Mexico Pampanga Setbacks

Welcome to the forum mangomon.

First port of call is your local Municipal office and perhaps Barangay.

Here our Garage is part of the boundary on the fence line and all is fire rated and approved by the powers that be, talk to an engineer preferably from the local Municipal as we did,,, becomes easy and no second guessing.

Good Luck.

Cheers, Steve.

Steve is right.  There may also be specific codes and restrictions that are associated with your subdivision and which would also be found in the filings with the municipal Planning or Building office. I would look for something in writing as the engineer may be corrupt as ours was. Welcome to the Philippines.

I hear you pnw with corruption and palm greasing in many areas and we were lucky with the local municipal.

Think I posted this before but will again for the OP.

I am pretty handy drawing plans as well as a reasonable knowledge on building codes in Australia that holds pretty high standards. We did consult with an architect very early in the process and he wanted like P100K for the plans and then 15% of the costs on what turned out to be total P7M including P1.4M in the solar system, his estimate was 9 to 10M  and his percentage on top of that so another P1.5M.

Went to the local Municipal with Ben and asked to make an appointment to speak with the engineer,,,,,, no need for that sir, take a seat and he will be right out. 10 minutes and we met the engineer and chatted about what we were doing,,,,,,, one minute sir,,,,, he dragged out another guy (turned out to be his draftsman) and went through my plans and I asked who they would recommend for the project,,,,,, all good sir we can do that and you build.

The long and the short it cost P26K and included a set of drawings signed off by the Municipal engineer, all fees and permits, a further 2 or 300 pesos to the local barangay for the fencing permit as well as 2 site visits from the municipal,,,,,, never saw them until the other day when they sent the valuers here to assay the property. Up go the rates.

Saved 3 to 4M pesos doing it ourselves and didn't have to deal with a snooty nosed architect, an 18 month project and we got what we wanted with no corners cut. Do your homework and you will be the winner.

Good luck.

Cheers, Steve.

@bigpearl I plan on going this route. I too have drafted my own plans and with some help from her family over there will just build it myself.

@mangomon

Don't be shy when it comes to cement and steel when you build. Good luck.

Cheers, Steve.

@bigpearl that's good to know, thank you. We are looking for land to buy in Pampanga also. Knowing all the pitfalls would save us some trouble. Too bad there are so many crooks here.

@mangomon May I know what do you mean by building it by yourself? do you hire workers directly? we are planning to buy a lot in Pampanga as well, but we have no construction experience.