House design and plan in Philippines - Charges

I sketched a 75 sq. meter bungalow and ran it by the foreman that built our 200 sq. meter two story house. The foreman made a few changes and drew up the bill of material for us to order. We tried to get away with no permit but we got busted and had to pay an engineer from the municipality P25,000 to draw up blue prints and make everything legal. The bungalow turned out better than expected and the in laws are very comfortable. We tallied up the material and labor and it came to P1.8 million.

Spent around 200,000 for all those items for 300 sqmt in an upscale development, gives you an idea for larger elegant design

Thank you both for the input

Allow us to congratulate you Roy on your thorough preparations you are obviously making with the planning stages for building your house in the Philippines.

With such careful attention to detail you are showing you will probably halve your problems.

But of course from building experiences anyway there will still be plenty of design, supply and construction issues to go around. But anyway, you certainly do seem to be off to a good start.

Our two story A frame is now about half-way built. Like you we chose our architects carefully.

In the end we found a neighbouring family. The father is a qualified and well experienced professional and his two children are both studying architecture in Manila. His work is well known in this area of Palawan, and his being retired, and living a 5 minute walk from our property, it was a no-brainer to choose him. Plus he guided us into employing the right teams, because they want to work with him.

And now, retired and living locally, he's on-site often. And things have gone very smoothly.

So my point is, don't disregard local professional-reputation and close supervision availability.

An ability to draw all of the numerous plans and drawings etc is really only a fraction of your requirements if you're seeking a smooth, speedy relatively problem-free building experience.

So far for this house we've found that it's our available local head-person / people and their reliable and proven talents first. Then comes everything else, eg good design work, costings, our actual tradesmen, material supply, legals and even the weather etc etc etc all come next.

Can't beat your boots on the ground early, checking out all your local construction resources.

Good luck with this project Roy. Maybe keep us informed of your progress?

Happy trails

Helloo There,

Thank you for a detailed reply

Vet well appreciated.

May I please ask if you are building the house in Puerto Princesa in Palawan?

If so will you be able to kindly send me a mail on ***

So i can share you my contact details and have a chat with you and get more insights on this

Will appreciate a kind reply

Kind Regards

Roy

No worries Roy.

Unfortunately, we aren't building in or near Puerto Princesa, but we are a couple of hours north of there. However, of course we are happy to help if we can. Cheers matey.

@roycherian

Hi!  I'm a registered and licensed Architect here in the Philippines.  As per our Standard of Professional Practice, we charge 10% of the construction cost for our service for residential developments.  The service fee includes the payment for the Architect and his allied professionals like the Civil or Structural Engineer, Sanitary Engineer and Electrical Engineer.  This cost cover the comprehensive design services of the Architect from Predesign (Project Definition, Site Analyses and Study, etc.) to Design Consultation, budgeting, to full production of the Contract Documents needed for the building permit application, to Bidding Assistance, up to Periodic Site Visits during the construction, and our liability for 15 years to the project.

Depending on your negotiation, the 10% of the construction cost is flexible.  The Scope of the Services of the Architects is also flexible and can be customized, depending on the services that you only need from them.

Thanks for info arch.jae, gives people an idea with the 10% consulting fees, that is pretty normal 10 to 15%.

Thing I found was 2 architects I consulted wanted their 10% cut and estimated our extensions/ fences and renovations at 10 to 11M for around 250M2 extensions plus 100LM of 2.4 M high block fences then their cut on top of that and that was without a solar system. I went and chatted with the local Municipal engineer and draftsman with my plans and they did it including all municipal and their fees for P 26K

We built it ourselves with boots on the ground with 10 to 14 workers for 12 months and 5 to 6 workers for 6 months, also had a 1.4M stand alone solar system installed, We used all 6 inch blocks with extra cement,,,,, special order more and larger steel, more cement in the one bagger mixer and attention to detail and doing the works properly, Being from the building industry I knew what we wanted.

The better half, book keeper and pay master, stock controller and sometimes cook for the boys lunches tells me we spent less than P 7M including the solar system.

I have no idea what the 2 architects were thinking aside from lining there own pockets from the gullible punters. We saved at least 5/6M based on their prices plus solar and overbuilt piers and tie beams, no skimping, great job and a very good crew that could listen and act.

Good to have building and engineering experience as well as management skills.

Cheers, Steve.

@bigpearl  How large did you build your solar? 1.4 million for solar alone? Thats almost industrial size.

300,000 is already more then enough with 20kw/h battery capacity.

But you are right, and i would refuse any plan based on a percentage of housing cost.

You can build full detailed plans from online sites and just adjust them for cheap.

@bigpearl How large did you build your solar? 1.4 million for solar alone? Thats almost industrial size. 300,000 is already more then enough with 20kw/h battery capacity.But you are right, and i would refuse any plan based on a percentage of housing cost. You can build full detailed plans from online sites and just adjust them for cheap. -@Lothar Scholz

Lother.

Our system is 11.4 Kw of panels, 28 of them, 4 x 10Kw LiFePo Batteries or 40.4Kw storage and 2 x 5 Kw invertors linked.

The killer is the batteries and from memory about P760K, no complaints with the investment as we run what we want when we want and on average generate P700 per day or P20 to 21K per month, lots of A/C.

The killers are 4/6 days of poor weather like typhoons and their tail spin gives us sh1t weather on the west coast of Luzon, we have the luxury of being able to switch back to shore power if needed and only 3 times last year for a day or 2. No power outages or voltage spikes with the solar.

Do your sums as 300K will get you a basic grid tied feed in system with no batteries and the power company will give you a 4 to 1 rebate.

You need to size the system to suit your needs,,,,,, as others say and I agree double the size if you can afford to, we have not looked back and smile when we see our area in darkness and candles burning.

Lothar, solar systems are/can be a long and hard road to design and implement, thing is you can always add on.

Good luck.

Cheers, Steve.