Well there are few new houses in Taipei area, only outside in Taoyuan, Linkou , Zhongli maybe.
What do folks think about buying an old house and renovating them ?
Still should he a hell of a lot cheaper than building a new house. I’ve seen it done the odd time in some old fishing villages , but not often.
See a lot of old houses that just need better windows, renovate the interiors, paint them up… they can still be decent enough as the concrete structure is sturdy .
The in-laws built a free standing house about twenty plus years ago , it looks like shit already, would need a fair amount of work and imagination, ripping out all the bars, doing up the bathrooms, the replacing the windows , paint it up and add a roof () but it could be done up at a cost of a few million .
The other option is just to go with a lighter more tiepi Wu like it cabin structure and see how long you get out of it …At least it’s really cheap in comparison .
That’s not as much as I expected. I could knock together something much better myself. How much government approval is required to get things like water and electricity/sewage hooked up? That’s probably going to be a big cost as well. Internet, too. I’ve always wanted to pick some cheap land in the mountains and build a house there, but I don’t want to be off the grid.
I don’t really know about getting government approval, that’s something contractors can do for you. But sheet metal construction while it isn’t bad in itself it has to be done properly. As in the supports need to be strong enough (the higher the stronger) so it can handle a typhoon. Even better if you can have insulation between 2 sheet metal walls so you at least would be somewhat comfortable, but the cost would be significantly higher.
You won’t have electricity account if the place is illegal anyways, you’d have to share with another legal structure, and that means your cost per kwh is high.
I can share my experience of building a house located about 20 minutes south of Hualien city.
Built in 2014-15.
Cement house. Price per ping was NT$75,000. That included:
-architect blue prints
-all cement and rebar
-all electric wiring and water pipes
-window frames and glass
-floor tiles (many types)
-clay roof tiles
-inside wall leveling (using cement)
-outside wall small stone covering
-bathroom fixtures (e.g. toilets, showers, urinals, tubs, wash basins)
Does not include:
-painting
-interior deco of any sort
-any other design help (e.g. interior decorator)
-light fixtures
For more details will need to bother the wife to go back and look. Paint and deco is the least of your worries…and will depend on your house size and what you need. So many options.
We had a building manager who included his fee within the NT75,000 per ping price. However, we ended up also hiring another building review person to watch over him…at NT$40,000 per month for 4 months. Long story.
We built on “farm land” which was empty. Paid NT$5,000 per ping. 1666 ping. House is 120 ping.
There are one million details regarding building the house…from size of rebar, how many layers of rebar, cement brand, cement PSI, wiring quality, etc.
A good building manager will explain details and keep quality hire. Key is finding a good building manager.
I imagine the building manager would also hire or have an engineer who is on staff right? I mean you can’t expect a layperson to know anything about concrete or rebar strength… that’s structural engineering territory. Then there are codes to follow, and because of major earthquakes like 921 they do enforce that. Mess that up and they’ll be picking up what’s left of you with a sponge after they clear the rubble following a major earthquake.
DO NOT cheap out on that.
Building a sheet metal construction is actually safer when it comes to earthquakes. They can be done properly.
For us the building manager worked with the architect to make sure met building codes. A govt inspector did show up at end but mostly to make sure any changes made during the build (not matching the original blueprint) did not alter the structure in any significant way. I imagine building in a big city would have more oversight than a farm house out in the countryside so cannot comment on regulation type stuff. We did not face much.
If you choose DIY, then be sure to clean the inside very well (read: sanitize). Most of them come with wood flooring, and if you keep it you should sand down far enough to expose new wood.
All the support comes from the four, vertical corner braces, so do not cut out any of the corners (like for a window or to join one to another).
Shipping containers are interesting to look at, but if you insulate you’ll have to insulate the outside only unless you want to rob yourself of what is already precious, interior space.
I’d love to know how that goes. My concern comes down to the foundation and how it would hold up against typhoons and earthquakes. Betel nut stands and construction worker dorms don’t have much to lose as singular blocks. (The later because the company doesn’t care if their expendable, illegally-employed workers get blown away in a typhoon, the former because they can just move their stock to someplace sturdier).
I’m also 180cm tall, so not being able to reach my hands above my head without smacking them against the ceiling would get old fast. My poor father wouldn’t even be able to stand up straight without his head being pressed into the ceiling. Would have to see about stacking them such that the living room and bedrooms have more ceiling height.
Insulation would be very necessary. Worse than the never-insulated concrete blocks, metal shipping containers would pretty quickly become ovens in the summer (and freezing in the winter).
I bet you could make a pretty decently sturdy container home in a not very long amount of time here. Considering the rebar I saw on my walk yesterday, sitting in a pile, waiting to be put into the road…it was completely rusted through. Walked a bit more and saw some sort of concrete cubes (maybe about a meter square), open at the top, rusted rebar sticking out of freshly poured concrete. We wonder why buildings collapse here. Probably safer to ship a container home ready to assemble, finished by a reputable company that specializes in container homes for earthquake-prone areas in “The West”
edit after reading @bojack’s post: Can you cut off sides and bottoms/tops of containers to stack them, or does that completely compromise the structural integrity? At some point you’re basically making a tiepi wu if you need to use steel beams and whatnot to reinforce cut-off walls
Don’t bother with the shipping containers, their layout is shitty. You just buy a simple prefab type building instead and customise it. Why bother with a container ? Never understood that. You see construction companies knock up amazing temporary show houses all the time.
There’s a whole cottage industry, just on youtube, built around problems with shipping container homes. I would do my due diligence before I spent a penny toward one.
That said, people do make homes from them. I think in the end they don’t save nearly as much as they thought they would, though.
I would be more interested in buying a pre-fab kit that doesn’t rely on shipping containers. I don’t know what the options are in Taiwan, but there are lots of new companies making pretty nice kits that can be ~easily~ assembled on a building site. I think homes built from these kits can achieve significant savings over a more traditional home.
Yep if I ever construct a house in Taiwan I will most likely just do a prefab jobby or retrofit an existing one. Mostly cos way way cheaper and most construction is ugly as hell.
With regards impact on the environment avoiding pouring more concrete is a huge factor. Concrete and cement industry cause so many problems here. There have got to be better solutions especially considering if you want a concrete house many already exist.
Earthquake and typhoon proofing is a concern but I think you can put X frames in the walls to help with sturdiness.
I would love to see a TV show where they got old houses, gutted them, added on some wings, opened up the space etc. A little bit challenging in townhouses but still I’ve seen some nice retrofits in Ankeng B&Bs.
I can see why somebody would opt for concrete and rebar it’s great against earthquakes and typhoons, so I’m not criticising that choice but thinking of the alternatives.
A new-building trend (actually at least a decade old now in N America) that I think makes more sense in sub-tropical Taiwan is a barndominium (aka a steel building home). That’s because the structure itself is built from steel on a concrete slab, so no worries about termites.
The problem is that no builders here know how, nor are they likely to learn (much less invest time in learning) given how expensive real estate is.
A shame, because I think barndominiums - modified to fit Asian aesthetics -would do very well in Taiwan.
It’s my understanding that you can build on 10% of farmland. Is that information correct? It looks like you’re well within that range at 120 ping. Was that a consideration in your land size and house size (the 10% rule, I mean)?
) but it could be done up at a cost of a few million .
