Building a Home in Davao

[Tommy T.]

1 minute ago, hk blues said:

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.

Yeah, HK... I agree that a big deal is that many contractors and others are definitaly not accustomed to dealing with "foreigners" who are generally more consterning than locals... I can make you a bet on that and win every time!!!

[Tommy T.]

6 minutes ago, hk blues said:

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.

The first sparky did great work... Then he sort of disappeared... His work here was wonderful.. but then he did not reply to follow up work... So he did fine until he became unavailable online... so we need a new sparky to complete his work. This is a bit irritating...

 

[hk blues]

23 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

The first sparky did great work... Then he sort of disappeared... His work here was wonderful.. but then he did not reply to follow up work... So he did fine until he became unavailable online... so we need a new sparky to complete his work. This is a bit irritating...

 

Yep...been there and done that Tom.  On the positive side, at least you know there are good quality tradesmen out there and in particular, sparkies tend to be of a better standard than other trades (tend to!) so hopefully you can pick another one up to finish the work to a better than average standard. 

[Snowy79]

On 12/11/2020 at 1:16 PM, hk blues said:

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! 

It's good that you found some decent tradesman I unfortunately tend to draw the short straw.  I've had some horrendous work carried out and can hand on heart say the only job I was happy with and was about to recommend the tradesman to a friend again let me down by doing a runner when I asked him to return to fix a small leak on my aircon.

Just a sample of the jobs that were done wrong.  A new sloping roof fitted to a rental property I was in should have taken about one month, 8 months later I moved out with it still unfinished.  They even drilled through the original roof into the living room when fixing the frame for the new roof. 

My apartment on Boracay had the roofing tiles blown off last xmas alongside most of the other apartments in the resort.  I warned the manager off that water was coming in through my roof which is on the top floor but I'd put tarpaulin down and made a waterway to the outside balcony so the water wouldn't flood the apartments below me. I waited two weeks for them to even look at the main roof and in the mean time they landscaped the gardens and started painting the undersides of the main roofs, there's a good 3ft overhang.  I kept telling them they need to fix the roof before anything else. 

One month later and lots of rainy days inbetween 324 of the 408 apartments suffered damage from water.  They then nailed thin metal sheets on the roof but not overlapping, they laid them like tiles. Again I chassed them up and pointed out what will happen when it rains but it fell on deaf ears. More rain and further flooding they decided to use mastic between the joints which lasted about one week and more flooding. I was still gettin rain coming in my main ceiling but only slightly and pointed out the water is getting soaked up by the gyproc ceiling which won't hold up much longer.  Three days later the ceiling collapsed. More mastic and more metal sheeting and they said they had repaired the roof until the new materials arrived from America.  They replaced my ceiling and almost one year later and 11 further leaks and the new ceiling starting to come down again they have finally got around to repairing the main roof with the new materials from America.  Which is basically roofing felt for sheds.

They have glued the roofing onto the metal sheets and used a few nails also.  I can look over at the apartments opposite me and the roofing is lifting already as I told them it would.  They only replaced the felt in patches and not the whole roof so the wind and rain can get under the felt and lift it. The overhang of the roofs they have had to repair about 4 times as the water leaking through was damaging what they had repaired.  Even better now they have replaced all the overhang panels they have to remove them again to get to the roof guttering drainage which has been blocked since day one.

There's a host of other repairs they screwed up from using cement to fix plumbing instead of compression fittings, wrong wiring in the electrics, wrong type of paint which has reacted to the original paint and is now forming bubbles.

Moving onto vehicle repairs I've put a car and a motorcycle into two seperate garages and had good parts removed and replaced with used parts and they even tried to charge me for repairs they never carried out. I'm a qualified mechanic so had done some work myself but was going away for a few days and figured labour was cheap enough.  On Boracay my friend let me use his motorcycle as he works offshore.  It was running rough so I decided to give it a tune up and replace all the carb jets, on taking the carb off I noticed the carb wasn't original and was from a differn model.  I messaged my friend and he had bought it from new, only had it three years and had put it into a garage once for repair previously, they'd swapped his carb.

Mobile phone repairs were another pain.  I had a good phone only about 9 months old with a cracked screen and loose charging port so I took it to a repair shop and told him I wanted an original part replacement, no Chinese copies and paid for a genuine screen.  Four days later I picked it up and it had a Chinese screen, I told him to remove it and get an original as asked for and to keep the box so I can be sure.  I paid him more money as he explained the genuine screen was more expensive. I told him that's what I wanted in the first place and had paid more than the Chinese screen would have cost. Another four days later and there was my phone with another Chinese screen and no box.  I was well pissed off and told him he has one more chance to get the right screen, another 1k peso on top and this time it took about two weeks for the screen to arrive and you guessed it, another Chinese screen.

I noticed when you plugged the charger in and held the phone the screen pulsated which is a sign of shorting out.  I lost it with him and threatened to go to the Mayor who is a good friend of my best mate unless it was sorted ASAP. I was leaving the town the following day so had my mate pick it up and sure enough it was still flickering, Covid hit and his shop closed so I had to bite the bullet.  I was bored and decided to open the phone as I've repaired a few and figured it can't be that hard.  It looked like he had used a match to solder the new charging port on.  My partner saw I had stripped the phone and asked me to look at hers that she had in a drawer.  It had been in two repair shops, the first said they couldn't fix it the second had told her it needs a replacement part which they don't have so she threw it in a drawer and forgot about it. It was a genuine Samsung which she bought from new and when I opened it there were microchips and aerial cables missing.

Moving onto Kite surfing reapairs, I put two kites into a shop to replace all the valves as they had persished in storage.  They repalced them about one month ago and already three valves have snapped just setting the kite up.  They'd used second hand valves.

I could go on as this is only a fraction of the poor work I've had done. 

[hk blues]

1 hour ago, Snowy79 said:

It's good that you found some decent tradesman I unfortunately tend to draw the short straw.  I've had some horrendous work carried out and can hand on heart say the only job I was happy with and was about to recommend the tradesman to a friend again let me down by doing a runner when I asked him to return to fix a small leak on my aircon.

Just a sample of the jobs that were done wrong.  A new sloping roof fitted to a rental property I was in should have taken about one month, 8 months later I moved out with it still unfinished.  They even drilled through the original roof into the living room when fixing the frame for the new roof. 

My apartment on Boracay had the roofing tiles blown off last xmas alongside most of the other apartments in the resort.  I warned the manager off that water was coming in through my roof which is on the top floor but I'd put tarpaulin down and made a waterway to the outside balcony so the water wouldn't flood the apartments below me. I waited two weeks for them to even look at the main roof and in the mean time they landscaped the gardens and started painting the undersides of the main roofs, there's a good 3ft overhang.  I kept telling them they need to fix the roof before anything else. 

One month later and lots of rainy days inbetween 324 of the 408 apartments suffered damage from water.  They then nailed thin metal sheets on the roof but not overlapping, they laid them like tiles. Again I chassed them up and pointed out what will happen when it rains but it fell on deaf ears. More rain and further flooding they decided to use mastic between the joints which lasted about one week and more flooding. I was still gettin rain coming in my main ceiling but only slightly and pointed out the water is getting soaked up by the gyproc ceiling which won't hold up much longer.  Three days later the ceiling collapsed. More mastic and more metal sheeting and they said they had repaired the roof until the new materials arrived from America.  They replaced my ceiling and almost one year later and 11 further leaks and the new ceiling starting to come down again they have finally got around to repairing the main roof with the new materials from America.  Which is basically roofing felt for sheds.

They have glued the roofing onto the metal sheets and used a few nails also.  I can look over at the apartments opposite me and the roofing is lifting already as I told them it would.  They only replaced the felt in patches and not the whole roof so the wind and rain can get under the felt and lift it. The overhang of the roofs they have had to repair about 4 times as the water leaking through was damaging what they had repaired.  Even better now they have replaced all the overhang panels they have to remove them again to get to the roof guttering drainage which has been blocked since day one.

There's a host of other repairs they screwed up from using cement to fix plumbing instead of compression fittings, wrong wiring in the electrics, wrong type of paint which has reacted to the original paint and is now forming bubbles.

Moving onto vehicle repairs I've put a car and a motorcycle into two seperate garages and had good parts removed and replaced with used parts and they even tried to charge me for repairs they never carried out. I'm a qualified mechanic so had done some work myself but was going away for a few days and figured labour was cheap enough.  On Boracay my friend let me use his motorcycle as he works offshore.  It was running rough so I decided to give it a tune up and replace all the carb jets, on taking the carb off I noticed the carb wasn't original and was from a differn model.  I messaged my friend and he had bought it from new, only had it three years and had put it into a garage once for repair previously, they'd swapped his carb.

Mobile phone repairs were another pain.  I had a good phone only about 9 months old with a cracked screen and loose charging port so I took it to a repair shop and told him I wanted an original part replacement, no Chinese copies and paid for a genuine screen.  Four days later I picked it up and it had a Chinese screen, I told him to remove it and get an original as asked for and to keep the box so I can be sure.  I paid him more money as he explained the genuine screen was more expensive. I told him that's what I wanted in the first place and had paid more than the Chinese screen would have cost. Another four days later and there was my phone with another Chinese screen and no box.  I was well pissed off and told him he has one more chance to get the right screen, another 1k peso on top and this time it took about two weeks for the screen to arrive and you guessed it, another Chinese screen.

I noticed when you plugged the charger in and held the phone the screen pulsated which is a sign of shorting out.  I lost it with him and threatened to go to the Mayor who is a good friend of my best mate unless it was sorted ASAP. I was leaving the town the following day so had my mate pick it up and sure enough it was still flickering, Covid hit and his shop closed so I had to bite the bullet.  I was bored and decided to open the phone as I've repaired a few and figured it can't be that hard.  It looked like he had used a match to solder the new charging port on.  My partner saw I had stripped the phone and asked me to look at hers that she had in a drawer.  It had been in two repair shops, the first said they couldn't fix it the second had told her it needs a replacement part which they don't have so she threw it in a drawer and forgot about it. It was a genuine Samsung which she bought from new and when I opened it there were microchips and aerial cables missing.

Moving onto Kite surfing reapairs, I put two kites into a shop to replace all the valves as they had persished in storage.  They repalced them about one month ago and already three valves have snapped just setting the kite up.  They'd used second hand valves.

I could go on as this is only a fraction of the poor work I've had done. 

Lucky White Heather anybody?

Seriously though, I could also recount an endless list of things which have not gone as planned as I'm sure every one of us here could. 

My point wasn't to say your and Tom's experiences were not the norm, rather I just wanted to slip in a bit of positivity about work being done here. Very good quality work is done - the trick is knowing by whom.

I won't take any credit for finding tge 2 contractors who excelled - I piggy backed onto a neighbour who was using them. I've now realised the secret is to find a good referer who will tell it as it is when it comes to recommending contractors.

You know what they say about paying peanuts - my take away has been that it's always best to pay the person doing the work if possible - one man bands tend to do better work as they enjoy the fruits of their labour directly.

 

[Jack Peterson]

6 minutes ago, hk blues said:

one man bands tend to do better work as they enjoy the fruits of their labour directly.

 That Statement is so very true 

[Snowy79]

25 minutes ago, hk blues said:

Lucky White Heather anybody?

Seriously though, I could also recount an endless list of things which have not gone as planned as I'm sure every one of us here could. 

My point wasn't to say your and Tom's experiences were not the norm, rather I just wanted to slip in a bit of positivity about work being done here. Very good quality work is done - the trick is knowing by whom.

I won't take any credit for finding tge 2 contractors who excelled - I piggy backed onto a neighbour who was using them. I've now realised the secret is to find a good referer who will tell it as it is when it comes to recommending contractors.

You know what they say about paying peanuts - my take away has been that it's always best to pay the person doing the work if possible - one man bands tend to do better work as they enjoy the fruits of their labour directly.

 

I think the lack of trade schools here play a big part.  If you learn bad habits chances are you will repeat them and many tradesmen are only part time or bluff their way to get a days pay.  I've had my fair share of tradesmen turn up without tools or thinking a piece of plastic tubing and six inch nail with a house brick is all you need to demolish a wall. 

One who installed a new split aircon for me I was assured has his own shop.  He was recommended by the maintenance engineer in the resort I live in and was meant to have fitted it when I was away.  I phoned the maintenance guy to see how the instal was to be told it's all good. Two days later I visited the apartment and phoned my caretaker when I was about 200m away, you could hear the panic in her voice as the aircon was just hanging off the wall about 60% completed. I got her to get the maintenance guy to drag his arse up to the apartment.  Lots of apologies later he assured it would be done within two hours. Sure enough two hours later it looked good but was running hot.  He tried to tell me it will cool down over time lol. I reminded him it was a sealed unit and once filled it works instantly so obviously he hadn't filled it.  It turned out he never had an adaptor for the gas. He was another one that went away for parts and never returned.

Edited December 12, 2020 by Snowy79

[hk blues]

1 minute ago, Snowy79 said:

I think the lack of trade schools here play a big part.  If you learn bad habits chances are you will repeat them and many tradesmen are only part time or bluff their way to get a days pay.  I've had my fair share of tradesmen turn up without tools or thinking a piece of plastic tubing and six inch nail with a house brick is all you need to demolish a wall. 

One who installed a new split aircon for me I was assured has his own shop.  He was recommended by the maintenance engineer in the resort I live in and was meant to have fitted it when I was away.  I phoned the maintenance guy to see how the instal was to be told it's all good. Two days later I visited the apartment and phoned my caretaker when I was about 200m away, you could hear the panic in her voice as the aircon was just hanging off the wall about 60% completed. I got her to get the maintenance guy to drag his arse up to the apartment.  Lots of apologies later he assured it would be done within two hours. Sure enough to hours later it looked good but was ruynning hot.  He tried to tell me it will cool down over time lol. I reminded him it was a sealed unit and once filled it works instantly so obviously he hadn't filled it.  It turned out he never had an adaptor for the gas. He was another one that went away for parts and never returned.

Keeping up with the UK newspapers as I do, Snowy, it seems the same type if issues are creeping in. This seems particularly prevalent with new-build homes - some horror stories there!

Doesn't really help us here but it's interesting to note.

(My father was a joiner who went through the old trade school apprenticeship system).

[RBM]

16 hours ago, Snowy79 said:

It's good that you found some decent tradesman I unfortunately tend to draw the short straw.  I've had some horrendous work carried out and can hand on heart say the only job I was happy with and was about to recommend the tradesman to a friend again let me down by doing a runner when I asked him to return to fix a small leak on my aircon.

Just a sample of the jobs that were done wrong.  A new sloping roof fitted to a rental property I was in should have taken about one month, 8 months later I moved out with it still unfinished.  They even drilled through the original roof into the living room when fixing the frame for the new roof. 

My apartment on Boracay had the roofing tiles blown off last xmas alongside most of the other apartments in the resort.  I warned the manager off that water was coming in through my roof which is on the top floor but I'd put tarpaulin down and made a waterway to the outside balcony so the water wouldn't flood the apartments below me. I waited two weeks for them to even look at the main roof and in the mean time they landscaped the gardens and started painting the undersides of the main roofs, there's a good 3ft overhang.  I kept telling them they need to fix the roof before anything else. 

One month later and lots of rainy days inbetween 324 of the 408 apartments suffered damage from water.  They then nailed thin metal sheets on the roof but not overlapping, they laid them like tiles. Again I chassed them up and pointed out what will happen when it rains but it fell on deaf ears. More rain and further flooding they decided to use mastic between the joints which lasted about one week and more flooding. I was still gettin rain coming in my main ceiling but only slightly and pointed out the water is getting soaked up by the gyproc ceiling which won't hold up much longer.  Three days later the ceiling collapsed. More mastic and more metal sheeting and they said they had repaired the roof until the new materials arrived from America.  They replaced my ceiling and almost one year later and 11 further leaks and the new ceiling starting to come down again they have finally got around to repairing the main roof with the new materials from America.  Which is basically roofing felt for sheds.

They have glued the roofing onto the metal sheets and used a few nails also.  I can look over at the apartments opposite me and the roofing is lifting already as I told them it would.  They only replaced the felt in patches and not the whole roof so the wind and rain can get under the felt and lift it. The overhang of the roofs they have had to repair about 4 times as the water leaking through was damaging what they had repaired.  Even better now they have replaced all the overhang panels they have to remove them again to get to the roof guttering drainage which has been blocked since day one.

There's a host of other repairs they screwed up from using cement to fix plumbing instead of compression fittings, wrong wiring in the electrics, wrong type of paint which has reacted to the original paint and is now forming bubbles.

Moving onto vehicle repairs I've put a car and a motorcycle into two seperate garages and had good parts removed and replaced with used parts and they even tried to charge me for repairs they never carried out. I'm a qualified mechanic so had done some work myself but was going away for a few days and figured labour was cheap enough.  On Boracay my friend let me use his motorcycle as he works offshore.  It was running rough so I decided to give it a tune up and replace all the carb jets, on taking the carb off I noticed the carb wasn't original and was from a differn model.  I messaged my friend and he had bought it from new, only had it three years and had put it into a garage once for repair previously, they'd swapped his carb.

Mobile phone repairs were another pain.  I had a good phone only about 9 months old with a cracked screen and loose charging port so I took it to a repair shop and told him I wanted an original part replacement, no Chinese copies and paid for a genuine screen.  Four days later I picked it up and it had a Chinese screen, I told him to remove it and get an original as asked for and to keep the box so I can be sure.  I paid him more money as he explained the genuine screen was more expensive. I told him that's what I wanted in the first place and had paid more than the Chinese screen would have cost. Another four days later and there was my phone with another Chinese screen and no box.  I was well pissed off and told him he has one more chance to get the right screen, another 1k peso on top and this time it took about two weeks for the screen to arrive and you guessed it, another Chinese screen.

I noticed when you plugged the charger in and held the phone the screen pulsated which is a sign of shorting out.  I lost it with him and threatened to go to the Mayor who is a good friend of my best mate unless it was sorted ASAP. I was leaving the town the following day so had my mate pick it up and sure enough it was still flickering, Covid hit and his shop closed so I had to bite the bullet.  I was bored and decided to open the phone as I've repaired a few and figured it can't be that hard.  It looked like he had used a match to solder the new charging port on.  My partner saw I had stripped the phone and asked me to look at hers that she had in a drawer.  It had been in two repair shops, the first said they couldn't fix it the second had told her it needs a replacement part which they don't have so she threw it in a drawer and forgot about it. It was a genuine Samsung which she bought from new and when I opened it there were microchips and aerial cables missing.

Moving onto Kite surfing reapairs, I put two kites into a shop to replace all the valves as they had persished in storage.  They repalced them about one month ago and already three valves have snapped just setting the kite up.  They'd used second hand valves.

I could go on as this is only a fraction of the poor work I've had done. 

Snowy, any good news stories?

 

[Snowy79]

2 hours ago, RBM said:

Snowy, any good news stories?

 

I'm unlucky when it comes to getting jobs done here sadly. I'm at the stage where I'm buying tools and doing things myself. I know it sounds negative but from the standard of workmanship, time keeping, and use of bad materials I'd hate to run a business here. It's not just me I have many friends both foreign and local that tell me the same.