Building a Home in Davao

[Tommy T.]

On 12/3/2020 at 11:06 PM, baronapart said:

Great house! I especially like the upper terrace. That is where I would be)

Thanks for the comments, Baron. Yes, the terrace is nice for quaffing a cold beer or chilled wine and taking in the ambience of the fruit orchard...until mozzie o'clock! Then we retreat behind the screens or simply close doors and windows.

For 

@intrepid Just wanted to thank you again for your recommendation. The gate opener is installed and working great. The professional installer did a good, clean job. It is a really nice convenience. It does have a manual bypass and it works fine too - already used it in two recent power outages.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Tommy T.

[Tommy T.]

So, the next stage of the build is now underway - the lanai, or small deck, off the living room...

The contractors are allowing us to pay straight up for workers and materials to perform this project.

My God!!! I have never seen such a solid foundation and framing for a deck. Put a few sheets of steel on the future deck, and it will prove to be good for protection from nuclear attack! That's okay... it will be here likely for at least two more generations...

Here's the basic framing for deck and roof covering.

Meanwhile, there are a number of things that need to be addressed... The sparky seems to have vanished... His work was good, but he has proved to be unreliable when trying to contact him to finish his work... even the contractor is irritated that he cannot be found. Oh well... So we will need to find another one to complete some of the electrics in the home.

L contracted a previous student's company to build us a bed frame... It was supposed to be completed and delivered a month ago... She visited the shop and spoke with the husband of the team and - for the third time - received more excuses for non-delivery. Good that she only paid a small down payment. She is increasingly fed-up with excuses from suppliers. I remind you that she is full-blood Filipina, but she shows western views regarding lack of service or commitment or reliability with some of the companies we are dealing with.

Meanwhile, most of the water leaks have been fixed already. We have started to plant a few things in the property, but still need to bring in some quality planting soil to really try to rival @graham59's vegetable garden. I want to plant the lime and lemon trees too so we can see and harvest some fruit some day. There is already a "wild" squash plant wandering through the yard and we will leave it alone to see what it really is and, hopefully, eat the veggie it produces.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Tommy T.

[Snowy79]

My partner is now fully onside with my criticism of the work ethos here but it has taken time.  The final straw was when we noticed a property on Boracay main beach sell for about 150m peso.  The new owners has had workers in for a few months renovating it to his standards. They have built a small soak pool off the main entrance and I think the tiling was done by Stevie Wonder. They have actually used different sized tiles to finish it off and it looks horrendous. Like painting a Rolls Royce with a toothbrush.

[Tommy T.]

16 minutes ago, Snowy79 said:

My partner is now fully onside with my criticism of the work ethos here but it has taken time.  The final straw was when we noticed a property on Boracay main beach sell for about 150m peso.  The new owners has had workers in for a few months renovating it to his standards. They have built a small soak pool off the main entrance and I think the tiling was done by Stevie Wonder. They have actually used different sized tiles to finish it off and it looks horrendous. Like painting a Rolls Royce with a toothbrush.

Yeah...Snowy... we have some similar work done in our new new home... it is really sad, but normal, to see that lack of consistency or attention to detail.

So I have been learning to accept most of it. L is really pissed off at some of the weirdnesses here. I guess we can either fix some of these things ourselves or pay someone to pay attention to detail in the future. I can do a lot of these things, but I would rather pay someone to do some of them... I am getting lazy in my dotage...

Edited December 11, 2020 by Tommy T.

[Tommy T.]

7 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Yeah...Snowy... we have some similar work done in our new new home... it is really sad, but normal, to see that lack of consistency or attention to detail.

So I have been learning to accept most of it. L is really pissed off at some of the weirdnesses here. I guess we can either fix some of these things ourselves or pay someone to pay attention to detail in the future. I can do a lot of these things, but I would rather pay someone to do some of them... I am getting lazy in my dotage...

What is nice now, is that we have the foreman and a helper constructing our lanai. I am always here and they ask me about things every time before they prepare. I have a few ideas that I have proposed that they are totally ignorant about - some ways to work with wood that I learned when working for the National Park Service in USA... just some cool ways to do things that look more natural and fit into a rural setting. These guys are not stupid at all... just ignorant about some alternate ways of building things that they have never done. So L and I have been teachers to them for some of their work.

We can only hope that they learn and maybe remember for future work...

[Snowy79]

2 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

What is nice now, is that we have the foreman and a helper constructing our lanai. I am always here and they ask me about things every time before they prepare. I have a few ideas that I have proposed that they are totally ignorant about - some ways to work with wood that I learned when working for the National Park Service in USA... just some cool ways to do things that look more natural and fit into a rural setting. These guys are not stupid at all... just ignorant about some alternate ways of building things that they have never done. So L and I have been teachers to them for some of their work.

We can only hope that they learn and maybe remember for future work...

I think you are correct about the not being stupid but they have learned the monkey see, monkey do method and thrown in with their stuborness and pride it will take someone as equally stubborn to change them. Probably a good time for a new post about work ethos before getting way off topic. 

[Tommy T.]

5 minutes ago, Snowy79 said:

I think you are correct about the not being stupid but they have learned the monkey see, monkey do method and thrown in with their stuborness and pride it will take someone as equally stubborn to change them. Probably a good time for a new post about work ethos before getting way off topic. 

Hey, Snowy... I have no issue with going off topic here... I think everything we discuss here is relevent to a home  build... so... please carry on!

[Tommy T.]

3 hours ago, Snowy79 said:

thrown in with their stuborness and pride it will take someone as equally stubborn to change them. Probably a good time for a new post about work ethos before getting way off topic. 

Hmmm... I find the workers do not seem so much to be stubborn but rather resistant to change that is not comfortable or familiar with them... I can understand that. So... we are showing them some new techniques and ways to do some things that we prefer. I also bought a nice SkillSaw for the foreman to use along with a good electrical cable for the connection.

Yesterday, I helped them out with a special spacer that permitted them to put pressure on some steel to push it next to the home wall... I, and we, are helping to make the work  easy and efficient...

They worked with that and it helped their work.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Tommy T.

[hk blues]

9 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Hey, Snowy... I have no issue with going off topic here... I think everything we discuss here is relevent to a home  build... so... please carry on!

Just for balance, i'll throw in my positive experiences in the event some locals are reading these posts and think we're a bunch of whinging old duffers!

Our last 3 projects (two steel roofs and one sun room) over the past year were all completed to a standard at least as good as we'd get back home.  The sun room in particular was excellent - just over 60,000php for an aluminium frame with tinted glass, awning windows with insect frames (5mx3.5m).  Hard to find any fault with the quality of work or materials used.

That said, I've experienced work similar to that described above so it's not all good! 

[hk blues]

3 minutes ago, Tommy T. said:

Hmmm... I find the workers do not seem so much to be stubborn but rather resistant to change that is not comfortable or familiar with them... I can understand that. So... we are showing them some new techniques and ways to do some things that we prefer. I also bought a nice SkillSwaw for the foreman to use along with a good electrical cable for the connection.

Yesterday, I helped them out with a special spacer that permitted them to put pressure on some steel to push it next to the home wall... I, and we, are helping to make the work  easy and efficient...

I'd also throw in Tom, that often times these contractors have not worked with foreigners before so may not be aware that we want a certain standard of work - and are willing to pay for it.  Going back to my sun room above, when he gave the quote I said I'm not going to negotiate (it was a good price for me so why would I) but that was because I trusted that the quality of work would reflect my position on the price.  I didn't need to be so clear in my thinking, and neither did he - it was accepted that I was paying slightly higher (very, very slightly) in return for an above average product.  Too often here, and I'm absolutely not pointing fingers at any of you guys, people say nothing until the job is finished and then gripe about it to try to get a lower price - I'm not looking for a lower price in return for a lower product.