Building a Home in Davao

[Yeochief]

How hard is to replace out the current ones to GFCIs?  Any rewiring involved?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[carbpow]

7 hours ago, Yeochief said:

How hard is to replace out the current ones to GFCIs?  Any rewiring involved?

 

No. I wondered if they would work with the no neutral Meralco wiring at first so I put one in, plugged up an old extension cord and deliberately shorted it out. Got a tiny spark and it tripped. I seem to recall them tripping at a 4-5 amp change in current within 1/30th of a second according to specifications. That is a good thing .

[Tommy T.]

I've been going to the home every day or every other day lately because there are so many things requiring decisions...

The fence is all done with the steel, except for the gates. They are sanding, applying rust inverter and then painting with the epoxy primer. It is, indeed, two part paint and looks very nice. But we had to remind the painter (not the journeyman, but a "worker") to put some tarp or similar beneath the steel so that there would not be splatters on the cement.

Evidence of no tarp here!

The sliding gate is taking shape. They had it on two rollers and I suggested they add a third to reduce friction and add support.

One of the welders (who is now wearing dark glasses when welding (!)) is lowering the railing on the terrace as we specced it to be too high.  Our oooppps...

The dirty kitchen shares a sink with the laundry area and L had them put up a wall to help reduce the offensive smells of her fish cooking. There is a cutout in the cement counter, from this side (laundry side), to make it easy to get to the sink and a nice platform on the right to stash laundry needing to be worked by hand (and my Tanduay or San Mig!)

The track lighting between kitchen counters and island is in place...

...and the dining table is set up with chairs and ready for a meal. We will get cushions installed on the rather basic chairs.

Ah... the air/con in the master bedroom. Somehow, somebody missed the boat and installed the cove ceiling and then the air/con too low. The best fix we figured was to just adjust the cove lighting ceiling and leave the air/con be. It's not the best solution, perhaps, but it will work for us and we can live with it. It's one of those "accomodations" that sometimes must be made... It will look fine once it is painted and massaged into place.

The steel on the stair railings has been painted with primer and then "analok(?)" colour and looks very sharp.

They stripped the accidentally white painted door frames and have been applying varnish. Some places look better than others, but we point out the flaws and they are getting there...

The roof-top outside air/con unit looks quite properly located and installed. There is a roof vent in the background in orange that still needs some work...

And...ouch!... today, we visited Wilcon and bought three toilets, two sinks, shower plumbing hardware (we have waited this long because it only has a 30 day replacement warranty), too towel racks, soap dispensers and shampoo, etc. racks for the showers.... whew!!! My wallet was complaining after all this...

Things are moving along... But we have some issues with the kitchen cabinets - I will update when more is understood. It will all work out, but the "getting there" is a bit of a hassle.

We now expect potential begin-to-move-in-date sometime around September 21, more or less... We have begun packing seldom used things (that should probably just be tossed) to prepare for moving things during every visit to the home. Starting this week, we will have two bedrooms where we can place our stuff and lock it up - Yeah!!!!!

Oh... I forgot to add some other comments.

I am totally lost regarding what value of surge protectors to use and where to find them - I am talking whole-house types. I learned that the ones I found called "Andeli" are pure Chinese and their website is almost not understandable. I don't want those! Any suggestions would be appreciated for any that might be available here in Philippines.

I also looked up automatic voltage regulators and cannot find a source or even a brand available here (especially one that I could afford!). I did search the forum for that but could not find brands or models. Perhaps I was too quick or lazy in my search? Again...I would appreciate any suggestions...

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by Tommy T.

[Yeochief]

23 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

applying rust inverter

I hate rust (Navy days) and most places we have looked at, the gates were rusting really bad and around the windows.

[Yeochief]

23 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

.and the dining table is set up with chairs

Did you buy them from a store or have them hand made?  I'm going to have them hand made so that the chairs can support my fat ass.

[Yeochief]

Tommy, on your outside doors (doors used to enter/exit), is there a gap at the bottom?  Most houses I have seen, there doors are not sealed when they are closed.  Is that normal here in the Philippines?  I would not want to cool the outside.

[Tommy T.]

19 minutes ago, Yeochief said:

I hate rust (Navy days) and most places we have looked at, the gates were rusting really bad and around the windows.

I hear you, Chief! I worked on a NOAA research ship as a deck hand for a while plus owned a sailing yacht. Rust busting was my job in both cases. Rust is insidious. I know I cannot stop it altogether, but maybe I can slow it down a while. Our windows have aluminum frames, so it will be corrosion to worry about there. As you likely remember - steel rusts, aluminum corrodes, wood rots and fiberglass delams... 

15 minutes ago, Yeochief said:

Did you buy them from a store or have them hand made?  I'm going to have them hand made so that the chairs can support my fat ass.

We had the same outfit that supplied the hardwood doors make the table and chairs, so they were hand made. The wood and grain are beautiful, but the workmanship is a bit shoddy and the finished varnish is a joke. And they were quite expensive. We would not go that way again. However all that may last forever since the hardwood, itself, is strong...

There are some second-hand shops in the area that sell furniture and other items. We intend to visit a few of these to see if we can find other decent tables, chests of drawers and maybe chairs.

[Tommy T.]

20 minutes ago, Yeochief said:

Tommy, on your outside doors (doors used to enter/exit), is there a gap at the bottom?  Most houses I have seen, there doors are not sealed when they are closed.  Is that normal here in the Philippines?  I would not want to cool the outside.

Great question, Chief! I went out and bought aluminum thresholds for all outside doors. I also bought "door sweeps" for those doors. So our doors will fit very tightly. Part of the reason was also to minimize or stop insects, like cockroaches from coming in. 

My God...the doors in the apartment have 1 cm gaps at the bottom. We put a towel on the floor for the front door to block the air/con air (when we use it). The norm here seems to not deal with insects or air/con leaks under doors...

We have low thresholds under inside doors (look back for a photo in a previous post) and I think I will put door sweeps on those too, since the bedrooms will be the most likely place where air/con will be used. So far, the living room area and other rooms are very comfortable during the day, with nice breezes and not needing air/con. We will see how it goes at night when we sleep...

[Jollygoodfellow]

On 8/26/2020 at 8:13 AM, Tommy T. said:

Maybe the rubber mat will be the ticket? But I will test it first.

Better to get the wife to test. Don't want you to break anything 

 

[Tommy T.]

Not much to report this time, although there is a lot of work going on. It is now mostly a lot of smaller things and finishing, but there is still a lot to do...

This is the stash of toilets, vanity sinks, water heaters and more door hardware. L wanted magnetic door stoppers so there are 10 of them somewhere in this pile. I wanted door thresholds and door sweeps to hold the air/con cold and at least slow down the influx of insects.

They are treating and painting the fence and it is adding a nice look to the total appearance. The welder lowered the terrace railing a few inches and so it looks more in proportion now than before. The boys have been cleaning up a lot of the build rubbish around the property and the house is looking more like a home now. We have fiber internet that tested out at 27 mbs yesterday (10 am, who knows what it might be at FaceBook o'clock - 7 pm?), and even a land line telephone!!! Wow! I will soon be able to drop the cell tower data that I have been paying 1k/month for the apartment laptop connection(with a limit of 800 mb per day) and will be paying 1.7k/month for the fiber cable internet at the house. So I will only really be adding 700/month for higher quality and faster speeds + unlimited data. I think that is a very good deal.

Hmmm...the kitchen cabinets.... There was a hassle with these since many of the surfaces had a pink laminate. PINK!!!!!! We both were shocked. Even the sales staff at OTR were shocked. But nobody knew (or would divulge) why. My guess is that they had some leftover plywood and tried to use it. One of the employees told us that marine ply always had pink laminate!!! I got a bit angry and challenged him to ride with me to Citi Hardware or Wilcon and show me a sheet of marine ply that had pink laminate! He got very quiet then. The company said they would remove the cabinets, start over and make new cabinets by next week. They were super apologetic to L and me. I believe they are sincere but have a few workers who don't know their stuff or maybe are a bit lazy?

The window installation has been dragging a bit too. So I visited them a couple days ago and told them we were getting irritated with all the delays. They also promised to work faster. They had, apparently, a worker who was dismissed for not producing very well. They also have had difficulties obtaining supplies that mainly come from Cebu. Covid seems to be a great excuse for a lot of things - maybe some are true, maybe not. They got the message and two guys were out there yesterday when we visited and were finishing the window installs. They are still waiting for some hardware for the mozzie screen installations.

We have begun moving non-critical things into the house just to make the final move-in easier. So non-essential stuff will go into one of the finished bedrooms...

Question: Does anyone here have suggestions for where and what to buy for an electric motor for a sliding gate? All the gate closer machinery I see at the stores is for swing gates. I know these exist, but am not sure where to find these.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Tommy T.