Back in July last year, I wrote a post about the house that my wife and I were building on Koh Samui, where her family are from. It was full of the joys and eager anticipation of a dream about to be realised.
At the time, a few people suggested I ought to document the build on Hive and although that had been my original intention, I decided not to. The simple reason being, I felt uncomfortable 'showing off' and running around a paradise island whilst others are still struggling with the effects of lockdowns and pandemics. It's a cheap build with a few alterations from a stock plan and is part house, part licensed medical centre for my wife to practise as she is a Paediatric Occupational Therapist specialising in ADHD and ASDs.
It all started so well! A bloke with a digger turned up to knock a hole in the front wall and dig holes for the footings. The rows of plants you can see at the front are the father-in-law's Dragon Fruit plants, all now sadly gone!
A few trees we had wanted to keep so these were replanted at the back of the land and the area was turned into a scene from 'Bonanza'. All we needed were some horses but they stuck sticks in the ground to mark where the holes needed to be dug. It was time for us to leave but we sorted out the date for the very important 'blessing of the ground' ceremony in which we apologise to the spirits of the earth for digging holes in her and is a very important part of the build. It gets included as part of the contract! August the 3rd, we would return!
We had food for the spirits and a banana tree stuck to the first post that was to be set. What could possibly go wrong?
Ding Ding! Round 1
Fighting with the building company started almost immediately. Their promised, qualified engineer and foreman who was to oversee the project, quit 3 days in after a row with his employer over the standard of accommodation he had been given. A site survey that had been completed by the company before the build commenced and had involved 5 of their staff coming down to Samui from Bangkok and which had shown no particular problems suddenly threw up issues with land levels, problems piling because of proximity to other buildings, electric supply and drainage issues which were all going to cost 'extra' to solve, and my initial 'westernised' reactions of forboding to seeing a bloke with a plumb bob on a string and some rough timber cut into right angles, marking out the positions of the posts and foundation blocks appeared to be justified.
After paying a deposit, I let things ride but watched the builder closely, yet from afar. Another tip I would give anyone building a home out here is to be there and watch! Especially if you have any knowledge of building. I have a little and had learned most of what I needed to know. It was though, difficult to check every delivery to the site as one of the common scams here is to supply undersized steel rebar. It's hard to check once it's encased in concrete!
Everything we were paying for is listed on a Bill of Quantity so we should be able to check everything.
The foundation work seemed to be going fairly well. My father-in-law who lives very close by was also keeping a beady eye on proceedings buts without a foreman to constantly check for accuracy, I knew we were flying by the seat of our pants!
With the blocks of concrete and posts completed, we got a phone call.
"You need to buy some more infill", said a lady from the company.
This puzzled me. They had dug holes, part filled the holes with a metre of concrete and built the posts but yet there was not enough earth to fill back in?
You dig holes. You fill them with concrete and the pile of earth at the back wasn't enough to refill them! What sort of voodoo shit is going on here?!
It turns out the builders had started digging holes at the wrong depth and needed more infill to basically bank up under the ground floor. The house was sat taller from the ground than it should. The company blamed the slope, I blamed the company for not sorting this during their infamous piss-up err site survey, and I refused to pay.
The company backed down and had 20 tonnes delivered to the site, just enough for their needs. When the build is eventually finished, I will need another 60 tonnes to level everything out a little. Friction was already developing.
Despite the promises of a new foreman arriving, no-one did and the builder, a local guy and his crew who had been sub-contracted by the company was forever downing tools and disappearing for days, complaining to us about not being paid. We found out later, the same company had just finished another home on Samui which had taken 9 months and had 4 different crews on the job, all of whom had quit over money.
Things were looking bleak and the sense of excitement was rapidly being overtaken by worry. The company were still being reassuring and blaming everything and everybody for delays. The lies and bullshit were obvious but when they have your money, there is little you can do except constantly badgering them. The builders finally turned up once more and for about three weeks, it looked as though things were going well and walls and doorways were appearing on photos we were sent almost daily by both Fon's dad and the company.
I looked at them closely. There was a door in the wrong place. Not just the wrong place but the wrong wall! There was a drain in the middle of the living room floor, 2m from where the riser shaft was meant to be and there were no drainage points in the kitchen, one of whose walls contained the offending door!
I was quite incredulous as to how a mistake like this could have been made and some heated phones calls followed, initially to the builder himself as getting hold of the company was proving ever more difficult until they were due another payment in which case they were soon on the phone!
These were stupid errors and easily rectified but a few days later, I got a photo that had me leaping on the bike and racing south overnight on a 750km dash to sort out a rather more important mistake.
The staircase was to be cast on-site from ready mixed cement, steel-reinforced of course, and built to an angle and stair depth which we had agreed at the planning stage. Staircases here are notoriously steep and the steeps are deep which we particularly wanted to avoid.
The photo that had me on the bike and tramming South! The pillar on the left of this photo, as it transpired is 20cm further left than it should have been thus making my shit staircase 20cm wider at the bottom than at the top!
Upon arriving I was horrified as my initial assessment of the photos was confirmed. They had started building the staircase 1 metre from where it should have started and as they had got the upstairs floor level wrong by over 30 cm, the steps from the small landing to the bedroom were wrong. Instead of 17 + 3 equally spaced steps, there were now 13 + 1 and a half. Not only that, to save money, the company had simply sent extra sand, cement and gravel to the site for the builders to do their own mixing rather than sending a truck of ready-mix out. I stormed upstairs, plans in hand to confront the builder who was working on the steelwork for the roof, only to be faced with another surprise: An additional concrete pillar, right in the middle of the bedroom floor!
I was 'not happy' and let my feelings be known to the builder who couldn't even find his set of plans to check, so I walked off.
We left messages for the company to which they didn't respond and the builder tried explaining to the wife that 'he could sort it' but we didn't want it sorting, we wanted it pulling down and starting again and so that's exactly what he did! Obviously, he'd managed to contact the company and they were not impressed, telling him that he'd have to pay for his error and buy the new steel and concrete himself. HE was still waiting for payment from them for work he'd done so he simply took his tools and crew and left, never to be seen again! This was in October, and after much complaining and cajoling, some other builders turned up in November, they didn't build a new staircase though. They simply laid out the sheet roof and then they left.....
No idea how we managed to get a step in that wall or how the bathroom doorway is narrower than the bedroom doorway. Something else that needs to be sorted!
For the next month, the excuses were coming in thick and fast, mainly that they were struggling to find a new crew, then it was announced that their own, fully employed crew and a foreman would be coming down from Bangkok at the beginning of January and that we should start choosing our tiles and fittings because the house would be finished in around 6 weeks......I wasn't holding my breath although, on the 8th of January, a new building crew did arrive, they were actually from Samui, and some of them were known by the family. Things were looking up! They started work on some first fix, water pipes and electric. They started trying to sort out some of the problems bequeathed by the previous teams and they started doing some rendering downstairs of the internal walls to try and make things look 'straight'. This was odd. No work on the staircase and there were still pipes and drains to sort out upstairs, not to mention internal walls!
The reason for this was simple. The contract shows the stages of construction after which we make a payment and at this stage, the water and roof should have been fitted and pressure tested and sure enough, at the end of January, we got a phone call from the company. There was another payment due, even though there was no way the builders could finish that stage due to none of the previous stages being finished completely or correctly and this building crew was now waiting for their payment...
We went down to Samui and the builder came for a chat and apologised but said there was no way he was able to sort out the staircase and the company had conned him into agreeing to finish the house and was refusing to pay him for work done. He was livid with them and gave us the lowdown of exactly what the problems were we didn't even yet know about.
We messaged the building company as by this time they were again refusing to answer calls, only sending messages in the 'Line group' and told them, we were refusing to pay anything else until the staircase was built and other problems rectified. This didn't go down well and the legal threats started!
Letters were sent to us telling us that due to 'unforeseen circumstances' they were extending the contract which was due to end after 6 months on the 4th of February and we had to make payment within 7 days or they would commence legal proceedings against us to recover the full amounts outstanding for the rest of the build.
Empty Threats!
Not a problem. We got in the local council buildings inspector and paid for an engineering report, we then got in a very expensive private chartered engineer from Bangkok to provide us with an in-depth written report and we took on the services of a lawyer that specialises in building disputes. We also got some advice from the architect, who had also quit the company in November after a dispute over his salary!
No local engineers would get involved in writing a report that criticised a local builder as they were, "afraid of threats"! It is that kind of business sadly. In Thailand, there is always that sort of risk where even small amounts of money are concerned.
We gave them the opportunity again, to visit the site whilst our engineer was here and 28 days to rectify the problems. They didn't turn up for the meeting, in fact, no one directly employed by the company has been to the site since last August! The 28 days will be up on Monday and we will commence legal proceedings after declaring the contract to be void. This allows us to get on with the work ourselves which in many ways is a blessing. We can put right the problems and make further small changes to the plan as we see fit. This time, I will be on-site to supervise 4 days of the week. The other three, back in Bangkok. It's going to be tough but for the best.
The aim of our legal action will be to recover additional costs to correct the issues, exactly as per the original and signed off plans. We will however continue the build and compromise where necessary. Sadly, legal costs can't be claimed back here, even upon winning a case which is odd but like many other things here, the legal system is a very unfamiliar minefield that needs navigating by professionals and I am happy to leave them to it whilst I get back 'on the tools' and get the house finished, to which I'm secretly looking forward to doing. This was to be the first time ever I left everything to the professionals instead of doing things myself but needs must!
The original budget is, of course, blown but not critically so. We called a halt at just the right time but it does mean the fitted kitchen I had dreamed of will now have to be built by myself and the mancave and workshop I had planned around the back will have to wait. At least I will be able to buy myself a nice and shiny new table saw as the infamous staircase, which will also need to be designed and built by myself in double-laminated 20mm exterior ply!
In Conclusion
We made mistakes. We should have done more due diligence before signing on the dotted line. We should have had a lawyer check the contracts, but that's not how it's done in Thailand, I was told. We should have refused payments earlier and paid for surveys at each stage of the build but companies like this rely on their customers being afraid to speak up and not having the available resources or extra funds to fight back.
They are nothing more than bullies and cheats and so it transpires, their wake is littered with unhappy homeowners with a multitude of problems for which repairs are being refused on warranty due to assorted 'loopholes' and many builders who are owed money from breached contracts. We now have contact with three ripped-off homeowners and a dozen furious builders. I hold no grudges against our original builder. He was shit, but to be fair had been contracted with a promise of an employed foreman on site. Builders here, although not often whiter than white themselves, generally have no formal training and work for peanuts. I have a lot of sympathies for them but it's no consolation, and all the sympathy in the world will not get me a staircase!
For the company, chickens are coming home to roost!
The money is important, I'm down about USD$20K but the worst thing about all this is the stress and feeling of helplessness as we felt we had so few options available to us. It truly was like a car crash being acted out in slow motion in front of our eyes, but not anymore. We now have renewed optimism and the finished product will be all the sweeter for the emotion and hell that's gone into building it!
And there she stands! Waiting to be completed.
As a footnote, I have omitted to name names right now due to ongoing legal action and because Thai defamation law is extremely harsh, even if you are telling the truth. Rest assured, however, this will be corrected when both home and legal action are completed. This company and its two directors will be plastered over the blockchain and every social media channel all over the world. I will fucking destroy them. Watch this space!
@nathen007/a-not-showing-off-blog-about-building-a-house-on-ko-samui-introduction-03-07-2020