CBU ASIA DESIGN BUILD CONSULTANTS CEBU – Page 3 – Construction Planning Designing Build Consultants Cebu

Build and sell business and rentable spaces business

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

Build and sell and rentable spaces is one of the most lucrative businesses one could go to especially here in the country where business is always abuzz. Build and sell and rentable spaces are also both very low maintenance businesses – so if you’re an expat or an overseas worker seeking to relax the rest of your life – these are the businesses you can go into.

Housing is in high demand today and there is a continuous rise in the demand for ready to occupy homes. If the location is exceptional – not the usual mass subdivision – the property can demand a good price.

This kind of business just require a bit of a capital as you need to buy good land from a good location and since the location has to be a good one – overlooking the beach, or on the hills, peace and quiet, then this land will also demand a good price. After finding a good land to build on, your next capital expense is the construction of the house – you can hire a contractor or you can Do It Yourself (DIY) – depends if you have the time to do it. After all the work and effort you need to put into the construction over months, your return is also really good. Depending on the location of the lot, you can get as much as double the cost of your initial investment on the land and on the construction. So in the build and sell business, it is always preferred that your land be on some posh location of the city.

If you are not into the cyclic style of business of the build and sell, you can also just build a commercial structure and have it rented out as commercial spaces or even apartment spaces. The only difference between purely rentable commercial space and an apartment space is that your apartment space will require higher construction cost since you need to design it to be ready for occupancy, whereas a purely rentable commercial space can be just a bare space since most renting businesses prefer to design and furnish their space according to their own business colors.

In the rentable spaces business, your only maintenance and overhead is usually the leaking roofs over time and maybe the bathroom plumbing. For each rentable space, you do need to install ahead plumbing for the tenant to connect to. Another overhead expense in keeping the rentable space business is just the guy who will do the collecting of the monthly rent and the paying or collecting of the electric and water bills.

In the build and sell business, once you turn over a house to the customer, all the physical upkeep of the house is already on the customer after the 6-12 months usual warranty coverage period of the construction…

Wide area 2 story residence at North Town Homes Mandaue Cebu

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

This classic designed home is only two stories but the floor areas are really wide thus allowing large rooms and a really wide living room in the ground floor…

This is an example that your home becomes really beautiful with average priced yet elegantly designed bathroom and electrical fixtures that you can easily find in most home depots.

If you can find a contractor that can understand your budget, you can really make your home a true dream home without having to spend a fortune.

The wide windows becomes even more beautiful when the wide glass windows are installed. For your railings – the popular design today is glass and stainless steel. Stainless and glass for railings is a perfect combination and if you can find a good affordable contractor/supplier with a heart for your project, then you can also get the most of your budget…

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Ceiling metal works (supports)

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

In the olden times before fiber cement boards were invented, ceiling for residential projects only use plywood, and thus the support backbone is wood. Nowadays in the age of fiber cement boards, ceiling builders prefer fiber cement boards because it is fire retardant and since you cannot use nails, but screws, on fiber cement boards, then your backbone support will be metal…

Checkout the way we build the metal supports for fiber cement ceiling. It will basically hang from the roof trusses and go across behind the fiber cement boards in a lattice formation so you can screw your fiber cement boards under it. You will need metal furring (double furring), w clips, carrying channels, and lots and lots of fiber cement screws. Depending on the size of the ceiling area, you might need angle bars to hang your ceiling with. During painting, you will need to use screen tapes on the surface joints of the fiber cement boards so that your joints will not break and expose the edges of the fiber cement boards during structural movements. The screen tape will help to hold the skim coat on the edges and joints. You will need skim coat also to hide the screws before painting…

When you examine the way we space the metal behind the fiber cement boards, you might say this is a very economical way of placing the metal – gaps are too wide – well this is indeed a very economical way of doing it – and thus you should not go beyond this type of spacing… If your budget will allow, you can lessen the gaps, but this kind of gap we’re doing is already strong enough… If you lessen the gaps, you will need more metal and it will also make your metal lattice heavier, so just strike a balance between those elements…

In the olden times before fiber cement boards we’re invented, plywood is the number one choice for ceiling builders, but when fiber cement boards became popular – people notice that it is not only fire proof, but is also very flat surfaced and will stay flat forever – it doesn’t bend and make waves over time – unlike plywood…

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Harness the free power of the sun Get professional solar power installation services

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

With Dr Joel’s mastery of the solar power design and installation, we are able to provide solar power installation services if you want to harness the free power of the sun. Yes solar power components is still not very cheap but when more and more people get solar power services eventually the demand and production of solar power components such as solar panels and the solar inverter computers will cause its prices to go down by benefitting from mass production and stiff competition.

If you are the type of person who wants to use the air conditioning system for 24 hours or maybe you have senior citizens who need to be air conditioned always, or maybe you’re running an office with a lot of air conditioners and you need to use the power of the sun for your daytime electricity needs, then solar power if for you. When night comes, and when the sun is asleep then our Kodak solar inverter computer will switch automatically to use the local electrical power supplier.

At this time, due to the high cost of batteries, solar power is still best used for daytime electricity needs when the sun is out. You still cannot rely on batteries to store power for your night time use when the sun is asleep. In fact, you will need a lot of batteries to power just one average size air conditioner, and since batteries are still a bit expensive, then solar power is only practical for day time use- like when you’re running an office and or you require aircon use during daytime or when you need to power your swimming pool motors. Solar is still only best when the sun is out during daytime.

If you have 2 half a horse power size air conditioner and another 1 horse power aircon in your living room, then we recommend a 2 kilowatt solar power setup, of if you can afford it – cover your entire roof with solar panels if you need to power more air conditioners during the day.

If you need to have your power consumption assessed as to how many solar panels you need, then simply message us so we can get you assisted and started to harnessing the free and clear power of the sun…

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Further advantages of getting a Contractor

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

project managers — Project Managers Consultants

Most people who hire contractors and not self manage their own projects know very well the advantages of having a contractor, but here are some more / further advantages why it is better to have a contractor than to self manage your projects, unless of course if you’re too tight on the budget that you’d rather risk it, than spend extra.

So there are reasons why contractors exist and thrive, and most company or corporate projects need a contractor and will not self manage their projects. Companies always hire contractors and not self manage because they want to focus on their business and not do some short term carpentry or masonry works. The contractor will also assure companies of workmanship warranties and quality claims – this is something that is hard to claim when you directly hire your own workers, you will have to extend the work of your own hired carpenters or masons when you feel a portion of their work needs to be redone. Those private very small time project owners sometimes like to think that they can save more if they self manage their projects, however at the end of the project, their own hired workers will require longer project duration and will not be able to give free labor for quality related warranty claims.

So we all know the main reason why some project owners like to self manage and directly hire workers, which is – the savings that they thought they would enjoy, but here are the reasons why you should get a contractor / project manager for your project:

You will be shielded from the headache and stress that come with a construction project. Imagine 8 months to maybe even one and a half years of managing a project, doing logistics, sourcing supplies and managing people. You will be able to skip all that stress through a contractor, but of course sometimes you will have no choice if your budget cannot allow it. Contractors already have a well established chain of reliable suppliers that can deliver materials on time and workers that know how to keep a sense of urgency in their work behavior as they know to be expected by their contractor.
You will not need to manage and hire people. Hiring people can be tricky if you don’t have a regular pool of workers. On top of a pool of workers, you also need to make sure that your workers will not abuse you by working slow so they can have a longer work period. Please take note it is common behavior of some carpenters and masons to work extremely slow and drag forever if they are hired direct by a customer / project owner. This is their usual behavior so they can have a longer work period especially when the location is close to their home. Construction workers who accept to be hired through a contractor also know what contractors expect and require of them – speed and accuracy. Also, the relationship created by the years of working relations between the contractor and the worker, will also result in good quality output by the workers. Good relations with workers will assure the contractor his workers are loyal to him- and this loyalty is expressed in the good work quality that they provide. By working efficiently, the workers know that the contractor will love keep them and hire them repeatedly for new incoming projects, so the workers will be assured of a steady income flow. Besides, the workers know that a project owner or customer can only hire them once – for that specific project, except rarely when the project owner has another project in the coming distant years. Contractors have higher rate of hiring workers since it is the business they are in and not some once in a lifetime construction project of say a dream home or some tower of babel you wish to build in your lifetime.
Contractors have an already established reliable list of suppliers for specific material items. These suppliers also have special price arrangements with the contractor to make sure he always comes to them for future repeat business. These suppliers always provide the best quality since they want to have repeat business with the contractor for his other projects.
Warranty claims – The contractor is bound to provide good quality work to stay afloat in the business and thus the contractor is sure to provide after work warranty. Whereas if one self hires his workers, then it will be difficult to get warranty claims since workers will never give repeat work for free even if they are the ones blamed for such poor quality work. The workers who are directly hired by the customer would rather not show up when there is a quality claim on warranty since he knows he will not be paid for repeat work, and will even blame the customer for being a perfectionist. The contractor will always pay the workers for repeat work or back job to make sure he can deliver on his warranty assurance to the customer.
Tools and transport elements – Contractors already have tools and transport equipment thus the customer who wish to hire his own workers will sometimes have to buy special tools for special applications. Please note that carpenters and masons usually only have the common tools and they usually don’t buy special tools. Now if you have a project that require special tools, then you no longer need to buy them since your contractor usually has that special tool for such specific special applications. Some subdivisions also require a special transport for workers and they don’t allow workers to walk from the gate to the construction site – and the contractor is prepared for this since he usually always have a special transport vehicle for workers. Also, there are times like during Christmas season or Holy Week when it is very difficult or sometimes even impossible for the workers to go home to their province since the buses are always full, and they will require from the contractor to be transported to their provinces during these special holidays.

Dr Joel G Bacarro (JGB) Electrical Works

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

Dr Joel G Bacarro Electrical Manager Extraordinaire

Dr. Joel is our electrical projects manager. Due to his more than 20 years of experience in the electrical field, he is already an expert electrical project manager par excellence – thus here at Fine Finish Cebu, due to his extensive project management experience in everything electrical – residential, commercial, industrial, and solar electrical installation and materials sourcing, we have awarded him the Doctor’s degree in the electrical field.

As we all know, experience is king, thus when you have someone with extensive experience he becomes your asset – a shining gem of an asset in the organization. He has contacts in the best priced electrical materials suppliers in the Visayas, so if you’re looking for where to get the best prices and best quality in electrical materials – he has all those contacts in the industry and he wields special negotiating power when negotiating for medium to large purchases of electrical materials and components.

If a certain project has certain specific extra ordinary requirements on the electrical design, he is the master mind who can adapt and modify designs to fit the customer or specific design’s requirements vis-à-vis availability.

If a certain electrical material component is hard to find for being uncommon, he has the contacts of where to source it anywhere in the country – this makes Dr Joel an extraordinaire electrical projects manager.

He has that exceptional ability to balance the project implementation between the sometimes-opposing forces coming from the design, availability, and budget requirements – to come up with the best-balanced decision on changing the design to meet all the factors coming from all directions.

He is the favorite go to guy for most big names in the Visayas – a large financial organization, and some of the big names in the retail business industries.

We are so happy thankful to have Dr Joel in our team. A very simple looking guy yet, a genius in his field.
Watch him here in one of the projects he managed.

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Hardiflex (Fiber Cement) – the wonder wall

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

fiber cement wall partitions — fiber cement walls used as partitions

Fiber cement board, hardiflex as popularly known by that popular brand that started it all, is everyone’s favorite partition wall material. Why not concrete hollow blocks? Well, the house owner would prefer you use concrete for his walls, but when the budget does not allow, just go for fiber cement – it will have a range of advantages compared to concrete hollow blocks. The only advantage the concrete wall has over fiber cement is strength (you can’t punch concrete wall and expect to make a hole like when you punch a fiber cement wall) and better sound proofing compared to fiber cement, other than that – the fiber cement has more advantages. Here are the advantages of fiber cement walls over concrete:

-Better thermal insulation – even if you don’t place additional thermal insulating material inside the air gap. Unlike concrete wall, there is a hollow gap in between the two fiber cement boards thus heat that goes beyond the fiber cement itself is cut by the air inside the metal furring supports inside the fiber cement wall. This same hollow air gap inside the fiber cement wall is also the same element that causes the sound from the other room to reverberate as if like a diaphragm and transfer to the other room, and the solution for this is to place insulating material like egg trays, wool, or aluminum foil to dampen the heat and at the same time weaken the sound reverberation so that only little sound could pass through to the other room. But still, as far as sound dampening is concerned, the concrete wall is still better because the sound is almost totally absorbed by the pebbles (aggregate materials) in the concrete mix and, also in the concrete hollow blocks if the concrete wall has hollow blocks in between. So, one could place his ear flat on the wall as if using it as a sphygmomanometer – that hearing instrument used by the doctor to hear the sounds from the patient’s body, and you will hear better if the wall is fiber cement than that of the concrete to which you will hear almost nothing, less the sounds from your imagination.

-Lighter – this is self-explanatory – definitely the fiber cement board is way lighter compared to concrete – this will definitely make your build lighter – less stress on your floor beams.

-Faster patching and painting – Since it is already very flat, then you only need to patch the screws and the joints to hide it. By the way, for ceiling, we highly recommend you place a screen tape – that screen mesh like tape under your patching material since ceiling move during earth vibrations and strong winds – to prevent the dried patching from cracking in the joints. If you’re looking for the cheapest screen tape at only forty-five pesos each roll, just head to your nearest unitop / baosheng / kakeng Chinese mall shop.

-Fire retardant – so its also best for ceiling material – it prevents fire from spreading rapidly – this is why condominium and hotels prefer this and will not even allow you to use any wooden material for your ceiling.

-Easier to demolish – so when you feel like to you need to fuse two rooms together to make it bigger in the future, then you don’t need that noisy ear-breaking jack hammer to demolish the fiber cement wall, you can just use your karate skills to demolish the entire wall easily in a few minutes, but If you don’t know karate then maybe it’s a great opportunity for you to start practicing it on your fiber cement wall – just don’t karate it during your fight with your spouse, only when you need to renovate.

-Faster to build – thus it will save you a lot on the cost of labor since it only takes a few minutes to install one sheet of four by eight feet compared to the smaller hollow blocks.

-Cheaper to build – Each fiber cement nowadays costs about five hundred pesos only – compare that to how much hollow blocks you need to cover a four by eight feet space.

Perhaps the major downside of fiber cement wall compared to concrete is, if your budget doesn’t allow it, also its cost – this means your visiting guests will think you’re cheap when they know and feel that your house partition walls are made of fiber cement. And if your kid likes to tap and bang on the walls a lot, it will certainly create that cheap sound noise of fiber cement.

To the home owner who can afford concrete partitions, there is nothing like the sound of solid concrete when one taps it.

If you know other advantages of the fiber cement wall over concrete, let us know…

Why Still the Local Concrete Hollow Blocks (CHB)

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

Traditional concrete hollow blocks (CHB) — Traditional hollow blocks (CHB) is still the way to go

So why concrete hollow blocks (CHB) are still in demand despite the creative marketing hype of the new wall materials out there (can’t mention specifics) who process faster builds thus they claim to save on the cost of labor and faster finishing works.
Let’s examine those big claims:

-Do the new wall blocks save on labor? Everybody knows it does not save you on the cost of the labor time since inhouse own workers are not familiar with that new block material yet – which means if you want to benefit on the speed element, you will be forced to get the labor services of the manufacturers since they are the ones who are familiar with it. If you are a contractor, it means you will have to let them sub contract the walling – and subcontracting usually costs high since these companies are usually not affordable. Even if your workers are taught by these new companies offering better blocks, their blocks still cost way higher compared to the locally available hollow blocks at only fifteen pesos per block.

-Does the new wall block material save you on the finishing works – patching and painting? Yes, it does but whatever amount you may save on the finishing will not be able to compensate on the cost per block of those new block materials.
Other things factors that are detrimental to the project when you use those new wall materials:

-It is not easy to order them. Since these new wall materials or blocks are usually manufactured by only one company, there is a very high chance that you will have to wait weeks to get your order delivered to your project site. Weeks or even days of delay in the construction will cost you dearly on the labor cost – workers not being ablet to work on their usual speed due to the waiting time for the materials to arrive. And another thing, when you order, make sure you order enough since it is not easy to order additional quantities – you will have to wait weeks again.

If you stay loyal to the ever cheaper hollow blocks, you will never get a delay on your order of more than 2 days since they are everywhere and you can order anywhere. If your favorite hardware supplier ran out of hollow blocks, then simply go to your second favorite supplier. In other words, simply jump between suppliers and you will never run short of supply of the ever always available and affordable hollow blocks.

Bamboo makes better sense for scaffolds

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

Bamboo as scaffolds — Using bamboo scaffolds for construction

The recent metal scaffolds collapse in Quezon City Philippines has made headlines, and has made contractors re think whether metal scaffolds is still the best option for scaffolding. Why metal scaffolds collapses can be easily blamed on metal fatigue, and on how they are bound and connected. The metal scaffolds use metal interlocks that you tighten with the built-in screws that come with the metal interlock clamps. The problem with these interlock clamps is sometimes they slide all the way through the metal tube when overloaded and when it gets wet and when it is not so tight. Sometimes workers also over load them and this results in the metal getting cut due to the weight.

What makes bamboo a better option is it does not slide or get cut with the weight, it just bends and even makes a cracking sound as a warning when it is about to give up. First world places like Hongkong still prefers bamboo scaffolds over metal. They use nylon or plastic strings to tie them up together just like how one would tie up the outriggers of the traditional Asian pump boats, they never break over the huge waves of the ocean.

Another advantage of the bamboo over metal scaffolds is that it costs a fraction of the metal tubes, and is also very abundant all over the Philippines. You just must be industrious in looking for a good source of bamboo. Here in Cebu, you simply head out to Pit-os, Talamban, and look for good bamboo harvesters like Manang Bening and she is very popular in sourcing bamboos. They can even deliver it to your project site as she has a truck for delivery.

Another advantage of bamboo over metal tubes is that you do not need a security guard to guard your bamboo stocks as it is not something that the thieves can easily sell unlike the metal tubes. So, you can pile up a good number of long bamboo sticks for scaffold lengths and you can sleep securely thinking nobody really like to steal bamboo sticks. Also, unlike the coconut lumber which is also a cheaper alternative for scaffolds, bamboo do not rot under the rain and the heat of the sun. Notice the bamboo outriggers of the pump boats, they never rot in the sea and under the sun. Another thing, the bamboo still costs way cheaper than the coco lumber. Bamboo is the safer way to go…

Mangubat Residence in Mactan Tropics Lapu lapu City

By Admin in Featured, Fine Furnishings

This minimalist simplistic layout of a residence in Mactan Tropics Lapu lapu City is designed by the owner himself and being an engineer and not an architect, the design is prioritizes layout functionality, and not aesthetics.

One might say, well this house is no eye candy, and we agree, but if you move around it, you can feel the greater emphasis on space – which gives you more freedom to actually run around the house like you do when you’re doing a tour on the country side.

The owner loves it just like that – large open spaces, high ceiling, large kitchen, and really large living room – great for indoor parties.

The large sun deck on top is the best for outdoor parties, and since there is a shed made out of solar panels – the food can be positioned under it while the guest enjoy the warm breeze of Lapu lapu City.

The house has pillars strengthened by metal i-beams with rebar web members – that is to weld rebars on the i-beam’s side to strengthen it.