice but not really ideal for residential development and especially not ideal of septic systems.

Many expats are willing and able to get personally involved in construction projects; hiring, supervising and firing local employees, shopping and bargaining for materials, getting permits and all the rest.  Bob did not feel comfortable with doing that so we hired an architect to develop the plans and to oversee the project.  Plans?  Yes, a building permit is required for the wall and to get a permit plans are needed.  We also wanted plans and specification to ensure that the wall was actually built the way we wanted it to be built.  We heard lots of stories about poor quality block. We told the architect that we wanted top quality block and that we wanted to approve the quality of the block in advance of its purchase and delivery.  That is proving to be more difficult than we thought.

Our architect knew of a major supplier of block to the Iloilo area so we piled into his car to visit the Damasco block plant in Pavia, Iloilo.  The firm had a small storefront in “downtown” Pavia, so that was our first stop.  They showed us their standard 4″ block.  I really don’t have much experience with block and don’t know proper methodology or equipment for testing it, but here’s what I did.  I brought along my 20 oz. Estwing hammer.  My theory was that rapping a block would at least determine if it would easily crumble.  The ring of hard concrete would also contrast with the dull sound of a over-sandy block.

It was immediately clear that the block we were looking at was weak.  When hit it, there was a very dull thud sound, not the ring of hard concrete.  It was easy to tap a hole in the block.  Anyway, this is a standard block used in most Philippine building projects.  When used in a house or wall they are not really structural.  The block is are reinforced with rebar, filled with wet concrete and then parged with concrete on both sides.  So, the explanation is that the strength of the individual block is not that important.  These blocks are made to sell for little money.  The block I ruined with my Estwing cost P9.75.  Doubtless, this price would be reduced with discounts.  Hence the block is mostly sand with not much concrete.  I have seen worse.  I went to one block plant that made blocks so weak you could crush them with your shoe.

Since our fence was not to be parged, we wanted a less crumbly block.  The worker at the storefront sent us back to the yard where the blocks are made.  Damasco’s was an impressively big operation.   The owner was very articulate about global warming, the Greenland ice cap and Al Gore.  He said the standard block were manufactured at seventy blocks per bag of concrete.  (A bag of concrete costs about P200.) He said the strength of these standard blocks is 300 PSI.  He showed us some well-cured 700 PSI block.  Forty blocks are made with one bag of concrete. I did the “Estwing test” on these.  These were much better, but still not comparable to block I had handled in the U.S.  The owner said he would custom make 700 PSI block for us, but the cost quoted to us is just about double that of the 300 PSI block.  Is it any wonder that most use the cheaper block!  Using better block would add about $1,000 to our fence project cost.  Also the better block is custom made.  The special order takes three weeks to produce.

After looking at and testing dozens of blocks, I decided to use the Damasco 6″ standard block.  The quality of Damasco’s standard block seems better than the competition.   Why 6″?  The price is only P1 more than the 4″.  That’s the only justification I can advance.  We are paying P13 per 6″ hollow block delivered to our Tigbauan building site.  The first 2100 block have arrived and we are very pleased with them.  However, keep in mind that we probably could have bought local block for P7 each.

We have friends in Dumaguete who feel our approach to fence building is extravagant.  Here’s the comments:

“For a fence, 10mm rebar is fine, 12mm is over kill and costly, IMO, if the footings is half again wider then the block size and 10mm rebar in the footing.  6″ block is over kill for a fence also, IMO.  4″ block fencing has stood for