First day of the build layout and Digging

Hello there guys, I found the photos of my first day of the build. The first day is very important so don't be excited and hire many people who would just waste your money because believe it or not the first day of the build is the easiest it is so easy you can do it on your own or with your wife or in my case my wife's little brother. 

Before you do some measuring and digging make sure that you have your final plan in paper. This is very important because once you dig it there is no turning back. Well there is still turning back but this will cost you money. 

So make sure you have your final floor plan on paper before doing some layout. Make sure also that you have tape measure some nylon cords a stick (it could be small wood or a bamboo) and a hummer and yeah an angled ruler or triangle is a must, you need this one so that your house is exactly 90 degrees in all sides. 

This is my neighbor's house she, just beside our lot in her hirst day of the build she hired 8 guys and only two of them are working the other's are just sitting around because you can't layout a house with so many people. We finished hours in less than 30 minutes. after layout we pour water on the outline so that the ground would be much easier to dig.   


After a week of digging (it took that long because we only work 1-2 hours a day because it is very hot) if we really want to finish it quickly we can do it in two days but we took our time on this one. Besides my co worker is a kid and I don't really want him to be really exhausted.

Summary of this project:

House Layout Done

Excavation for the house foundation Done

Expenses: Less that Php 200 pesos

Saved: More than Php 2,000 worth of labor

Lesson: Why hire if you can do it right?

Typhoon Egay and Falcon is making me nuts

Hello there guys, It's been a week since I last work on my house and this rain is starting to bug me. Since last week we were hit by two typhoons the fist was Typhoon Egay who was really destructive because of it's strong winds. It blew of my tool shed. Then the second typhoon was falcon, even though it wasn't as destructive as Egay. Typhoon Falcon brought lots of rain and now the pit I dig for the foundation of my house is now full of waters. It will take a week or two just to dry that up. Truly building house in rainy season as it's ups and down.  

Learn how to design a house using google sketchup

For me designing the house is the most important step in building one. This will be your guideline or goal in making your dream house. Designing your own house will benefit you greatly specially if you are not relying on a contractor because let's face it, hiring a contractor to build you your dream house is really expensive.If you want to build your own house in a budget be a contractor.  

The easiest way to design a house is by a computer program known as google sketchup it is free to download and it is very easy to use. if you don't have any idea how to operate this program. Search youtube videos for sketchup tutorials there are thousand of tutorials out there. You don't really need to be expert at it you just need to learn house to use the tape measure the push and pull tool and a couple more functions and you're done. I learn to design using sketchup in half day and made my house plan in that same day. 

For me sketchup is very important when you are building a house because you can just design whatever you want and just show it to the carpenter and you don't have any problem explaining to them what you want because it is there, you showed them what you want and the measurements are exact so that is as close as the real thing. I will show you what I did so that you will have an idea how I made mine.

This is the sketchup interface. Don't be afraid it is easier to use.

this is the google sketchup logo

JUST INCASE YOU WANT DO DOWNLOAD THE FREE VERSION OF THE GOOGLE SKETCHUP JUST FOLLOW THIS LINK: http://www.sketchup.com/download

Here is my final design it is a lowcost minimalistic design 

This is the top view of the house it has one bedroom one bathroom 

Photos shows the whole roofing system and how easy it is to built one. I choose shed type because it is cheaper and easier to make that the other design and I think it is more suitable to that minimalist theme.

Building a jig bench

Hello there guys it's now July 1 2015 and it is my 2nd week of the build. I just finished digging up the lot for the preparation of the foundation of the house. My project for this day is to make a jig bench so that I can make some rib bar for the house footing of the house. This house footing is very important because this will make the foundation of the house stronger. 

I googled some images and found this one from wikipedia.org and this is exactly what I wanted to do. I never made one before so I need to research it first before attempting to make one.

First stop I needed to make a decent jig bench from and old bench some old steel I bought from a junk shop for Php 10.00 and two small pipes that I am going to use for bending rib bars.

Old bench from our apartment I dig a small hole and place fee
t of the bench in each holes for extra rigidity 

the bench 6 small metal and the pipe

My tools in making this jig bench

Jig bench finished and ready to go

after half day of work I made 6 pieces of rib bars

 for house footing 42 more to go 

that's all for now it's lunch time!

My first step in making an affordable house in the Philippines: Research Research Research

I still remember when I was in my high school days when our science teacher bombard us with research papers and home works. We need to research one subject before we discuss this subject in class so that all of us have an idea on what the teacher are going to say. Well I can finally apply this research thin in real life situation. This is the first thing I did before I decided to build my own house here in the Philippines. I research the best materials my money can buy (that means it is cheap and at the same time it is quite strong). I also research lots of house designs. I google search some small house or tiny house out there and there are thousand of designs out there. I also research some building material prices on the web there are lots of online sellers who offers cheap building materials but I don't really have a plan to buy from them I just get their price so that I can have an idea. 

So lets have a recap this is the list of things I research:

• Design of the house
• Basic building terms (wall footing, stiffener etc.)
• Materials
• Prices of building materials
• Google Sketchup (This you really need this one I'll explain it to you guys later on)
• alternative building materials (this is if some materials are not available or it is too expensive in your area)

  

My first post

Hello there guys. This is my first post in this blog. After renting an apartment for 1 year me and my wife decided to build a small house. We have a limited budget in this major project but we have a lot of time in our hands. We decided to not to rush things and take it slow and learn the mistakes of others. I've been working on our house for about two weeks now and there are lots of things I learned from searching on google and asking some friends on how they build their house. I will going to update this blog as often as possible. I am a Filipino and I will going to record all of the materials I purchased and all the problems I will going to encounter and it's solutions. So good luck to me guys and I hope this blog will going to help you weather you are a Filipino or foreigner  who are planning to build their own home here in the Philippines.