Posts Tagged ‘Retirement Home’

Second Day Report (Boxing Day) From Our Retirement Home In Pakchong (Pak Chong) Thailand

First The Good News About Our Retirement House in Thailand (Later to Be Followed By The “Bombshell”

(It’s actually taken me 7 days to get this post written and published. busy with the house and my workshop and Internet connection problems which you can learn about on the “Mobile Broadband Internet In Thailand” page.

This trip to our retirement house in Pakchong (Pak Chong), Thailand, is the first for me since the house was completed just a few weeks ago.

I see the visit as a ‘test’ or perhaps a research project to see if I really can commit to retiring in Thailand. One thing I have been told (AKA the “Bombshell”)  has really put me off but lets put that to the side for a minute and look at the good things I have found so far.

The House Is Really Fantastic

The house really has a big ‘airy’ feel to it, especially the outside concrete area (I’ll call it the Patio) and the huge Utility block both of which I have complained about as being a waste of money. Maybe they are but it’s still a great feeling to be sitting there and enjoying the space and the amenities.

(Having great difficulty getting videos uploaded to YouTube. Could be the G3 mobile broadbandI’m using.

If you want to be informed when the videos are uploaded then simply Join the Announcement List)

Kanyah had been telling me for weeks before I came to see our completed retirement house in Pakchong (Pak Chong), Thailand, that it was very windy and cold. I believed her but when I arrived I was no quite prepared to find out exactly how cold and windy – and dusty – it was. The wind howled through the wooden house and literally whistled as it blew through the gaps between the windows. That made it very noisy and cold in the house but there was another downside… the dust.

The dust was everywhere, and we know about dust from our days in Saudi Arabia. Little did we know that it would follow us here to Pakchong (Pak Chong)!

So the days start cold and very windy but after around 1000 am the sun breaks through and we get a hot (by U.K. standards) day. The windy mornings are quite spectacular. Here is a video on a windy morning showing the views from different positions aound the house. Make sure you wait until the end to get a glimpse of Kanyah’s Thai humour.

How To Quickly And Easily Get Online In Thailand With Mobile Broadband Internet

When I asked my readers and posted the question “What is the best option for mobile broadband Internet in Thailand?” on the Mobile Broadband Internet In Thailand page there was a mixed response.  Some people had a “work-around” linking their lap-top to the Internet via a mobile phone and others suggested a landline connection.

The solution was so easy I almost couldn’t believe it.

I walked into Tesco Lotus in Pakchong (Pak Chong), Thailand, and spotting the “Mobile Phone and Internet” counter made a simple enquiry.  ”How do I get mobile Internet in Thailand?”.

Minutes later I walked out with a device and when I got home plugged it into my laptop and was online in less than a minute!

I’m still using it now! Go to the Mobile Broadband Internet In Thailand page to see how easy it is to get mobile broadband in Thailand.

So much for the good things going on with our retiring in Thailand project. Now for the “bombshell” I have mentioned before…

The “Bombshell” That Rocked Me To The Core And Dashed My Retiring In Thailand Plans

I don’t remember how this came up in conversation but Kanyah mentioned that once you reach 60 years old you are no longer allowed to drive in Thailand.

That was like a bombshell to me.

“The maximum legal age to drive in Thailand is 60 years old” – was it true?

Apparently our neighbour had told Kanyah that you can’t drive in Thailand if you are 60 years old or over.

If true, this was a major blow to our retirement plans. Although we don’t live deep in the country, our retirement home in Pakchong (Pak Chong) is about 10 minutes drive from the nearest shops of anything but the daily needs kind. We simply could not survive without a car.

Kanyah is not 60 yet (officially anyway but that’s another story) so she can still drive, this would mean that I would never be able to drive in Thailand.

And another thought struck me – it’s a recurring thought actually – what would happen should die before me? How could I get around?

You can understand that this was a terrible blow to me. Kanyah seemed not to worry too much, she doesn’t seem to care too much about dealing with the police. So long as she has ready access to cash I suspect…

Anyway that is not my way so I immediately start looking on the net for any upper age limit on driving in Thailand.

I tried all the usual keywords in major search engines. Key phrases like “age restrictions driving Thailand”, “upper age limit driving Thailand”, “can’t drive over 60 Thailand”, etc.

These two websites said there was no maximum age for driving in Thailand:-

http://www.sawadee.com/hotel/service/selfdrive

http://www.budget.co.th/tips_driving.aspx

This website tells you how to get a Thai driving license but doesn’t mention an upper age limit to be allowed to drive in Thailand:-

http://driving.information.in.th

So Was I Told A Bummer – And There Is No 60 Years Old Upper Limit On Driving In Thailand?

I have spent a couple of hours on the Internet searching to see if there is an upper age limit (e.g. 60 years) on driving in Thailand and have not found any mention of it.

Quite the reverse, several websites say that there in no upper age limit to driving in Thailand.

So maybe there is no “can’t drive over 60″ law in Thailand? Maybe it’s OK?

As far as I can tell from my Internet research there is no upper age limit for driving in Thailand. but to be sure i want to hear from people who know.

Most of the readers of this website have more experience than myself about retiring in Thailand and have more knowledge about the driving laws in Thailand and the age limits.

So please, if you have any actual experience on this subject I would be most grateful if you could take a moment to leave a comment on your experience below.

It will only take a few minutes of your time and could influence the decisions by many whether it’s a good idea to retire in Thailand or not.

Thank you very much.

Update: From “The Source” About The Upper Age Limit For Driving In Thailand

Last night our Thai neighbour. Noi, came round and we shared a few beers together. I raised the question with Noi about the law relating to a maximum driving over age in Thailand, since it was Noi who made the statement in the first place.

Noi “clarified” as follows:-

After you are 60 years old in Thailand you can still drive a car.

But after you reach 60 years old the officials will not issue you with a new driving licence in Thailand.

I’m trying to grasp the concept he explained. That up to the age of 60 if you drive you must have a driving license. but when you are over 60 you don’t need a driving license to drive a car.

So I posed the question “I am over 60 years old and I do not have a driving license. Is it OK to drive a car?”

Noi answered “Yes, no problem, just make sure you have 200 Baht in your pocket.”

Add a zero for farangs I guess…

I Have Just Received The Finished Construction Version Of The Thai House Plans To Build Our Retirement House In Thailand

Yesterday, September 29th, 2010, I received a set of construction drawings from our Thai architect to allow us to move forward on the road to building our retirment home in Thailand.

The house plans consisted of a set of very detailed Thai house plans, 46 sheets in all covering, Architecture, Structural, Electrical and Sanitation works.

I was delighted with the quantity and the quality of the drawings. I will describe what I received here in the post and show one or two of them but to do justice to the house drawings I have displayed them in the Galleries Section of the website.

Or you can go directly to the Architectural Construction Drawings Gallery

Samples Of The Thai House Plans – Construction Drawings – Designed By Our Thai Architect In Bangkok

Above, a sample of one of the construction drawings. This is the architectural layout for the second floor.

Construction Drawing Our Pakchong House End Elevation 2

Above, another example of one of the construction drawings. This is the front elevation.

Construction Drawing Our Pakchong House End Elevation 1

And above is the side elevation of the drawing for our our retirement home.

Construction Drawing Our Pakchong House Section BB

Above, another sample of the Thai house plans designed by our Thai architect. this time it is a section through the house that is shown.This is the last of the Thai house plans that I am displaying in this Post. I will be uploading more of the Thai house plans to a separate web page.

How Many House Plans Do You Need To Build A house In Thailand And What Level Of Detail Is Necessary?

There is a minimum quantity and level of detail that your house plans need to satisfy in order for you to build your hosue in Thailand. The minimum level depends upon the size of the house (i.e. how many rooms) the capability of the builder and the degree of control over the detail in the finished article that you want.

For our small house to be built in Pakchong, it is only 200 m2, our Thai architect has produced a set of house plans of construction stage quality and comprising 47 sheets of drawings. Here is a summary of what the set of construction drawings comprises:-

The Budget Price Of Building A House In ThailandReceived – A Proposal From Another Thai Architect Company To Design Our Retirement Home In Thailand

If you read the previous post Finding an Architect in Thailand to Design Your Retirement Home you would know that having found one Architect to design our retirement home in Thailand we were not very happy at the final fee negotiations and decided to look for alternative Architects in Thailand.   

I gave a list of links to Thai architects’ websites and sent emails to the site owners asking if they could design our house for us. I enclosed all the information I had to hand which included drawings (house plans) produced by myself plus schedules of components and finises etc.   

I received just one reply!   

Here it is:-  

Dear Kanyah,
 
I appreciate your interest in the designs for your home.
 
We looked at them and for basic design contract to supply finished architects construction drawings. Cost of construction we think would be 1.6m -2.2m baht plus vat (7%). But only the construction contractor will know this once the architects drawings are completed.
 
Our fee for this would be 150,000 baht plus vat (7%)
 
This does not include:
 
1.       Applications of permission to build but we do supply engineers and architects information for you to use in application.
2.       It does not include interior design,  landscaping or travel expenses if required to visit site. (We think we can design this without going to the site if all information is provided correctly by yourself.)
 
 
Sincerely,
 
name removed for privacy

 The Cost Of Building Houses In Thailand

Now this was interesting. Let’s look at their estimation of the cost of building the house.  

They put this at 1.6 to 2.2 Million Baht.  

I had an estimate from the other Thai architect as you can see on the web page at The Budget Price Of Building A House In Thailand and this was 1.95 to 2.6 Million Baht.  

Very similar and very useful. If you want to get a budget price for your retirement home in Thailand you could do worse than ask these two companies, or simply use these estimates on a rate per square meter basis. (15,000 to 20,000 Baht/m2) More information on the budget cost of building houses in Thailand here.  

Architects Fee Proposals – How Much Do Thai Architects Charge To Design Your House?

The previous Thai architect’s fee proposal was 120,000 Baht on a cost estimate of 1.95 to 2.6 Million Baht.  

This represents 6.15 to 4.6 % of construction cost estimate.  

The Thailand Architects  fee proposal is 150,000 Baht on a cost estimate of 1.6 to 2.2 Million Baht.  

This represents 9.37 to 6.82 % of construction cost estimate.  

So with this information and the information at The Budget Price Of Building A House In Thailand you should now be able to estimate the cost of building your own house to retire to in Thailand and also the cost of hiring a Thai Architect to make the house plans (drawings) for you. 

Which Architect Did I Choose?

I have in fact appointed an architect in Thailand to make the construction drawings for my retirement home. The architect has been sending me questions and proposals and I have been responding! 

All very interesting and exciting. Do you want me to tell you who the arhitect is and to learn about the deisgn process we are going through? 

You do? Good. But that’s for the next post!

Finding an Architect in Thailand to Design Your Retirement Home

I never thought it would be so difficult to find an architect in Thailand to design your retirement house and make the plans for building permission and construction.

As you may know already if you have looked around the website, my wife has bought a piece of land (1 Rai) in Pakchong on which we want to build our home to retire to in Thailand.

Early this year I made a set of house plans (in other words I designed our planned home) which you can see here: http://retiringinthailand.net/house-build-thailand-2/

Since then I have bought the land and updated the house drawings. The next step was to find an architect to take my existing house plans as a starting point and produce a set of proper drawings that can be used for:-

A) obtaining the building permit

B) obtaining quotations from builder to build the house and

C) building the house

You would not believe how difficult this is.

Of course I am living in the UK and trying to do this over the Internet. If I was in Thailand it would not be so difficult I’m sure.

I Came Very Close To Signing A Contract With A Thai Architect

Last year I found a Thai company and they gave me a budget price to build the house and a price to make the plans. (House drawings).

The price was higher than my wife was comfortable with and so I was reluctant to go ahead. But time is passing by and I want to get the drawings finished ready to start building in September after the rainy season has finished. So I sent of all the latest and updated information and received a confirmed price.

As I mentioned, the company had previously given me a budget price for building the house based on a unit rate of 15,000 to 20,000 Baht/m2. you can see all the details at The Budget Price Of Building A House In Thailand. The quote for making the house drawings was based on 7% of this construction cost estimate. Well, if you have seen the Pictures Of The House We Are Building In Thailand you will know that half of the ground floor is ‘empty’ and the other half is simply a blockwork ‘shed’. So I reckoned that the unit rate for the construction cost should be lower for the ground floor making the cost of the house – and hence the architects fees lower since they are based on a %age of the estimated construction cost.

I put this to the company offering to make the retirement house drawings for me and although at first they responded that their price was “their fixed, standard low price and could not be reduced” they eventually offered a very small discount, for which I was grateful. My wife, being Thai always asks for a discount when she goes shopping and I had to follow suit in this case, otherwise she may not have agreed to go ahead.

Anyway, I wanted to agree to the new price and and asked them to send me a payment schedule, which was duly received. I expected this to be based on progress. In other words each stage payment would reflect the amount of work completed. For example when half the work is complete I would pay 50% 0f the fees. This sounds fair to me.

But what I was offered was ‘front end loaded’ as you can see below!

This what the company proposed as a fee payment schedule to make the house plans for our Thai retirement home:-

• 1^st 50% advance after sign contract
• 2^nd 30% when propose first draft preliminary design
• 3^rd 10% when propose final draft and perspective
• 4^th 10% when complete of construction and permission drawing and submits to client

What didn’t I like about this? Well, for starters I have already produced the concept drawings so steps 1 and 2 are already finished! Even if this represents the half-way stage, I am paying 80% of the fee for 50% of the work.

The last two 10% items is where the important parts of the work are. And there is over 50% of the total work here. What incentive is there for the architect to do 50% of the work for 20% of the fee? I am very nervous that this part of the work will never be complete – at least to a good standard.

So I made another attempt at finding an alternative architect in Thailand to make our house drawings.

A List Of Thai Architects

The first thing I did was to google ‘Thai Architect’. this came up with a few individual websites and one business directory listing dozens if not a hundred Thai architects.

Here is a link to the list of Thai Architects:

http://www.bangkokcompanies.com/categories/thai_companies_p407.htm

Next I sent an email to all the architects who had a website or an email address. Here is a list of those:-

http://www.thailandarchitects.com/contact-us

http://www.archinet.co.th

bangkokcompanies@gmail.com

arch@aanda.co.th

siripongy@yahoo.com

a_seven@thaimail.com

And here is the message I sent them:-

Hello,

I am Thai living (at the moment) in U.K. I have bought some land in Pakchong and will be building a house there.

Can you please give me a price to make the house plans.

All the information is in the files you can download from

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads

Here are the individual download links:-

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads/Thai-House-Plan-Kanyah-Pakchong-HOUSE-100701-1.zip

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads/Thai-House-Plan-Kanyah-Pakchong-HOUSE-100701-2.zip

http://retiringinthailand.net/downloads/Thai-House-Plan-Kanyah-Pakchong-HOUSE-100701-3.zip

Thank You
Kanyah

By the way those are real download links. You can download for free all the plans for my Thai retirement house.

The drawings are in AutoCAD 2006 and pdf format. You can also download some photos, spreadsheets and Word documents. These explain the scope of works for the architect and give a detailed specification for the house and it’s construction.

That’s all for now. I’ll be reporting if If I get any replies.

Update July 2010 – Response Received

From all those architects I contacted I only had one email by way of response. Here it is:-

—————————————————————————————————————–

Dear Kanyah,

I appreciate your interest in the designs for your home.

We looked at them and for basic design contract to supply finished architects construction drawings. Cost of construction we think would be 1.6m -2.2m baht plus vat (7%). But only the construction contractor will know this once the architects drawings are completed.

Our fee for this would be 150,000 baht plus vat (7%)

This does not include:

1. Applications of permission to build but we do supply engineers and architects information for you to use in application.

2. It does not include interior design, landscaping or travel expenses if required to visit site. (We think we can design this without going to the site if all information is provided correctly by yourself.)

Sincerely,

Name removed for Privacy

—————————————————————————————————————–

(Note I was using my wife’s name, Kanyah, as the contact)

So I sent a simple question to this Architect:-

—————————————————————————————————————–

Update August 2010 – I Have Appointed A Thai Architect

After that I decided to go with the Thai company who gave me a budget price for my house and a design fee proposal I described above.

And I’m now glad I did because I am delighted with their service and the work they do. Highly recommended.

Here are some links to the work they have done and what I have said about the way they work:-

Thai Architects House Plans

Comments On Thai Architects Preliminary House Design

More Comments On Thai Architects Preliminary House Design

A Thai Architect In Bangkok Is Making Our Retirement House Plans

If you want to contact the very same architectural and construction company I use and recommend, I suggest that you to do so using this contact Form because then you will receive the same personal attention that I did.

How To Build A House In Thailand

I have just started a new section of the website all abut building a house in Thailand.

You can visit the page on this website at Build A House In Thailand.

This section of the website will be regularly updated with all the information that I come across as I start to plan and build my own retirement house in Thailand.

As such, you will have access to all the latest and up-to-date information. I’ll be covering such topics as methods of building, materials, components, how and where to buy materials etc.

There is a whole section devoted to useful web links pointing to other websites relating to building a house in Thailand.

Follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/retirethailand

Land Purchase Update

I mentioned in a previous post “Problems Buying Land In Thailand” that we had hit a snag about buying the land upon which to build our retirement home because the land owner had knocked out the marker posts with the bulldozer when clearing the land.

These posts now have to be put back in the correctly surveyed position and verified by the Land office. The land owner has employed a private company to do this work and we are waiting for it to be completed before we can sign the Chanoht and take ownership of the land.

The situation is still the same. I am waiting for a call from Thailand to say it’s been completed and then I’ll jump on a plane and flight out there. All the above is written into a contract that my wife signed when she paid the deposit for the land.

The latest time in the contract for signing the Chanoht is 18th may 2010. i.e. 60 days after paying the deposit. So it’s a bit tense at the moment as we await the news.