Just a thought: The foam + wood on the outside? not a great thing here in Taiwan. Remember, there are Typhoons and Earthquakes. Not in Europe. That’s why I suggested Shotcrete. You could do the projected foam inside, though. But I think it’s not worth it.
In Europe, things like shotcrete and projected foam are cheaper because they require less people and less time investment, and the price of the material has a lower impact on the final bill. Here in Taiwan, the final bill is more influenced by the materials and less by the people, so it might pay off if you go for the slower but cheaper solution.
If we go with the double-brick wall idea (which I like because a brick wall can look very nice if well done), when building the first layer around the container is there anything that has to be placed between the container wall and the bricks?
That’s pretty much what they do here anyway right?
Put up the concrete pillars and brick up the spaces. If you go with local building techniques would be easier. Quality of brick work is piss poor though! Many walls are literally slapped together.
What about converting many of the run down places that already exist in Taiwan? Always an option and less issues with planning.
Maybe not as cheap as before to buy…
My uncle in law sold some low lying hilltop land in miaoli for chalet housing a while back for 1 million ntd. I think he got ripped off but he needed the money. A contractor came in and built four dwellings on the land, sold it to retired people or Taipei folk I guess.
The low lying hills will be owned by local farmers in many cases, so you could just ask around or put up some posters about purchasing some land. Planning is always a question but in places like miaoli it will happen once the right palms are greased.
My in laws have more hilly land but you need to be aware that its always a risk during typhoons.
For the land we may have found an interesting area in the central-western part of Yilan.
Da Tong is for the vast majority reserved for aborigenal Taiwanese, but between Da Tong and San Shin there’s quite a bit of land that can be found at 1 wan per pin, with possibility to build. The only disadvantage is that it’s a bit in the middle of nowhere, but if we could buy a large lot of land it would make for a nice B&B on the way to Taiping mountain.
I wouldn’t mind a nice 鐵皮屋 anyway. It’s a kind of housing so common in Taiwan, we could get it at an extremely affordable price and have a bit more budget to make it look “pretty”.
It looks like Blaquesmith knows a lot about this topic, but I would also go with the foam isolation thing that you just mentioned. That foam is used pretty much everywhere isolation is needed. A green roof is also a good idea (I was reading about this some time ago in a National Geographic and it looks like it makes sense). Honestly, if I knew for sure that I’ll end up here in Taiwan, I’d most likely do the same than you.
Yeah, it looks building a traditional (under Euro standards) home in Taiwan could be extremely expensive, so if we want to be mortgage free and mostly off the grid a container/prefab/鐵皮屋 seems like the way to go.
Prefab is the most expensive at 5.5/6 wan per pin.
鐵皮屋 is the cheapest, even if we would have to spend a bit of extra to make it look like a proper home and not a steel hut.
The container way is still up in the air due to the fact that containers are not born to be a house and require a lot of work, that translates into having to spend even for things that are a standard in Prefab/鐵皮屋.
Basically over the course of the following weeks we’ll make a comparison of the required budgets. My wife is not a huge fan of the 鐵皮屋 because it’s often seen as a crappy, temporary place. She had the same idea of containers but eventually changed her mind. For me, the final decision will be based on the price of:
a) 2x 40’ containers + 1 20’ container, plus the money required for insulation, interior walls etc etc
b) A 鐵皮屋 of exactly the same size as the container home (around 21 pin)
Considering that the container home, while cool, is definitely more 麻煩, if it turns out to be more expensive than a well made 鐵皮屋 I’ll probably ditch the container idea, or maybe just get a small one to use as my own bike workshop.
if you keep scattering Chinese terms here and there I will stop reading you 
hahahaha sorry xD
鐵皮屋 is the “steel hut”, very common in Taiwan (someone mentioned it earlier in this post)
麻煩 is mafan, troublesome xD
Check Alibaba, they are selling prefab container homes, they’re almost finished and require very little work afterwards.
alibaba.com/product-detail/4 … 9.html?s=p
alibaba.com/product-detail/f … 6.html?s=p
And there are other websites, too: containerhomesforsale.net/
And check this guys. They sell container-sized modules almost ready for living in: mekaworld.com/
That shit looks fairly good indeed! at least for poor people like me
I would say 鐵皮屋’ is the best choice in terms of cost and local skills. They are the 鐵皮屋 masters of the universe!
Here’s an example of a tiepi wu B&B. As the guy says it’s not luxurious and doesn’t isolate the noise well but it does the job.
legacy.nownews.com/2008/04/30/11478-2268062.htm
BTW, I have stayed in this area in Chiayi and the wildlife is indeed amazing, they take you for little guided tours at night to see all the critters running around.
Personally I think the prefab houses are the nicest in terms of looks and comfort, but yeah, more $$$. It’s probably possible to find experienced carpenters who can knock you something together from wood instead of so much metal.
Put ‘漂亮的鐵皮屋’ into google image search and you get some nice stuff popping up…along with a lot of crap!
My meeting on saturday is with a girl who works for a company that does exactly that! They’re based in Taipei so the cost should be lower than anything from China or other countries.
She told they can help with the design of the home, not just the “raw” container, so I want to see how much they’d ask if I want 2x 40’ container ready for living without having to worry about anything (as in:“I give you cash, you cut them the way I want, place them, insulate them and do everything needed”).
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
Put ‘漂亮的鐵皮屋’ into google image search and you get some nice stuff popping up…along with a lot of crap![/quote]
ahahhaha yeah that’s the problem with my wife. A lot of taiwanese only use that kind of hut as a storage/temporary home/super cheap home, and they look awful. But it doesn’t take much to turn them into something nice, I mean the structure can be built anyway we want it, and what will make the difference is just the materials used for the exterior. Something like this:
For me it’s really beautiful, I’m not a fan of the roof color and I’d probably tried to use a different material for the outside, but it shows that you can get good results if you contact the right contractors.
Side note:
After 6 months in Yilan, I’m starting to consider the idea of ditching any plan for solar panels. I think that if we had 50 square meters of solar panels installed outside of our apartment, over the course of the last 6 months they would have gathered enough sun-power to turn on a standard Smartphone and keep it going for no longer than 7 minutes.
[quote=“Ibis2k12”]Side note:
After 6 months in Yilan, I’m starting to consider the idea of ditching any plan for solar panels. I think that if we had 50 square meters of solar panels installed outside of our apartment, over the course of the last 6 months they would have gathered enough sun-power to turn on a standard Smartphone and keep it going for no longer than 7 minutes.[/quote]
Forget about the sun in the northern half of the island. If you want some kind of renewable, you’d be far better with vertical axis aerogenerators:
They need less maintenance than the regular aerogenerators, and since Yilan is quite flat (if you’re not in the mountains), you have enough breeze to make them spin. I’ve seen them installed in a couple of buildings in Jinguashi/Jianguo.
Besides that, they require less investment than a solar installation. (The batteries are the same, but the generator device is not)
[quote=“Blaquesmith”]
Forget about the sun in the northern half of the island. [/quote]
They never mention that in tourism websites or real estate agencies!
It’s always:“Oh wow Yilan, most beautiful region in Taiwan, seaside, surfing, Turtle Island, Taiping Mountain, many museums, more Turtle Island!”, and no one mentions the Never-ending Rain of Doom and Gloom.
Are those generators safe during typhoons? They look like something that would fly away within 5 seconds!
The most beautiful part of Taiwan is Pingtung and Taidong (IMHO), but Pingtung is full of hicks and pretty wild so people don’t consider living there much. Weather is awesome in Taiwan on west coast once you go south of Miaoli, 300 days a year sunshine perhaps on west coast. If we could only transport the beaches from Ilan we would be set.
I’d say that Miaoli and around beats Yilan and Pingdong, but I guess that it’s difficult to say. I love Yilan though.
Yeah but Pindong has coconut trees man.
Totally tropical.
Yeah but Pindong has coconut trees man.
Totally tropical.[/quote]
Fair enough. Indeed, what pisses me off about this island is that yeah, you have the fuckin’ green forest eating everything everywhere, you have moss, plants, tress, gigantic grass with plenty of snakes and so, but I can not find anything to eat for free. Oh, yes, you have lots of betlenut palm trees, which I don’t feed on, and which most of the times have an owner, but you don’t have mango, coconut, etc.
Actually there’s tonnes of stuff you can eat in those forests, if you knew where to look and what to eat. For instance bamboo shoots, of course you have to get them in season. Wild veggies. Wild herbs. The old timer Hakka and Aboriginals know what to look for. The low lying areas often have abandoned farms so you could find some semi wild fruit and oil seed trees. Of course you’d have to hack your way through the snake infested hills to get to them. You can even find mango trees growing in towns in lots of places with the fruit literally dropping off the trees, people don’t eat them (but be careful of trying to eat the ‘fake mango’ tree mangoes which will put you into hospital if you eat them).
Anyway…I get what you mean that hacking through these forests is a big challenge given the terrain and stuff crawling around, I’m not into bamboo shoot collecting myself given that bamboo forests can be a mosquito infested nightmare!