Home Construction
I like owning a home....I trust my wife. Most foreigners don't. Even if you rent you will need to take what follows into account. You may laugh but these are real things you'll need to deal with.
Need a Home? 
If you are thinking about moving here, click this link
for a great deal on a
beautiful home just outside Cebu City. This home is located in a guarded and
gated sub-division and is but a short drive to Cebu City, Mandaue, and Talisay.
We've been to this home and it really is a beautiful home. Upon entering you are
impressed with the openness of the home as the vaulted ceiling in the living
room is two stories up. The pricing of this home has been reduced substantially
for a quick sale. If the finer things in life is one of your desires, this home
is for you. Right next to the sub-division swimming pool. We also have many
contacts in the real estate industry. Let us refer you to a qualified realtor or
sub-division. Contact us at
info@superphilippines.com with your requirements for both homes and land.
Another Home at only 3.7 million pesos. This one is on the island of Mactan and is outside the city of Lapu-Lapu. It has been occupied for less than a year and comes furnished. It is sitting on a fully fenced and walled corner lot. The yard is completely concreted and has a fully tiled front. The home has three Kolin split AC units with remote controls, a large range/oven, and a large western style refrigerator. The home is a single story 3 bedroom, 2 bath. Hot water heaters are on both showers, and there is a washer and dryer in the carport. The electrical system of this house was upgraded to 100 amps to support the increased electrical load and all bedrooms and the main living area had telephone and cable installed. The perimeter fence and wall totally enclose the property and the home is in a gated and guarded sub-division with wide concrete streets. The home and all furnishings are less than a year old and is completely paid for with clear a title. It is a short drive to Lapu-Lapu city and to the bridge connecting to Cebu. When you buy a home here you must realize that they are not up to western standards. This home has had many of the improvements made that are necessary to bring it up to a western standard comfort level. This is a low maintenance home with ceramic tiles throughout. There is community water and frequent curbside garbage collection by the city of Lapu-Lapu. The community is very well maintained and kept clean by a competent staff. Monthly sub-division fees are only 300 pesos ($6 USD) and the water bill runs $5-$6 a month. Contact us at info@superphilippines.com . Retire to this home and you are close to where the action is in Cebu City but out of the pollution of the city. Two bridges connect to Cebu and there is a ferry service across the Mactan Strait to Cebu. There is enough out on Mactan for you to not have to go to Cebu frequently, and there are wonderful resorts such as the Shangri-La and Hilton Resorts. There are many others that cost you but a few dollars to use their pools and beaches for the day. If you are into gambling, one of the two Waterfront Hotel Casinos in the Visayans is located on Mactan, 15 minutes away from this home. The international airport is also 15 minutes away. It is a short drive across the strait to SM mall. Ayala mall is not much further. Home is serviced by Globe and has DSL service along with Cable. Three TVs are included, all purchased within the last year. The largest is a 29" flat screen Sony. The others are 20"+. Home is currently owned and occupied by a foreigner/Filipina couple. The airport has frequent low cost service to Manila and other places in the Orient, and from across the Mactan Strait in Cebu you can catch high speed boats that will get you to Bohol in two hours. Cebu has one of the best harbors in the country and you can take fast craft, large ships, or small boats to the many islands of the Philippines and all at low cost. If it is your desire to be conveniently located and in an area where you can easily reach the many wonders in this part of the world, you'll love the location of this home.
Construction: If you buy a house you will be 'impressed' with the
construction. As an American friend put it, "try to hang a picture on a
concrete wall". Reinforced concrete columns and beams with plastered block walls
is the normal construction technique. Get yourself a good hammer drill, the
first power tool I bought. Insulation....what? The concrete provides a great
thermal mass, it gets hot and stays hot. No temperature swing here, always hot
inside unless you are like me with tons of cooing BTUs. I have twice the air
conditioning capacity I had in twice the space in my prior home, and my last
home was in a hot and humid part of the US. The only insulation I've seen is
1/2" thick foil lined panels used under roofing. Why Bother? Besides, I've only
seen single pane glass windows that don't seal well. I've not seen an airtight
home. Walls are plastered inside and out with a cement sand mixture. 
Check out
the AP photo of a house after a mudslide. Notice anything strange? How many
houses in the US would still be intact? Concrete columns, beams, and a lot of
rebar do the trick. My only question is what do you do with your strong home
sitting at a thirty degree angle? Bull-dose it or wait for the next mudslide and
hope that it will be somewhat level then? And while on the subject of things
being level; the use of a level for anything seems to have been lost in the building
trades here. If it looks straight it must be. They typically use a lot of
rebar for reinforcement and I see why. The cement plaster finish applied to both sides
is over an inch thick! Mixing concrete here is an exact science, they mix it on
the ground. With labor so cheap, why should a builder buy actual equipment.
There is ready-mix available here but few use it as it is cheaper to mix on site
with your $4 a day laborers. Some contractors will actually use a one bag mixer for large jobs. I am amazed at how big a building and home
and how many stories you can go up with just pure cheap labor and not tools and
equipment. The workers are not the problem. the owners and management of the
construction firms are. There is a building code here. Why, I don't know. Seems
to me the strength of concrete has something to do with the mix of ingredient
ratios and the amount of water used.
Electric: The electric service here is 220 VAC, 60 hertz. Nothing is grounded. I like their switches and outlets. You can put six light switches in a single gang box, and getting three modular two or three hole (USA style outlets) in a single gang box possible and how we do it when we add outlets. We typically put in two three hole outlets and one of the Japanese style outlets to accommodate most of the appliance we have. The outlets resemble American duplex outlets and you can plug a two prong 110 volt American appliance right into the 220 volts that comes out of the wall. I actually have some duplex outlets in my house with the ground receptacle too, just like America. The ground is not connected to anything though. Buying appliance here is interesting. Not much is made here and it seems that the world does not know which type of plug to put on an appliance. As I rework my home, I install receptacles that will accept two and three wire plugs and the two hole round plug like you'll find in Japan and other places. I haven't found wall outlets to accommodate the large UK plug yet so we have an assortment of adaptors. Buy a power supply for your computers and anything of value. They will typically have a 110 volt outlet on them too, just be careful what you plug in where as the receptacles are all the same! Be careful with any of the things you bring with you. I've blown up my share by plugging into an outlet and not a reducing power supply. Live out in the province where you'll not have many appliances and your problem will be solved. I can reach up and touch my electric power feed from the pole where it is taped to the house entrance cable. Great if I want to disconnect my own power as I don't need a ladder. Great building codes. I guess if I have tall kids I'll have to tell them not to play with the wires unless they want an electrifying experience. My home came with a whopping 60 amp service. I installed more than sixty amps worth of air conditioning. Needless to say, I had the service changed. It was fun as the service panel was cemented into the wall. Electric is reasonably reliable, it only goes off a few times a month for a few to several hours. Electricity costs just under twelve cents a kwh. It is pretty reliable.
Water: We have 'city' water. There is a water tower for the sub-division to feed all the homes here. They don't seem to make the water towers very high and therefore our water pressure is not great.
Plumbing: My house has one cold water line going to the kitchen and each bath, therefore we use hot water heaters at each shower. Forget hot water at the sinks....unless you don't run the water for awhile in which case it may all be hot as the pipes soak up the heat. With water pressure so great who cares about how the pipes are laid out, just don't flush a toilet while someone is in the shower. Our shower turns to a dribble when you do such a thing. My Filipina wife loves hot water showers which is a new experience for many here.
Air Conditioning: Common in the master bedroom for many homes. This ex-Yankee can turn his house into a refrigerator at will. All spaces are air conditioned with split type air conditioners. The electric company likes me. Window units are more common and cheaper but I didn't want to cut the bars over my windows. Yep, my windows all have 3/8" square bars welded in place, a security feature and I am in a guarded and gated sub-division. It'd be easier to break through the wall than cut through the bars.
Use your Lot to the Max: As long as you build a firewall higher than your structure you can typically build right to your property line. I'm keeping a few feet away from my property lines so I can walk around my home. It's awful hard to have windows on a wall that becomes your neighbors wall too. I guess its great if you get along with your neighbor though; open the window and visit without visiting. I think I'll open a business selling sky lights. Use your lot to the max and you could end up with three walls without windows, kind of like living in a cave.
Contractors: Hiring contractors here is interesting. First off, since you are a foreigner they want to charge US rates for sub-par work. Have someone else negotiate a price. When the contractors arrive don't expect them to have much in the way of anything. They will probably arrive by jeepney, trike, or bike. They will not show up in a shiny new pick-up truck loaded with tools and such. I contracted out my perimeter wall, a roof extension, and 125 square meters of concrete slabs. I even had to buy the shovels for them to manually dig the footings for the wall and remove dirt for the slabs. No power tools here. I also hired a very competent electrician to do much work. I took him on many trips to get things he needed. Remember this is the Philippines and most people don't have vehicles.
