Building a house in the Philippines. We built a house on Panay Island in the Philippines. We’ve documented our project with photos, text and building cost reports. This is the index to our posts. Keep in mind that we are not architects or engineers so don’t take our opinions as gospel. We been very open about things that went wrong and why. That may give the impression that we are unsatisfied with the house we built. Nothing could be further from the truth. We love our house and our life here. Yes, some things could have been done differently if we knew then what we know now. Isn’t that always the case? We are open about our missteps because we’d like to give our readers a chance to learn from our experiences.
We continue to update these posts to reflect our year to year experiences with the products, materials and designs we used in building the house almost four years ago. For example, our CAE faucet failed quickly, so we suggest getting another brand. Our Hunter ceiling fans are an unexpected disappointment. Our Pedrollo water pump has worked flawlessly so can recommend that brand.
Finally, in this narrative we sometimes express frustration with our construction crew. If they had a blog, we’re sure that they’d return the favor! Nonetheless, we feel real affection for our crew, and deeply appreciate their hard work, work which has given us a wonderful place to live out our years.
House in 2013
December 10, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Hello!
I will start building a small house on Malapascua island now, and I have a hard time finding concrete vibrator and other things with the English language on the Internet.
Do you have any good website / hardware store to recommend?
Br.
/ Lars Eriksson
Sweden
December 18, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Lars,
Wish I could help but, in our experience, you really will not be able to do your shopping on-line. Probably you will have to buy the equipment in person in Cebu City and arrange delivery to Malapascua. When we bought ours, we paid about P50,000 for the mixer and P20,000 for the vibrator. See http://myphilippinelife.com/our-house-project-equipment-shopping/ I assume that prices in Cebu City will be similar. You can probably negotiate with the seller to provide delivery. If your crew is not familiar with how to use the vibrator, you may want to forget about using one. Used improperly, they can do more harm than good. Also, you may be able to rent a mixer in Malapascua or on the mainland nearby. In our area, the daily rental is P500 to P1,000.
Good luck with your project and best wishes for the holidays.
Bob and Carol
June 5, 2012 at 9:45 am
Hi Andy!
Hope everything is going well with you, your wife and children. Have been researching your blog and can’t find anything in writing or photos about your swimming pool that you had built (or so I believe you had built). Can you either direct me to where I am supposed to go or can you send me photos to my email address. Jerry and Nick are finalizing everything for the building of our home that will be started in December 2012. We had to go through a couple of revisions, but nothing out of par. Makes it hard to contact them via email and am thinking about getting a phone card to talk to them directly.
So, any and all help will greatly be appreciated.
Warm Regards,
Ester & Paul
May 8, 2012 at 7:50 am
I love this website thank you… Just wondering. You have some black link sections in the index here (some of the first ones like buying a lot etc…) have they been lost or just not completed?
May 8, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Sean,
I have fixed the text color in the index section. I think all the links work but if not let me know.
Bob
April 22, 2012 at 4:20 am
Hi Bob & Carol,
Greetings.
In 2009, I built a “tribal style” bahay kubo for my retirement in the Philippines.
It is still in good shape but slowly and surely being consumed by “bukboks” and “anay” (bugs & termites)
I intend to build a “real” retirement house (read that as concrete) near Vigan, Ilocos Sur. My launch date is November 2012.
One question if I may : why did you choose hollow blocks instead of poured concrete for the walls?
Thank you so much. I learned a lot from your blog.
Elmo
Vancouver, BC, Canada
April 23, 2012 at 8:04 am
For us, building a house in the Philippines was a bit of a adventurous undertaking what with language and cultural complexities and considering all the horror stories we had read. Hollow block construction is the norm in the Philippines. Workers know how to build with hollow blocks. If we had decided to do something different such as poured concrete, it would have much more difficult and would have required a lot more ability than we had.
April 20, 2012 at 5:11 am
I have just retired at the first of the year. My wife has a small home in Dolores, Mabalacat, Pampanga. I have been designing a remodel on the house for the pass two years now. We will be adding 30 feet to the back of the house and adding a small bath, master bedroom with master bath, and remodeled kitchen. I will spend most of next year in the Philippines doing the rough in of the addition. Then I will return the following year to do the finish work. As my wife will not retire for another four years we have time. Plus we have family members living across the street from us to watch over our home. I have found your website is loaded with answers to many of the questions that I already had and many I had not even thought of. Thank you for taking the time to cover all this in such an informative matter. Who set up and hosts your website as I would like to chronicle my project also.
Thank you again.
April 20, 2012 at 12:56 pm
George, thanks for your kind comments. If you’d like to chronicle your project you can use one of the free blogging services. Google has one at http://www.blogger.com and WordPress at http://wordpress.com/. The downside of these is that you can’t have ads to help support your blogging. My experience is that the ads bring in very little revenue. If you want to be able to have ads and generally more control over your blog you will have to buy a domain name ($12 per year). Of course ours is “myphilippinelife.com”. Then you will have to host your site. We use the very popular hostgator.com. We paid for three years in advance for about $150. No problems at all and pretty good tech support.
Regards,
Bob
February 9, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Hi Bob and carol – love your project thanks so much for your efforts. realy would like to see the section on landscaping but its down just now – carol wonderful dishes i will show them to my filipina wife – we live in Bogo – stumbled on your site yesterday.
February 11, 2012 at 5:38 pm
David,
I had forgotten that we had not yet finished the landscaping section. That’s why you can’t access it yet. Sorry about that. We will have to get to work!
Bob and Carol
September 29, 2011 at 2:37 pm
enjoying your experience. we are from alabama however we are in Legennes, Iloilo
this month visiting family. we have purchased a nice lot in Roxas City to build on in the next 2 years. Are you close to Legennes?
September 30, 2011 at 3:51 pm
Leganes is maybe 40 or 50 km from Tigbauan. Tigbauan is WSW of Iloilo City and Leganes is ESE of Iloilo City. Sometime we go that way to the Joy Joy seafood restaurant on shore road.
January 13, 2012 at 3:04 am
Tigbauan Proper is about 20 km WSW of Iloilo City, while Leganes Proper is 11 km NE of Iloilo City. When the circumferential road C1 is completed, you could bypass Molo and Jaro by turning left at Dulonan and the C1 will usher you out at Buhang, Jaro on to Leganes. Or you could also use the newly finished R4 Bypass Road from Buhang to Leganes. R4 Bypass is parallel to MacArthur Drive or the Jaro-Leganes Road (R4). R4 Bypass starts from Buhang and ends just outside Zarraga.
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August 9, 2011 at 11:10 am
nice blog, very informative. i hope that someday ill be able to write a blog of my own about building my own house. i became interested about building a house when i read a book years ago by tracy kidder titled “house.” i never thought that it could be such a beautiful subject for a book. i live in the the national capital region where i think building a house is a different challenge and experience than your own. my province, however, is pampanga, so im also dreaming of having a future house there. good luck in all your endeavours and have a wonderful stay in the philippines. its not a perfect place but there’s so much hidden beauty in it.
August 9, 2011 at 11:50 am
In a way, I envy you building in the NCR. The choice of every type of building material is so very much better than in Iloilo. One of the things I do if I was building again would be to spend a week or two scoping out the materials suppliers in Manila so that I could arrange shipping to the province. I’d buy an old container to store the stuff in while I was building. Regards, Bob
August 6, 2011 at 12:45 pm
I have already said in other places on your blog how much I admire your work and especially this very interesting tale documenting the whole process.
Now, young man, I’m going to wear my Iloilo tourism hat on here !!!! Excellent blog about you building your lovely home in Iloilo and then you go advertising Boracay with your main photo!!!! (Lovely photo by the way!!) Are there no lovely beaches in Iloilo that you could feature ???
All the best
August 7, 2011 at 7:51 am
Young man? Are you sure you have the right blog? Haha. OK, will look to see what I have for images. It needs to be an image which suits itself to a very horizontal cropping.
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October 15, 2010 at 9:36 am
Hi bob & carol,
I’ve seen the pictures of the plumbing work for your house. Can we use this pictures to post in our Plumbing Journal?
Our journal will soon be published this November.We need pictures to support one of our article (How To Construct, Operate and Maintain A Good Plumbing System).
Hope for you favorable approval.
Thank you.
Joy Abaja
Plumbing Journal
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May 3, 2010 at 1:53 am
You have a great deal of info here. I don’t see any information about the plumbing though. I would also like some more info on a septic drain field. I know lots are small in the PI but do they use a drain field like we do in the US ?
Chuck
April 18, 2010 at 4:50 pm
John,
We only considered it in passing. Our approach was more or less completely conventional, just using stronger mixes and 6″ rather than 4″ block.
Bob
April 17, 2010 at 7:26 am
Hello again
Thanks for the quick answer, as well as all the info on here – I am sure there are many people following your build with interest.
One other question for you: did you ever consider the “cast solid wall” version of construction?
Thanks and good wishes to you and your wife
John
April 15, 2010 at 10:47 pm
Hello Bob and Carol,
I am following your house-building reports with some interest because I shall be embarking on a similar “exciting challenge” soon in San Carlos City.
You reported your roof as being about 300 sq meters but could you tell me the size of the overall floor area please?
Regard and thanks in advance
John
April 16, 2010 at 2:37 am
John, the floor area is 150sm. The is a 1.2M roof overhang. The rise in the roof is 3m.
April 11, 2010 at 7:55 am
hi Bob and Carol,
thanks so much for your blog. We are also planning to have a bungalow built in Pampanga. The experience you shared with us will definitely help us when we start construction next week. please keep us posted on your progress. great looking house you got there!
best regards
michael
April 10, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Hi Bob & Carol,
Thanks for the blog, these are good insights. I just returned from a trip in Guimbal to visit my wife’s relatives. It is a nice coastal town, probably very similar to Tigbauan. Lots of good fishing sites. Definitely will swap golf clubs for some fishing rods next time. Sad to say for golfers, there is only one golf course in the entire province of Iloilo… but it’s well worth it, the course is very challenging.
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February 18, 2010 at 12:22 am
Hi Bob & Carol,
Thank you so much for your blog. I am an American married to a Filipina and am currently living in Dumaguete (where I am a good friend of Bobby-Ray). My wife has a piece of land just outside Carmen, in the Chocolate Hills of Bohol, that we intend to build a modest house on, starting later this year. I have never done a project like this in my life and to say I am nervous about it would be a massive understatement. Being able to read about your ongoing experiences and finding a source of comparative costs, how to, etc., has made me a little more confident. I will be a keen follower of your progress and will undoubtedly ask many questions (hopefully not too many stupid ones).
Gary & Irein Davis