Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
- bolueeleh
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
my floor height is 3.6m, so i had the general construction supervisor guy calculate the threads and risers right infront of me but he still manages to fucked it upFreightdog wrote: ↑Fri Feb 17, 2023 9:40 pm A couple of items popped up in that last post.
Stairs- treads and risers dimensions don’t appear to be a concern, here. More than a few places, the risers are inconsistent height, making negotiation interesting in blackouts, and stair angles a little too steep, with treads sized for 8yr old feet.
Bathroom drains. In our current apartment, I think the upper floor bathroom drain is a high point, making the bathroom a vapour trap. I keep meaning to poor some napalm down the drains to see if I can clear out whatever seems to have crawled in and died.
Dummy question-
Electrical standards seem to be rather lacking on the whole. Is this apathy, corruption, a combination, or an actual genuine lack of any meaningful standard set by the department of putting stuff up?
I got dragged into a sideline consulting thing last year, in Nigeria. Outright corruption means that standards are simply ignored subject to whatever is in the envelope. They do have a proper building code, and proper electrical codes, albeit somewhat last century, but British Standards, all the same. They’re just a guide to how far people have deviated when they start counting the bodies.
as for drainage i asked each waste water entry point to have S pipe installed to trap odours but it still doesnt work, im guessing it need a proper waste vapour vent pipe system
for electrician, dont think there will be any "qualified" electricians out in the provinces but to engage a licensed electrician to come to the province means you have to pay exorbitant prices
Money is not the problem, the problem is no money
- bolueeleh
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
precisely, i have some businesses experiences in indonesia, malaysia, thailand, vietnam and china as well, apart from indo, khmers have the least pride in their work but yet they demand higher and higher fees and wages, good example is the garment industry where cost to productivity ratio is much lower in other countries such as bangladesh whereas vietnam and china outperforms in quality productionphuketrichard wrote: ↑Sat Feb 18, 2023 8:18 am MY observation, Khmers take no pride in their work or others work:
Money is not the problem, the problem is no money
Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
We are currently entering negotiations with a contractor to build ourselves a restaurant, guest house and two apartments on a 210 m² riverside plot. Unlike others here, my experience of building in Cambodia has been very positive to date. My finished projects include a 5 ha resort, a kindergarten for 120 children, an NGO HQ and a teacher training school on the National Institute of Education campus. It helps a lot to actually know what you're doing when you design something that's buildable in this country, I'm an engineer, and it helps immensely if you've been introduced to Cambodian construction and contracting by people who understand its special characteristics. NGOs who've delivered school buildings to tight specifications and budgets over the last decades are a good training ground. If you have neither the expertise nor the experience, you can either buy it, or choose to progress without - as most here seemingly have done- and, if you take the latter route, then there's really no grounds to single out 'Cambodia' as the reason for the several possibly expensive disappointments that you are subsequently likely to experience. Simply relying on a contractor is unwise here or almost anywhere, unless perhaps you buy an 'off-the-peg' building, which many Khmer people do.
Our building has 400 m² gross floor area, spread over 3 storeys, the middle storey a 'half-floor' mezzanine, typical for the country. It's been a fairly full-time job for seven months to design it, get the required engineer's stamp (I'm not registered in Cambodia), get a building permit and a priced bill of quantities for the negotiation. The outlay so far - apart from my time and the land - is around $1,500, which I call a result. I don't know that I could have done it any faster and still kept my wife fully on board with the project.
I'd be very interested in the experience of others, except perhaps if this experience is of the 'everything here is crap' nature, which is unhelpful and boring.
Our building has 400 m² gross floor area, spread over 3 storeys, the middle storey a 'half-floor' mezzanine, typical for the country. It's been a fairly full-time job for seven months to design it, get the required engineer's stamp (I'm not registered in Cambodia), get a building permit and a priced bill of quantities for the negotiation. The outlay so far - apart from my time and the land - is around $1,500, which I call a result. I don't know that I could have done it any faster and still kept my wife fully on board with the project.
I'd be very interested in the experience of others, except perhaps if this experience is of the 'everything here is crap' nature, which is unhelpful and boring.
Revolutions have all shown that many things can be changed, with the exception of people themselves.
- Grand Barong
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
Share some photo's of your builds?Marx wrote: ↑Sun Feb 19, 2023 11:57 am We are currently entering negotiations with a contractor to build ourselves a restaurant, guest house and two apartments on a 210 m² riverside plot. Unlike others here, my experience of building in Cambodia has been very positive to date. My finished projects include a 5 ha resort, a kindergarten for 120 children, an NGO HQ and a teacher training school on the National Institute of Education campus. It helps a lot to actually know what you're doing when you design something that's buildable in this country, I'm an engineer, and it helps immensely if you've been introduced to Cambodian construction and contracting by people who understand its special characteristics. NGOs who've delivered school buildings to tight specifications and budgets over the last decades are a good training ground. If you have neither the expertise nor the experience, you can either buy it, or choose to progress without - as most here seemingly have done- and, if you take the latter route, then there's really no grounds to single out 'Cambodia' as the reason for the several possibly expensive disappointments that you are subsequently likely to experience. Simply relying on a contractor is unwise here or almost anywhere, unless perhaps you buy an 'off-the-peg' building, which many Khmer people do.
Our building has 400 m² gross floor area, spread over 3 storeys, the middle storey a 'half-floor' mezzanine, typical for the country. It's been a fairly full-time job for seven months to design it, get the required engineer's stamp (I'm not registered in Cambodia), get a building permit and a priced bill of quantities for the negotiation. The outlay so far - apart from my time and the land - is around $1,500, which I call a result. I don't know that I could have done it any faster and still kept my wife fully on board with the project.
I'd be very interested in the experience of others, except perhaps if this experience is of the 'everything here is crap' nature, which is unhelpful and boring.
What is the name of the resort & where is it? (if you don't mind) it sounds interesting & would make a great topic.
Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
Grand Barong wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 8:31 pm
Share some photo's of your builds?
What is the name of the resort & where is it? (if you don't mind) it sounds interesting & would make a great topic.
I was part of the on-site team that delivered phase 1 of Hanchey Bamboo Resort (HBR), it's 25 km north of Kampong Cham city. Financed through the Swiss agency Ecosolidar, and built by the NGO 'Buddhism for Social Development Action' (BSDA), phase 1 included an 80 seat restaurant, a meditation hall, a kitchen, a swimming pool, 10 bungalows, a dormitory, a staff house, roads, electrical, mechanical and sanitary infrastructure and landscape. Subsequent to phase 1, a conference centre and a further 10 bungalows have been added.
HBR is interesting on several counts:
It's a social enterprise project, meaning that aid is made available to start a business whose profits are then ploughed back to the recipient. This is intended to reduce 'aid dependency', as the business cuts itself loose from donors.
BSDA runs a children's home, the Resort is used to provide job training for them in gastronomy and hotel management. Many children who came to BSDA from positions of extreme disadvantage have passed through HBR to obtain worthwhile jobs throughout the Kingdom.
HBR was built entirely by local labour. This was a strategic decision, taken to ensure that money flowed into the local communities, rather than being creamed off as profit elsewhere. Labourers were all offered on-the-job specialist training. Many moved on to well-paid work elsewhere in the Kingdom, rather than returning to day-labouring in Thailand. At the peak period a community of 40+ workers and their families were living on site.
HBR was built using bamboo and earth building techniques, with raw materials obtained within a 20 km radius of the site. Its carbon footprint is exceptionally low, its capacity for end-of-lifespan recycling very high.
Revolutions have all shown that many things can be changed, with the exception of people themselves.
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
Great looking buildings. I would urge people to employ a Khmer engineer. In my experience they are excellent. If one is not experienced at building and not able to supervise the locals then it is very difficult. Electrical and plumbing skills sorely lacking. No common sense at all. The Viets and the Thais are very good builders as Richard says.
There is a Frenchman in Kampot who seems to be a very good builder and another French architect in Phnom Penh who is excellent. I supervised the two school buildings at Northbridge. The architect was a British/ Thai company. Fucking useless. Terrible drawings, no details and no specifications. Luckily we found an Aussie plumber on the beach at Snookyville. He redesigned the plumbing completely. The electrical drawings were terrible with light switches and GPOs at the wrong height. Light switches behind doors is always a good feature. I sorted out the electrical and data layout. The builder was terrible, he couldn't read the red drawings. The engineers often found a ton too much steel in the beams and slabs.
I changed many major details to make the building more practical and cheaper. When I returned in 2018 and toured the building I was really pleased at how good it looked and how well it worked. They had built the primary school a year before I began there and the structural steel was full of rust and the huge expanses of composite decking expanding upwards in places like a ski jump. The doors didn't fit properly and despite having small balconies on the perimeter the windows didn't open, the balconies had no drains and filled with water and it was impossible to clean the windows. Khmers are real fuck ups with building.
I wish that I could have stayed and established a building company with my very bright young Khmer engineer mate. He is a project manager now and is doing very well for himself. Old engineers who lecture at the Tech were all trained in the eastern bloc after the war. they loved living in Russia, Poland and the other eastern bloc countries. They have photos off themselves in the snow with furry hats on. They were very well trained by the Commies.
There is a Frenchman in Kampot who seems to be a very good builder and another French architect in Phnom Penh who is excellent. I supervised the two school buildings at Northbridge. The architect was a British/ Thai company. Fucking useless. Terrible drawings, no details and no specifications. Luckily we found an Aussie plumber on the beach at Snookyville. He redesigned the plumbing completely. The electrical drawings were terrible with light switches and GPOs at the wrong height. Light switches behind doors is always a good feature. I sorted out the electrical and data layout. The builder was terrible, he couldn't read the red drawings. The engineers often found a ton too much steel in the beams and slabs.
I changed many major details to make the building more practical and cheaper. When I returned in 2018 and toured the building I was really pleased at how good it looked and how well it worked. They had built the primary school a year before I began there and the structural steel was full of rust and the huge expanses of composite decking expanding upwards in places like a ski jump. The doors didn't fit properly and despite having small balconies on the perimeter the windows didn't open, the balconies had no drains and filled with water and it was impossible to clean the windows. Khmers are real fuck ups with building.
I wish that I could have stayed and established a building company with my very bright young Khmer engineer mate. He is a project manager now and is doing very well for himself. Old engineers who lecture at the Tech were all trained in the eastern bloc after the war. they loved living in Russia, Poland and the other eastern bloc countries. They have photos off themselves in the snow with furry hats on. They were very well trained by the Commies.
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
You know that tingly little feeling you get when you really like someone? That's common sense leaving your body.
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
There is a house online in Brazil and another in Vietnam. Both are on tiny blocks with un rendered concrete blocks inside and out.
They both have exposed galvanised steel conduit. I think it looks great and is very practical. That is how I would build. One could also batten some walls later and clad with local second hand hardwood.
They both have exposed galvanised steel conduit. I think it looks great and is very practical. That is how I would build. One could also batten some walls later and clad with local second hand hardwood.
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
Does anyone know the costs of a swimming pool for residential use? Pro's Con's?
Stay classy na
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Re: Building a house in Cambodia - useful tips
Approximately $800 per square metre, with machines included. I recall seeing a company in Siem Reap that was selling fibreglass pools. They were priced at around $500–$600 per square metre, if I remember correctly. Unfortunately I can’t recall the name of the company anymore. If anyone knows, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share it.David Gordon wrote: ↑Mon Jan 20, 2025 2:36 am Does anyone know the costs of a swimming pool for residential use? Pro's Con's?
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