This week we introduced our new Building in Asia Forum which will be complemented by our regular Interviews with the Experts Series, where we have a chance to talk with the leaders and most experienced Building Industry Professionals in SE Asia. For our very first interview we were fortunate enough to be able to talk [...]

Building with Solar Power in Thailand Are you planning to include a small solar power contributor to your building project ?  Adopting a small Solar Power solutions is one the the easiest contributions you can make towards lowering your footprint on the earth’s resources in 2010 its easy, fast and affordable ! I have made [...]

There are two main type of vibration elements used in the placement of concrete – external and internal. This post discusses the correct use of  “internal” or “insertion ” vibrators – so called because of because the vibrating head is “inserted” into the concrete. Handheld concrete vibrators are used to consolidate concrete by forcing  the [...]

Bamboo Cement Driving home from the construction site today I saw a group of Thai builders using Bamboo as reinforcement in a concrete floor and also a driveway and stopped and took these photographs. Whilst I am always interested in alternative and traditional building techniques and practices and the use of bamboo as a reinforcing [...]

Dealing with Power Fluctuations This post is going to briefly touch on the challenges of dealing with power fluctuations in SE Asia. I would start by saying that with so many power generation and management solutions on the market today there is an available solution to most power problems, now it may not always be [...]

This article explores how to build a Water Sand Filter. One the most common simple water filtration devices for rural areas is a simple sand filter. Slow sand filters are very easy to construct and can be built from commonly  available materials. They use a medium coarse sand which is similar to the one that [...]

Thailand has two commodity Portland cement products hand mixing as well as several other specialist products. Red Branded Portland Cement ASTM 1 Commonly branded as Cement Red there are several major brands of this “type” including TPI, Rajasri and Elephant Brand – all of these brands are considered equivalents products as they are all are [...]

A few new photos to document the progress of our Interlocking Block Wall With the birth of my son Jack things have slowed down almost to a stop over the past six weeks, enjoying our time with him in this first few weeks at home as definitely been the priority around here recently. However with [...]

Bamboo House Construction The people of Asia and South America have been Building with Bamboo for centuries. Still considered a marginal “alternative” building material in all Western countries is it is widely believed that as traditional wood sources become a more and more expensive resource that we will see a renewed surge of interest in [...]

Property Perfect announced this week that it will be partnering the Siam Cement Group to create several new modular homes project sites in 2010 / 2011 worth an estimated 2 billion baht. Chainid N. Sirimanee, CEO of Property Perfect said that the proposed partnership will provide a turnkey service for the design, assembly and installation [...]