If you are not an engineer and planning to build your first home, be sure to follow this guide on good and bad house construction practices originally published by the German Technical Cooperation, United Nations Special Unit for South-South Cooperation, and the United Nations Secretariat of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
This guideline handbook was published to control or prevent house destruction during storms and earthquakes due to poor construction practices in poor areas like the Philippines.
Poor construction practices or methodologies exist in the Philippines mainly due to poverty and culture where everybody want to save money and so instead of hiring an architect or engineer, people usually rely on experienced carpenters who try to save you some money by cutting corners and doing unsafe practices.
A good and safe house must have good foundation that will not lead to unequal settlement and cracking or walls and floor. Your design must be coherent and simple so your workers can easily follow it. Walls must be joined properly to the columns, beams, and to the roof. Trusses on your roof need to be flexible but strong. To resist lateral movements, you need to bracing between your roof and walls.
If your lot location is prone to flooding, then you need to elevate the house.
Your foundation has to be strong. The ground under your structure must be able to bear the weight of your structure. If your lot is soft or damp or has water underneath, then you need to strengthen your structure all the more. Your soil must have good drainage system so it stays dry and not filled with water. If your soil has water underneath, it could become liquefied (semi liquid) during earthquake and your structure could sink into it.
You should have integrated structural ringed beams on top of your doors and windows that must be connected to your columns. Your triangular gable end walls must be supported structurally in your design.
Your column rebars should protrude from the top of your columns so you can bend it around your trusses or if your trusses are wooden then you can strap it to your columns with metal ties.
All exposed metals or rebars should be painted with red oxide to prevent oxidation or rust.
Walls must be tied to your columns or beams to prevent it from moving or falling over time. Your wall ties should be hooked to your columns or beams.
Wooden truss joints must be bolted together or tied with metal straps so that it can be flexible yet strong to withstand earthquakes.
Metal roof trusses must be welded together and then welded to your purlins and beams.
To resist lateral forces, your wall and roof must be cross braced in all levels especially when it is wooden.
A good house plan should have a good drainage plan that connects to a common community drain so that you won’t have problems during rainy seasons.
If your lot is located in a flood prone or swampy area, be sure to elevate your house or even use stilts or better yet, if you can, add a second or third floor to it if its in a tsunami prone area.
Be sure to avoid landslide prone lots or slopes when planning to build your home.
Points to consider in choosing your materials for your house construction:
Only broken rocks should be used in foundations, not solid rounded river stones.
Use only clean sand and gravel not dirty sea or coral stones.
When mixing cement, make sure enough cement is added, and mix the ingredients well.
Do not add too much water and never use salty water as salty water corrodes metal and weakens concrete. Concrete should stand up and not flow away due to excessive water.
Concrete columns should be built up first in one part before constructing the walls. Columns should have bars for tying walls and ring beams.
Your columns should have 4 re-bars with rings to hold them together spaced at approximately the same as the width of the columns, and should be anchored in the foundation. Re-bar hoop ends should be bent at 135 degrees into the column.
Column steel must be covered with a minimum of 2 cm all around.
Never put pipes at the center of columns.
Reinforcement steel or rebars is best if it has a twisted form or deformed so that it cannot pull through concrete like the plain round bars. Never use plain round bars.
If your roof trusses is made of wood, be sure that it has a triangular frame. placed over columns and tied to it. Wooden roofing supports for wooden trusses should be made of a block of wood and not just a nail.
Your wall should be tied or connected to your column steel reinforcement at a regular intervals of 40 cm and should extend from the bottom to the top of the wall. It should be cast into reinforced concrete columns, along with the reinforcement for ring beams. Hollow block walls should be reinforced and wall ties must be bent at the end to hook into the wall material.
Do not place water well within 30 meter from your septic tank to avoid contamination of your water with septic liquid. It is better to source water from a trusted community source than an individual well.
Bathrooms and toilets should be well ventilated and must have at least 1 window.
See GUIDELINE PICTURES below. Click to ENLARGE.
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