# Advice building in Bohol



## Fin7ao (Jul 4, 2018)

Hi guy i was wondering if any one here has any experience building in Bohol . I’m not sure if i want use a builder or go it alone and hire my own foreman and workers . Any one have suggestions ?? Or recommendations on builders , architects , skilled workers ? Any suggestion on supplies or suppliers hollow blocks , roof products etc .... thanks !


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## Maxx62 (Dec 31, 2013)

Fin7ao said:


> Hi guy i was wondering if any one here has any experience building in Bohol . I’m not sure if i want use a builder or go it alone and hire my own foreman and workers . Any one have suggestions ?? Or recommendations on builders , architects , skilled workers ? Any suggestion on supplies or suppliers hollow blocks , roof products etc .... thanks !


I don't have any experience with building in Bohol, but my wife and I built our own house here in Cebu, and I've seen one or two people build houses over here as well.

About ten years ago my sister-in-law (a retired nurse from California) hired a professional construction company to build a four bedroom house for her. Her total cost of construction ended up being somewhere north of four million pesos, and the quality of the work wasn't really that much different than if she'd gone out and simply hired local workers to build her house for her. (Toilet not properly bolted to floor, bad wiring, and rain water coming through gaps around window frames. A lot of rain water.)

Back in 2013 my wife and I hired some friends of the family to build our house, but we had a lot more defects and since then I've probably spent close to 10,000 USD fixing those mistakes. (The other day I noticed water on the bathroom floor. Turned out that when they installed the drain for our bathroom sink, the plumber just wrapped a plastic shopping bag around the 1-1/4 chrome tube before he shoved it in the wall, and then he put some sort of RTV caulking over top of that.)

If I had to do it all over again I would ask the foreman I'm hiring to show me his tools before I agreed to have them work for me. Most of the crew that showed up to my house didn't own any tools, and I had to rent / buy tools in order for them to work. Big mistake! If they don't own a tool box, then they probably aren't any type of a skilled tradesman, and they won't know or care what they are doing while building your house.

The other thing is that most of the locals don't know or care about how to properly mix cement, sand, gravel, to make concrete, and they will almost always put way too much water into the mixture. The problem with having too much water is that the concrete will crack all over the place as it dries. The person who did the finishing work on the outside of my house was so bad that it literally looked a five year old child had done the work. (I've since knocked off some of the really bad stuff, patched other areas, and have redone some of the finishing myself.)

The other big problem is theft of materials. Probably about 20% of the paint, boxes of electrical wire, welding rod, and pipe got thrown over the back wall and was used by my construction workers to fix their own houses. The painter kept telling me that I needed to buy more paint (a lot of paint) however when I looked at his house located around the corner from me, his house was painted the same color as mine! (Not joking!)

I guess that the thing to do is to not rely solely upon word of mouth from relatives and in laws. If someone gets recommended to you, make sure that they have a complete set of tools, and that they know how to use them. (I later found out that my foreman couldn't read and write, after he made a mistake reading our blue prints..)

The other thing is that I probably should have hung around and watched them working a little bit more than I did, and then I could have caught some of the mistakes in progress. Also, you cannot rely upon the foreman to take care of everything for you, because my guy wasn't even smart enough to let me know when he was running low on materials. He'd come up to us early in the morning and say that they were out of cement, or some other material, and then they'd sit around for hours while we called places trying to get stuff delivered. Completely worthless as a foreman. If someone tells you that Bong Bong is a good forman, don't simplly take their word for it, 

Don't mean to scare you but you have to be careful.


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## fmartin_gila (May 15, 2011)

Max62, VERY GOOD POST AND TELLING IT LIKE IT IS.

We also had a 'professionally recognized' company build ours a couple years ago. Turned out the same - so many things wrong, some we are living with and some I have corrected. 

There have been quite a few threads about building, I would do some searching back and a lot of reading.

Fred


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## Maxx62 (Dec 31, 2013)

fmartin_gila said:


> Max62, VERY GOOD POST AND TELLING IT LIKE IT IS.
> 
> We also had a 'professionally recognized' company build ours a couple years ago. Turned out the same - so many things wrong, some we are living with and some I have corrected.
> 
> ...



I left out the part where the foreman working for the professional construction company hired by my sister-in-law simply went out and hired a bunch of locals to do the work, as he ordered them about. Again, that was at my sister-in-law's house, and the final product was much better than our house, but the labor cost was probably five times higher than ours. (But then again our house was riddled with all sorts of defects.)

The other thing I should have added above is that the quality of locally made concrete hollow blocks is an absolute joke, and it if I had it to do all over again, I probably would have gotten some molds to make my own hollow bocks, and then paid a guy to do nothing but make hollow blocks all day long. You'd probably have to start making hollow blocks a week or two before the main construction starts, but it would be worth it. 

Also, it seemed to me that the guys over 45-50 years of age took a little bit more pride in their work, while the younger guys in their twenties and thirties kept sneaking away and hiding.


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## Gary D (Oct 28, 2013)

You can specify the grade of hollow block, but unless you are standing over them as they are made who know what you get. DIY is probably the way ahead, we will definitly be looking into it when we refurbish.

One thing to consider is that the hollow blocks are not structural so they don't have to be too strong.


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## Diosa (Oct 27, 2018)

Hi
OK what part of Bohol are you going to build ???? If it is panglo then you are going
to be ripped off unless you are standing over the workers every day.
There is a construction company i know they built a house for a friend of mine made a good job and corrected any faults large house to basic finish cost around P1.8m
another friend let his GF family and others build his house now unfinished and P2.5
and still counting.
If you can let me know what part of Bohol i can give you more info of people to contact for hollow blocks good ones foreman who does work hard or building company if you want to go that route


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