Home Service Redundancy Design and Consulting

Building a home in the Philippines? Planning too? Already have a home and you want to be better prepared for emergencies in terms of power, internet, drinking water, food, etc? If you live outside of the Manila or one of the other major cities, in the provinces, as they say here, living in the Philippines will feel much more like what most Americans would consider living off grid. Depending on your area, there may be basic municipal services such as water & power, but often this is not the case or the available resources is simply undependable or inadequate You have come to the right place.

After living in the Philippines for a few years, our founder’s best advice is to have redundant options for everything that you depend upon. This is where western prepper ethos starts to come into our business philosophy. Redundancy is great, Plan A + Plan B is great, as long as it’s within budget. Many of the ideas described here do not necessarily meet the criteria of the low-cost option; though, we do try to touch on at least one low-cost option in each category. There is an assumption that if you have the resources to be an expat relocating to another country, these ideas are viable.

Most people will initially say that don’t need these things, but then wish they had them during an emergency. It’s impossible to know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but the more planning and preparation one does today, the more prepared you will be when tomorrow’s emergency arrives.

Do not assume that your local home builder and contractors will do these things or do them right simply because you asked. Direct involvement, designs, and testing is needed. You must not be afraid to tell your contractor to redo something that doesn’t meet your expectations.

Energy / Power / Electric

Our founder lives in Eastern Samar. Beautiful place, kind people, but the power is the most expensive in the Philippines and is undependable. On average, the power is out for eight to twelve hours per week. You have a couple of choices. Learn to live with it, as many of the locals do, by adopting a lifestyle that is not so dependent upon reliable electric power or plan and implement a backup solution.

During a hardware store trip in Tacloban, while our founder and his girlfriend were building their house in the Philippines, an elderly Australian gentlemen who had lived in the area for decades with his Filipina wife approached them. They just happened to be looking at diesel generators at that moment—they were buying kitchen appliances on that particular trip. The Australian introduced himself and his wife, asked how long they’d been together, and if they were building a house. The advice this gentlemen gave was to not be dependent upon electricity. Again,this is one approach.

For most westerners, I suspect there are certain modern convieniences they just aren’t prepared to give up—aircon anyone? If that’s you, then you need to be thinking about a secondary power solution here in the Philippines. This could include a generator or batteries + solar. There are many products and services companies in this space. The price point, quality, and complexity varies dramatically.

You could purchase all-in-one solutions for batteries, BMS, and power inverter, plus solar panels. You could even throw in a diesel generator as a back up. This can have a relatively simple installation depending on whether or not you directly power appliances from the batteries / generator or if you wire the secondary power system into an electrical panel. The recommended approach depends on your situation. Obviously, the ideal state, if money is not a limiting factor, is to have all power systems automated with minimal effort needed to fail over to backup power and fail back later. Of course, this leads to a great deal of additional costs. If you don’t mind some manual fail over work, then there are opportunities to minimize cost.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to think about the system you are installing beyond periodic maintenance to maximize useful lifetime and its in your price range, then a combination solar + battery + generator backup system automatic fail over / fail back wired directly into your breaker panel is the way to go.

This decision point about overall automation is a major determining factor in what should be done for backup power solutions.

Other determining factors in overall cost are:

We will explore these questions in future blog posts in much greater depth.

If you are living in the Philippines and what help designing a backup power system for your home, contact us.

Internet

First, in order to have internet access, you have to have power; so, definitely read the last section as well.

In the major cities, there are usually a couple of different options for internet access including hard lines coming into your house and cellular wireless data services. In the provinces, there are typically fewer options ranging from none, to local unreliable small businesses, to cellular data options, to maybe one established player such as Globe or Smart. For rural areas, the dependable, but far more costly option is StarLink.

The cellular data plans are typically low-cost by western standards, but can still be expensive for the average Filipino. Cellular coverage in the provinces can vary dramatically.

Depending upon how important internet access is, you may want to have two or more of these options. If you are self-employed, working remotely, or running a business, internet access may be critical. If you or your kids are into online multi-player games, you may also place great importance on having internet access.

Our founder has a primary and secondary Starlink router for reliable internet access. If Starlink goes down, it happens every so often, the local 4G cellular data plan + phone wifi hotspot works as a viable backup. Though, you probably won’t be running MS Teams video conference calls off that, but voice-only does fine on such calls.

We’ve met small regional ISP operators that will pay Smart or Globe to run a business line into their Barangay, then they run fiber optic cable to local houses and businesses for a monthly fee. Depending on the skill and quality of that local operator, this could suit your needs, but shouldn’t be your only internet access.

Water

One cannot drink tap water in the Philippines. The locals don’t do this; foreigners definitely cannot do this. Most households get water through pottable water placed in blue containers that are filled at water stations run by the local municipality and distributed by small local businesses. This system is fragile and can be easily disrupted by emergencies such as earthquakes or typhoons, both of which happen on a regular basis.

Ideally, building a new home would also include a water well. How deep that well needs to be depends on the area. Our founder’s first well was only about five meters deep. That worked for about six months until the drier season. So, then, he had to pay to have that well dug out to a depth of about 15 meters. That has been sufficient for the past two years. Both times the wells were dug by hand. About ten meters down, they ran into solid rock and had to use a jack hammer. There was only one jack hammer in the city available for rent and had to wait about a week to rent it. In another section, we talk about tools and preparation.

In areas that are not quite as remote, using more modern well drilling techniques are advisable. An electric well-pump is strongly recommended, but a more traditional manual pump (think Little House on the Praire) is also recommended for when the power is out. The power being out should not mean no water is available.

If you have a water well and electric well-pump, it also advisable to put a water tank on the roof (if it can be supported) to feed the various water fixtures in the house. If you have a multi-story home, more than one water pump may be required. Alternatively, the water tank could be placed on top of a tower that is tall enough to allow gravity to feed the water fixtures in the house.

One could also potentially setup a rain water collection system that feeds a large water tank; however, this alone will probably not be enough to supply the water you need to a house. Any water that comes from the ground (or sky) needs to go through a water filter. A typical whole- house water filter is probably going to be enough to allow native Filipinos to drink water from your water tank. However, for foreigners, additional filtering such as UV filters, boiling, or a high-end whole house water-filter system is recommended.

While it is not the most environmentally-friendly option, one could always by bottled water for drinking. In fact, this is a good back up solution for emergencies—what if the well pump breaks? Our founder bought an extra well pump to sit on the shelf until such time it was needed when he was buying well pumps. This way, it was simply a matter of removing the old one and adding the new one, which is the same model.

Sanitation

While a messy business, any modern house is going to need to address sanitation and waste water disposal for the plumbing (toilets, sinks, showers, bathtubs, etc). Almost any house being built outside the major cities will need a septic tank.

Cellular Phone Services

You can get a prepaid cellular phone number from Smart or Globe in the Philippines that you can hold on to for the long-term. Having a recent smart phone with the support for an eSIM is advised. You can keep this prepaid eSIM phone number in the long-term by keeping a load (prepaid money in the account) on the account.

Usually, keeping a non-zero load on your prepaid cellular account will keep the eSIM number active. You’ll need this local phone number for a GCash, ShopeePay, or similar accounts. You’ll also need a phone number to associate with your local Filipino bank account. On at least one trip to Europe for our founder, using the Smart eSIM’s global roaming plan for a week was cheaper than activating a local SIM card.