THE HONG KONG AND FAR EAST BUILDER
REINFORCED CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION IN SIAM
Activities of a Danish-Siamese Engineering Company
47
Coach Shed at Hualampong covering an area of 4200 square metres built for the Royal State Railways of Siam.
Local conditions in Siam have proved to be favourable to the use of reinforced concrete as a building material. Cement is produced in the country and although steel has to be imported, under normal conditions reasonable quantities are always available in the local market. Aggregates often represent the major difficulty. In the Central Plain round Bangkok the upper formations consist of clay or sandy clay and as means of transport are inadequate it is difficult to arrange supplies of large quantities of gravel and sand, The grading of available aggregates is usually unsatisfac- tory. There is a scarcity of skilled workers which very often rules out steel structures in favour of reinforced con. crete, ordinary workmen having proved to be satisfactory for R. C. constructions provided careful supervision is given to the work,
For house building wood was formerly normal as con- struction material but the trend of prices, the fire hazard and danger from white ants have gradually led to a change to other materials. Difficulties with foundations and in- evitable settlements require a light but continuous and stiff construction, and R. C. frame construction with brick panel walls are therefore now very common, at least in the capital.
The activities of the firm in house building have been on an increasing scale especially during the last few pre- war years. R. C. frame construction with R. C. purlins and corrugated roofing is mostly used for warehouses, go- downs and similar buildings; in a few cases R. C. arch construction has been used. Saw-tooth roofing is often used for factories.
Multi-storied R.C. frames and floors have been carried out in hotel, office and school buildings, while shell con- struction has been made use of in a market hall, a cinema and a hangar.
During the period up to the war efforts were made to improve communication facilities. The railway systemi was already in quite good state but highways were few and in poor condition. A plan was made to build a system of highways to connect the capital with the important rural districts. Under this plan the firm contracted for and car- ried out R.C. bridges with a total length of about two thou- sand metres. Different types of structures were used, small beam bridges of a few metres length, cantilever girder bridges of medium spans. bowstring bridges and, for the largest spans, arch bridges, the largest being an arch bridge
with a span of eighty one metres. The superstructures of the bridges have no extraordinary features; for one crossing a special construction utilising bowstring span with inclined hangers was planned but this project never materialised.
Foundations have caused difficulties in some cases es- pecially in the Central Plain area where the carrying capacity of the upper soft clay layers is as low as five tons to the square metre. It has been necessary here to use concrete piles of twenty to thirty metres in length in order to ensure a safe foundation.
As part of the plan for developing communications, the construction of a harbour for Bangkok was started in 1938. Formerly the loading and unloading of ships in Bangkok had been handled by privately owned wharves. The firm contracted for the first stage of the construction of the harbour consisting of a quay of one thousand eight hundred metres in length with a depth of water of ten metres at low tide. Due to the soft clay layers the quay was constructed as a sixteen metre wide R.C. slab resting on sixteen to seventeen metre long wooden piles, a total of about twenty thousand piles being used. The bounding to the river is steel sheet piling. Behind the quay were built transit sheds of R.C. frame construction with a total floor area of forty three thousand square metres, a three storey warehouse and an office building. Further harbour works were planned but have not yet materialised.
Bridge over Huey Dome Yai for the Highway
Department, Bangkok, in 1938.
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