Pyramid House Thailand: Start of a second rainy season this year?

Let's start with good news. Unexpected the boss of the Orbortor (Local government with (not only) the responsibility of checking and granting requests for construction work) visited us late afternoon of Saturday November 5th. He was very interested in our progress and made some pictures. Also he wanted to know the situation of the dirt road to our site. Who knows some progress will be made next year. Nice he came to visit to experience with his own eyes what we are doing at our nice place.

A bit sad news, especially for the farmers, is that for two days again we got heavy rains during the late afternoons and night. Sad for the farmers because they are in the process of harvesting and drying their rice on the streets in the village. A hard process as everybody can understand during heavy thunderstorms. Rice is floating instead of drying and three days of this weather is enough to destroy all the harvest. Also sad the straw left overs after cutting the rice in the fields, needed for the cows during the period they have to be in their stables, will start to rot.

We think, brand-new and who knows thanks to the climate change, the second rainy season of the year started. We are in lockdown again... two trucks today (one of them with a rice harvest machine who had to unload because of heavy weight) were stuck in the mud at the dirt road and also we cannot drive the scooter through the thick layers of mud. It feels a bit being back in monsoon time again.

During digging of the construction site for our main house we discovered the extreme amount of rainwater this year had problems to leave our land. Reason why I thought about a solution to get rid of it in a good and quicker way not to disturb the foundation. Instead of a so called 'French drain' I made a modified 'French drain' construction with pipes with inspection possibility that we put deep underground surrounded by gravel and connected with a drain-pipe to drain the groundwater to the rice field. Today we finished this very hard job of digging and installing up till 1.5 meters under the surface of the underside of the foundation to pour. We also discovered, thanks to the rain, the system works great.

We intended to pour concrete last Friday but did not succeed to finish the drain system. Temperatures of 36 degrees C did not support us to dig nearly thirty meters of pipe by hand deep into the land quickly. And after that... the rain stopped us to place the formwork we rented. Still we have to put the wire mesh and rebar in. With the weather and road conditions this present moment we will have to wait a long time to get the road and our land strong enough to receive three concrete trucks we need. So, we have to wait for a weather change and rent the formwork a bit longer. Something that does not give any problems. It's not possible at all to pour concrete for the foundation now.

Writing this blog now it's nearly 10 pm and our land is flooding again. And rain will go on. The weather forecast shows starting November 20 another week of heavy rainfall is arriving. We hope the forecast is wrong. This is totally unusual for this time of the year.

Already two weeks we are waiting for a quotation for the hollow-core pre-stressed concrete slabs. Also no problem because we cannot place them at least within one month.

Our main water pressure pump broke down. Happy this pump has a special safety for overheating and switched off. I had to take apart the pump piece by piece and finally discovered the inside of the pressure switch did not function anymore because of chalk. All together this took nearly three hours to repair but it's working great again.

Wonderful to have no schedule so no stress only a bit sadness because after a long period of stop and go during the rainy season we want to go on now again. Still lots of other work to do in our process as well. No time to sit still.