According to Thai tradition, it takes one day to build a house. This did not include the entire construction process, just the assembly once all the components had been built. Nowadays it takes a bit longer....

Experience is the name we give to our mistakes and mistakes when building a house can be very costly. This site is designed to help people avoid some of the most common mistakes. Also, there is a paucity of information about how to build a house that is suited to a tropical climate and this site also addresses some of these problems.

The principal advantage of the traditional teak house is aesthetic. It is very difficult to make artificial man made surfaces as beautiful or pleasing to the eye as natural ones. There is something about wood, the texture, the different shades of color that is not easy to replicate. But in addition to aesthetics there are some practical advantages. Prefabrication makes traditional Thai houses easy to dismantle and move. In former times when river banks eroded or when the land was depleted, entire villages could be quickly dismantled relocated and reassembled. When wealthy home owners wanted to build a new house, they often dismantled their old ones and rebuilt them on temple grounds as kuti or dwelling places for monks. The ability to dismantle and move your house is still useful in the present day and solves many of the problems of property ownership in Thailand especially for farangs. In addition the traditional Thai house is well adapted to a tropical environment.