The way you build your house, is the same way you have created your TH-cam videos. Great quality, no corner cutting, nice design and efficient implementation. Pretty rare to see. Everything looks great and you are a very skilled individual. Hard-work pays off. What I suspect is the hard part? Truly taking the time to enjoy your creations.
I have just started watching so I am not watching in order. I have to say I admire your attention to detail and the finished result make that all worth while. Very different to the way my house was built
Gtreat show Maarten. Gives me an indepth knowledge while I build my house and important areas of focus while we have our buiding design and inspection during the build. Thanks a lot.
I don't understand why the video has so less views, thanks a lot for all the informations in the video! I like how nice you work together with the thai workers, so each one can learn from the skills from the other...
"And it took us another week to clean the floors again" - Died laughing - some contractors at least bring a tarp or even some old news papers, but majority don't even seem to notice that while they are fixing one thing (plaster, cement, paint, whatever) they are destroying another.
Fantastic looking house, luckily you know about the building trade, otherwise a lot of work would have been bodged. My biggest annoyance in Thailand is electrics, earlier this week My wife said to me " how do you make electrics safe" I explained to her in basic terms, she said " OK I want you to wire our house in Thailand" & there's me thinking I'm retiring.
Great job Maarten….lot of situations come back in my memories watching your videos…..building my resort was a 5 year job but unfortunately circumstances force me to sell it and start again over.currently in design of our new place and need to prevent “mistakes” made before and in addition add some cooling technic as you do. Visit at your home few weeks ago was helpful and currently designing our place using lot of your tips. With a little bit of luck i trust our new house is nearly done
Wonderful to see this level of work and the industry and thought you've put into the build. I commend you on the tiling work, that cut around the architrave alone had me out of my seat. Fantastic!
Well done and very unusual construction in Thailand. More Thai builders need to learn these techniques. Marble tiles are printed in a series (limited number) of designs. Open every box and sort the tiles by design. Number them with a dry board marker to aid in placement and prevent laying the same pattern tiles next to each other. You are doing a wonderful job. All the best to you!
Oh no, I could have seen more Maarten, have waited so long for this, please put up the next video soon. We have actually returned to Australia since your last Video, was wondering what happened to you. Excellent presentation Maarten thank you.
Excellent, very impressed with the build to date. Its quite different to the typical builds we have been viewing. Looking forward to the next installment. My wife and I will be in Thailand for all of December and January as we start making preparations for our own build in Isaan. Best from us both, Nick & Yisa.
Wat een werk Maarten maar petje af hoor, heel knap gedaan! Het geeft zoveel voldoening om te zien hoe mooi het wordt als je er zelf zoveel bloed, zweet en tranen in steekt. Het eindresultaat is in zicht, hou vol, straks heerlijk genieten van een prachtig huis 🙏🏻
Well. Not professionally, but this is the third house I am building, so I did pick up some craft. And... in my home country a man is only considered a man if he can drive a stick-shift and handle his power-tools. 😊
Beste Maarten, het is ongeveer een half jaar geleden dat je in je mooie nieuwe huis bent gaan wonen. Kan je een video maken hoe het huis bevalt en of je innovatieve oplossingen het huis echt koeler hebben gemaakt?
We are close to Renu Nakhon, in a tiny village called Apai Wong. I looked at laminated flooring, but it was much more expensive than tiles and I was not sure of the quality as I saw some quality issues at MegaHome (corners damaged, click-system not clicking, etc). Maybe there are better brands out there, but I though it better to stick with tiles. In my previous house (in Bolivia) we had hardwood floors, but you can not get any quality wood here 😞
I had another question. I like your idea of the isolation under the roofing structure with the air barrier (the foam with silver side?). Did you also put some insulation under the ceiling panels? I've retrofitted insulation on rental houses here and I've only managed to put it under the ceiling panels but I wonder if you should do both. 🤔
I will put insulation above the ceiling as well. Not sure which kind yet, but not glasswool or rockwool. Those "pulverize" over time and make their way into the living-area as the ceiling-spots are not sealed. That would not be healthy. So some sort of foam.
@@Living-off-grid Yeah I just used the foam with a silver side on the ceiling alone and it really helps. Problem is though many Thai houses are horribly designed for ventilation so you can end up trapping heat in the house which otherwise used to travel up towards the roof. So you're cooler during the day but it never cools down at night.
Great video, just like the previous ones. Looks like You've got some serious conflict managing capabilities, as I'm pretty sure there was a lot of arguments from the thai workers, since this project is something they never seen before....
Well... Let's just say that a lot of workers don't work with/for us anymore 😉. But some of them are genuine gems. And... it is my wife who is the conflict manager 😊
@@Living-off-grid I can imagine. I can't call myself an expert when it comes to dealing with thai workers, but based on my experiences there, I definitely would not go down on the road you're on, and doing so smoothly...at least from here it looks surprisingly smooth :) anyways, good lock with the rest of the building works, and keep us posted! Cheers
This is in between Apai Wong and Nong Sean near the city of Renu Nakhon in Nakhon Phanom province. It is part of an old forrest that somehow survived the craze for rice-padies.
I've really enjoyed your build documentary. I am especially admiring your ventilated facade. I suspect the performance is significantly better than the double 7.5cm wall conventional wisdom dictates. How's it working for you?
Thank you for the compliment. I can not tell yet how the insulation is performing as we have no glass in the windows yet 🙂. But even with the windows not closed, the interior always feels cool. When all is finished I will make a video with the results, though it is hard to specify as we have no comparison.
@@Living-off-grid Haha, glass... good point! Glazing should be interesting. Can you find the required putty and glazier's points here? Looking forward to future installments!
Hi. Active insulation is not a brand. It is a system. A way of creating insulation. In this case, it is a cavity wall with an air-intake at the bottom and a air-exit at the ridge of the roof (called a ridge vent). When the sun heats up the outer wall, this in turn heats up the air inside the cavity. A passive cavity would slowly heat up and transfer that heat to the inner wall. But in this active system, the warmed up air rises (warm air does that) and exits at the ridge vent. This air is at the bottom air-intake replaced by cooler outside air. This way the air in the cavity will never be warmer than the outside air. An other system we use is the replace the inside air in the house at night when the outside air is cooler. These are called active insulation because they are actively doing something, as where regular insulation just slows down the heat transfer. (The key word being "slows down"... )
Je schiet al flink op. Maar wat een werk. En maar goed dat jij verstand van bouwen hebt. Want van het Thaise vakmanschap moet je het niet altijd hebben :-)
I am from italy. and my wife from Pakchong (Korat) ... Like me in next make home in thailand so in Pakchong... Half thai style and half italian style.. But like me too your project... are you engineer?
Yep. It only takes a split-second of misplaced trust on your side to F.. up a perfect plan. Then again, if you are less than 100% in your own planning and execution, you should never ever build a house for yourself. After all, when all is said and done, you have to live in it.
@@Living-off-grid Houses are a large surface area in themselves. That is a challenge for a one man site foreman. Our house has three wings and a collosal roof. You are lucky that the house is for you, a farang, to live in. Give it to the family and… Well, you’ll find out. Our house was painted cream. Dark green roof. We thought it was time for a repaint. We sorted that from living in England. Were informed is was finished… It was white! Now you can buy dustbin sized containers of cream anywhere. WHY do they think this way? You learn to live with these things because its the first way to find the rage of them losing face.
So far the house itself has cost 2.1M. I expect some 500K more to completely finish. This does not include the land, the gate&fence, the water-tower and the solar setup.
Thailand and “professional tiler”….. I nearly spit my coffee out cos there’s no such thing as you found out 5555. They install tiles on a dry bed of mortar around 2” thick usually, just wetting the top for adhesion, obviously it doesn’t work but they all continue to do it even though everywhere you go there are tiles loose or sticking up/broken. Love Thais, love Thailand but damn do Thai builders suck, they just don’t learn/care when something goes wrong….. Thais should be banned from all building work (don’t even get me started on them using luklang for under house land fill!) And 1000% from driving, other than that they are the best people in the world 😀. House looks great by the way!
The "tile guy" used 2cm of tile glue. That would have cost me around 100.000 baht in tile glue 😨. Not to mention that the maximum allowed thickness is 10mm and the advised thickness is 3mm. But hey... what does the manufacturer know? 🤣😂
@@anthony7091 luklang is clay they dig out of ponds/rivers 😳, it’s cheap so they use it to fill land including making a pile of it and building houses on it, it’s the most ridiculous building practise I have ever seen! You want rising damn✅ check You want heave, cracked/collapsing walls✅ check You want the luklang to wash away from under your foundation ✅ check You want your land to flood and hold water every rain season✅ check Do local government use it on roads before they are concreted making it impossible to get down some roads as they turn in to rivers when it rains and deeply rutted when it drys out✅ check Welcome to the land of idiot builders/engineers (lol engineers). Sorry these sound strong words and anti Thai, it’s not anti Thai it’s anti there practices. 25 years building in the uk where there are standards and rules to follow but this country no rules are followed so everything ends up a broken mess! Thais answer would be Mai pen rai….it’s ok 😳 what they do only becomes an issue when us “too much farang” actually want a job done correctly.
@@Living-off-grid only 2cm he was a pro 55555, seriously though it’s crackers isn’t it. The problem is they never do the floor pad to the right height to start with, it’s just chucked down usually with not much thought for level or final height needed, honestly I have watched as they put what looks like very dry screed cement down at 2” and then just damp down the top, put the tile on and smack it as hard as the can with a rubber mallet…..are we tiling or laying slabs loll in a short time the tiles move and Ants also colonise the voids that are inevitably left laying them like this. Got to say I admire you sticking to your guns to get this house built right cos I know from a lot of experience there would have been some feathers ruffled as Thai builders are pretty sensitive souls when told they are not doing something like you want! Your partner must be an Angel, mine translates my angry English in to Thai that doesn’t make them loose face…. Again I’m not Thai bashing as in the “people”, honestly! I am a builder/landscaper by trade so I can’t help but call out the incredible amount of inadequacy’s the majority of Thai builders have.
As an expat in Thailand you are allowed to build your own house, just as you are allowed to cook your own food and maintain your own garden. Paranoia never led to anything good, so relax a bit.
The way you build your house, is the same way you have created your TH-cam videos. Great quality, no corner cutting, nice design and efficient implementation.
Pretty rare to see. Everything looks great and you are a very skilled individual. Hard-work pays off.
What I suspect is the hard part? Truly taking the time to enjoy your creations.
I have just started watching so I am not watching in order. I have to say I admire your attention to detail and the finished result make that all worth while.
Very different to the way
my house was built
I enjoyed all 30 minutes. Lovely to see high quality work being executed. 👍
Very beautiful. I built a similar house in Thailand. The large outside sitting area was totaly worth it. I spent most of the time there.
So far so beautiful thanks for sharing this with us ❤
Gtreat show Maarten. Gives me an indepth knowledge while I build my house and important areas of focus while we have our buiding design and inspection during the build. Thanks a lot.
Good luck with your build.
You are so kind, sir.
I don't understand why the video has so less views, thanks a lot for all the informations in the video! I like how nice you work together with the thai workers, so each one can learn from the skills from the other...
Wow !!! I like very much Thx for sharing
Looks like you should have started with driveway. Beautiful house. I brought 2000 tile spacers from home
Your house is looking great and my wife and I are really enjoying your videos.
"And it took us another week to clean the floors again" - Died laughing - some contractors at least bring a tarp or even some old news papers, but majority don't even seem to notice that while they are fixing one thing (plaster, cement, paint, whatever) they are destroying another.
Soooo true.
Fantastic looking house, luckily you know about the building trade, otherwise a lot of work would have been bodged. My biggest annoyance in Thailand is electrics, earlier this week My wife said to me " how do you make electrics safe" I explained to her in basic terms, she said " OK I want you to wire our house in Thailand" & there's me thinking I'm retiring.
So did I... so did I...
The house looks absolutely amazing beautiful beside you gotten amazing scenery
To goes with the house.
Thank you. 😊
what a great work… brilliant
Great job Maarten….lot of situations come back in my memories watching your videos…..building my resort was a 5 year job but unfortunately circumstances force me to sell it and start again over.currently in design of our new place and need to prevent “mistakes” made before and in addition add some cooling technic as you do.
Visit at your home few weeks ago was helpful and currently designing our place using lot of your tips. With a little bit of luck i trust our new house is nearly done
Hi Robert,
Good luck with the new house. ‼️
Wonderful to see this level of work and the industry and thought you've put into the build. I commend you on the tiling work, that cut around the architrave alone had me out of my seat. Fantastic!
Thanks. It is nice to get compliments.
Well done and very unusual construction in Thailand. More Thai builders need to learn these techniques. Marble tiles are printed in a series (limited number) of designs. Open every box and sort the tiles by design. Number them with a dry board marker to aid in placement and prevent laying the same pattern tiles next to each other. You are doing a wonderful job. All the best to you!
Plasterers are artist's
Oh no, I could have seen more Maarten, have waited so long for this, please put up the next video soon. We have actually returned to Australia since your last Video, was wondering what happened to you. Excellent presentation Maarten thank you.
Geweldig en zoveel goede informatie
Wow!! Amazing! Thank you
Excellent, very impressed with the build to date. Its quite different to the typical builds we have been viewing. Looking forward to the next installment. My wife and I will be in Thailand for all of December and January as we start making preparations for our own build in Isaan. Best from us both, Nick & Yisa.
Yes, quite different!
Looking really good Martyn I see what you meant when you said you and Tip have been really busy and its been pretty hot and humid 🥵 👍🏻👍🏻
This was a fascinating series.
It's not over yet. 😊
Nice house!
Amazing! Well done!
Please if i come to Thailand, i will visit you ,wonderfull Work ,i am same men you
Wow I do love your house.👍👍
Wat een werk Maarten maar petje af hoor, heel knap gedaan! Het geeft zoveel voldoening om te zien hoe mooi het wordt als je er zelf zoveel bloed, zweet en tranen in steekt. Het eindresultaat is in zicht, hou vol, straks heerlijk genieten van een prachtig huis 🙏🏻
Ido the same work at our house in Germany, in Thailand I only build the electric and finished the wooden floors. With the rest we must live😎
Great job, my friend!
Thank you.
New viewer here. Beautiful project. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻
Welcome. Thank you.
I assume you had prior building experience? You are very hands on.
Well. Not professionally, but this is the third house I am building, so I did pick up some craft.
And... in my home country a man is only considered a man if he can drive a stick-shift and handle his power-tools. 😊
Hi Maarten. Great video. House is looking good. I am looking for your video about the front property wall construction. Where is it ?
Hi Bernhard.
It is in part one, about the foundation and the fence.
Thank you🙏
het word prachtig. tis maar goed dat jij zelf zo kundig en handig bent....kijk uit naar episode 4 en verder
Dankjewel Ab.
Beste Maarten, het is ongeveer een half jaar geleden dat je in je mooie nieuwe huis bent gaan wonen. Kan je een video maken hoe het huis bevalt en of je innovatieve oplossingen het huis echt koeler hebben gemaakt?
Goed idee. Zal ik doen.
Prima idee
I'm loving this series- why did you choose tile and not laminate/composite flooring? Also, where are you living? I'm in Isaan 😀
We are close to Renu Nakhon, in a tiny village called Apai Wong. I looked at laminated flooring, but it was much more expensive than tiles and I was not sure of the quality as I saw some quality issues at MegaHome (corners damaged, click-system not clicking, etc). Maybe there are better brands out there, but I though it better to stick with tiles. In my previous house (in Bolivia) we had hardwood floors, but you can not get any quality wood here 😞
I had another question. I like your idea of the isolation under the roofing structure with the air barrier (the foam with silver side?). Did you also put some insulation under the ceiling panels? I've retrofitted insulation on rental houses here and I've only managed to put it under the ceiling panels but I wonder if you should do both. 🤔
I will put insulation above the ceiling as well.
Not sure which kind yet, but not glasswool or rockwool. Those "pulverize" over time and make their way into the living-area as the ceiling-spots are not sealed. That would not be healthy.
So some sort of foam.
@@Living-off-grid Yeah I just used the foam with a silver side on the ceiling alone and it really helps. Problem is though many Thai houses are horribly designed for ventilation so you can end up trapping heat in the house which otherwise used to travel up towards the roof. So you're cooler during the day but it never cools down at night.
Great video, just like the previous ones. Looks like You've got some serious conflict managing capabilities, as I'm pretty sure there was a lot of arguments from the thai workers, since this project is something they never seen before....
Well... Let's just say that a lot of workers don't work with/for us anymore 😉.
But some of them are genuine gems.
And... it is my wife who is the conflict manager 😊
@@Living-off-grid I can imagine. I can't call myself an expert when it comes to dealing with thai workers, but based on my experiences there, I definitely would not go down on the road you're on, and doing so smoothly...at least from here it looks surprisingly smooth :) anyways, good lock with the rest of the building works, and keep us posted! Cheers
Very nice sir. Very informative video too. What part of Thailand are you in? We have a place in Udon Thani.
We are near Renu Nakhon in the Nakhon Phanom province. (Isaan)
Looks like a really great location with the forests. Where is this exactly?
This is in between Apai Wong and Nong Sean near the city of Renu Nakhon in Nakhon Phanom province.
It is part of an old forrest that somehow survived the craze for rice-padies.
Looking good Maarten
Did you buy all the tools or do they belong to the Thai workers?
I bought the tools. I figured they'd come in handy anyway as I like to work with my hands just as much as with my head.
I've really enjoyed your build documentary. I am especially admiring your ventilated facade. I suspect the performance is significantly better than the double 7.5cm wall conventional wisdom dictates. How's it working for you?
Thank you for the compliment.
I can not tell yet how the insulation is performing as we have no glass in the windows yet 🙂.
But even with the windows not closed, the interior always feels cool.
When all is finished I will make a video with the results, though it is hard to specify as we have no comparison.
@@Living-off-grid Haha, glass... good point!
Glazing should be interesting. Can you find the required putty and glazier's points here?
Looking forward to future installments!
Good job 👍Inspirational and informative video.
Can you please tell me the brand of active insulation and the price? Thank you
Hi.
Active insulation is not a brand. It is a system. A way of creating insulation.
In this case, it is a cavity wall with an air-intake at the bottom and a air-exit at the ridge of the roof (called a ridge vent).
When the sun heats up the outer wall, this in turn heats up the air inside the cavity. A passive cavity would slowly heat up and transfer that heat to the inner wall.
But in this active system, the warmed up air rises (warm air does that) and exits at the ridge vent. This air is at the bottom air-intake replaced by cooler outside air.
This way the air in the cavity will never be warmer than the outside air.
An other system we use is the replace the inside air in the house at night when the outside air is cooler.
These are called active insulation because they are actively doing something, as where regular insulation just slows down the heat transfer. (The key word being "slows down"... )
@@Beyond-Anywhere Thank you so much for your explanation 🙏
Je schiet al flink op. Maar wat een werk. En maar goed dat jij verstand van bouwen hebt. Want van het Thaise vakmanschap moet je het niet altijd hebben :-)
"Breek me de bek niet open".
🤠👌
Hi... nice project... its you make?
Yep.
I am from italy. and my wife from Pakchong (Korat) ... Like me in next make home in thailand so in Pakchong... Half thai style and half italian style.. But like me too your project... are you engineer?
@@vincenzo7790 retired engineer. (ICT)
@@Living-off-grid Then this project you make a design and calculations. Where are you from?
@@vincenzo7790 Netherlands, but living in Thailand
I have found out it doesn’t matter HOW specific you are with any details- It will be changed!
Yep. It only takes a split-second of misplaced trust on your side to F.. up a perfect plan.
Then again, if you are less than 100% in your own planning and execution, you should never ever build a house for yourself.
After all, when all is said and done, you have to live in it.
@@Living-off-grid Houses are a large surface area in themselves. That is a challenge for a one man site foreman. Our house has three wings and a collosal roof. You are lucky that the house is for you, a farang, to live in. Give it to the family and… Well, you’ll find out.
Our house was painted cream. Dark green roof. We thought it was time for a repaint. We sorted that from living in England. Were informed is was finished… It was white! Now you can buy dustbin sized containers of cream anywhere. WHY do they think this way? You learn to live with these things because its the first way to find the rage of them losing face.
Nice where is the house?
Near Renu Nakhon in the Nakhon Phanom province (Isaan)
how do you solve the Termites problem ?
Termites don't eat steel, or cement.
The siding is fiber-cement.
The wooden windows are treated with anti-termite paint.
What was the cost of construction?
So far the house itself has cost 2.1M. I expect some 500K more to completely finish.
This does not include the land, the gate&fence, the water-tower and the solar setup.
He didn't use tile spacers?
He did... but not properly. Some tight, some loose, some not there. 🤣😂
Maarten, Do you have contact details where my wife and I can discuss your build and its specification in more detail ? Thanks, Nick & Yisa.
Hi Nick.
You can contact me at maarten@beyond-anywhere.com
I'll be happy to discuss the build.
Hi Maarten, Have sent you an email.
Thailand and “professional tiler”….. I nearly spit my coffee out cos there’s no such thing as you found out 5555. They install tiles on a dry bed of mortar around 2” thick usually, just wetting the top for adhesion, obviously it doesn’t work but they all continue to do it even though everywhere you go there are tiles loose or sticking up/broken. Love Thais, love Thailand but damn do Thai builders suck, they just don’t learn/care when something goes wrong….. Thais should be banned from all building work (don’t even get me started on them using luklang for under house land fill!) And 1000% from driving, other than that they are the best people in the world 😀.
House looks great by the way!
What is luklang?
The "tile guy" used 2cm of tile glue. That would have cost me around 100.000 baht in tile glue 😨.
Not to mention that the maximum allowed thickness is 10mm and the advised thickness is 3mm.
But hey... what does the manufacturer know? 🤣😂
@@anthony7091 luklang is clay they dig out of ponds/rivers 😳, it’s cheap so they use it to fill land including making a pile of it and building houses on it, it’s the most ridiculous building practise I have ever seen!
You want rising damn✅ check
You want heave, cracked/collapsing walls✅ check
You want the luklang to wash away from under your foundation ✅ check
You want your land to flood and hold water every rain season✅ check
Do local government use it on roads before they are concreted making it impossible to get down some roads as they turn in to rivers when it rains and deeply rutted when it drys out✅ check
Welcome to the land of idiot builders/engineers (lol engineers).
Sorry these sound strong words and anti Thai, it’s not anti Thai it’s anti there practices.
25 years building in the uk where there are standards and rules to follow but this country no rules are followed so everything ends up a broken mess! Thais answer would be Mai pen rai….it’s ok 😳 what they do only becomes an issue when us “too much farang” actually want a job done correctly.
@@Living-off-grid only 2cm he was a pro 55555, seriously though it’s crackers isn’t it. The problem is they never do the floor pad to the right height to start with, it’s just chucked down usually with not much thought for level or final height needed, honestly I have watched as they put what looks like very dry screed cement down at 2” and then just damp down the top, put the tile on and smack it as hard as the can with a rubber mallet…..are we tiling or laying slabs loll in a short time the tiles move and Ants also colonise the voids that are inevitably left laying them like this.
Got to say I admire you sticking to your guns to get this house built right cos I know from a lot of experience there would have been some feathers ruffled as Thai builders are pretty sensitive souls when told they are not doing something like you want! Your partner must be an Angel, mine translates my angry English in to Thai that doesn’t make them loose face….
Again I’m not Thai bashing as in the “people”, honestly! I am a builder/landscaper by trade so I can’t help but call out the incredible amount of inadequacy’s the majority of Thai builders have.
@@w8rdy32Arrh . If it’s what l am thinking we call that dirt sing daeng(red dirt) in my area. .
Better hope Thai Government Immigration don't see this video.
As an expat in Thailand you are allowed to build your own house, just as you are allowed to cook your own food and maintain your own garden.
Paranoia never led to anything good, so relax a bit.