Raising the Roof

The furious house construction pace continues:

The crew applies the second and final "plaster" coat to the ground floor walls.  This is a time consuming process that requires repeated trowelings.  The dried surface is then rubbed with a flat stone to further smooth the surface before painting.  I am fortunate to have a construction crew of ten.  Some guys are assigned to plastering while others complete different tasks.

The septic tank nears completion.  The foreground chamber is a soak away that connects to an array of buried pipes forming the drain field.  This chamber receives grey water, the chamber on the opposite end receives sewage only.

Wall sections are cut and assembled on the ground floor.

The wall sections are man handled up to the first floor ......

...... then nailed in place.  The interior wall defines the bedroom walls as well as closet space.  Most Belize homes do not have closets, armoires are used instead.

This is the view from my future front porch.  The canal behind my place makes a right angle turn to enter the bay just beside the white and orange house.  Unfortunately, there are some nasty trees that block my bay view and cut down the cooling breeze.  I may approach the property owner about removing these trees and perhaps replacing them with palms.  In the meantime, I have other things to spend money on and defining wants and needs for a new place is better decided after living there for a while.

The bedrooms and closet framing is on the left-hand side.  The bathroom framing is on the right and to the rear.  The crew is installing jack rafters in the initial hip roof construction stage.  The rafters running fore and aft will later be removed once the hip and additional jack rafters are installed.

Here the doubled up hip rafters extend from each corner of the structure to meet in the center.  Jack rafters are nailed to the hip rafter starting with the longest at the top and continuing down to the shorter lengths.  All hip rafters receive similar length jack rafters before proceeding down the hip to the next shorter rafter.  This assures even loads on the structure and prevents distortions that could result from unequal weights or stiffness should all the jacks be installed on a single hip at once.

The temporary fore and aft jack rafters are removed in the image above.  Dormers will be built in these openings to catch the prevailing wind and remove interior heat.  The dormers will accommodate relatively large windows for this purpose.  The result will be an open airy space full of light.  These windows face east and west so sunrise and sunset promise to fill the house with brilliant color.

The rafters will remain exposed and I find them visually interesting.  With the interior walls and roof in place I'm gaining a much better feel for what the living space will be like.  I have to say it is so much better than I ever envisioned.  It will be a very comfortable living space that I can not yet convey in photographs.

The dormer rafter gap may make better sense in the image above.  The roof is altered from the previous description in that the hip roof will not extend over the front and rear decks.   Simple sloping roofs will cover the decks.  Roof changes were necessary to obtain a geometry the would permit more of the cooling breezes to pass through the house.  Note that the house now sports a remotely controlled garage door!

Ceviche!

     Near by is the popular water front bar, Scotty's, where I meet up with friends, have a few beers and often find something to eat.  My first few weeks here I could not get enough ceviche.  It is made with onions, tomatoes, cilantro and most often shrimp marinaded in lime juice.  One day I was cycling past Scotty's where I spied all of the bar's staff on the upper floor, I waved as I went past.  They didn't necessarily know my name but yelled out "Ceviche!" to acknowledge me.  Since that day it has become my Belizian nickname.  Most all Belizians are known by a nickname and I take it as a sign that I'm accepted.  Thankfully, I didn't take a fancy to burritos during my first few weeks.
   

The ground floor will serve as a garage and shop.  The electrical outlets were installed above counter height to accomodate work benches along the walls.  Outlet installation required a brief halt in wall construction.  Above, the window sills and reinforced lintels have been poured.

The crew makes good use of a boulder dug from the lot.  Short reinforcement bar lengths were forced into holes drilled into the rock.  This created a re-bar bending jig used to rapidly create numbers of identical reinforcement shapes.

Forms are in place to pour the reinforced columns on corners and wall mid points.  The crew labors to assemble other reinforcements.

The crew prepares to pour the chain, a reinforced concrete perimeter on the wall's top.  Here the re-bar is set in position before the form is closed up.

There is another construction crew working across the canal from my lot.  The crew building my house politely asked me for permission to fish in the canal.  This permission I happily and immediately granted.  I like the guys on the hard working crew.

There have been some lunch sized fish caught, but this small cat fish was returned to fight another day.  I like to peer into the water to see what can be seen.  I've spied turtles, a wide variety of fish, but have yet to catch sight of the crocodiles known to inhabit the canal.

The crew scrambles to complete the pour of three columns that will support the front deck.  The concrete is placed in precious (hard to come by) five gallon buckets for these pours.  On other house construction sites they carry cement filled buckets on their heads while climbing ladders.

Two interior columns support I beams spanning the shop's width.  These in turn support the beginnings of the living space floor above.

I beams also span the support columns for the front and rear decks.  A careful observer will notice the wall visible through the garage door opening has been "plastered".

This is the rear view of the house after the first scratch coat has been applied inside and out.  A second finer coat will be applied and troweled to a smooth finish.  The ground floor will soon be powered up thanks to an electrician's visit.

I'm about to seek out lunch and it is likely to reinforce my Belizian handle, Ceviche.

We're Going to Build a Wall!

     I was minding my own business enjoying lunch at a bay side bar I frequent.  Out of the blue this U.S. guy shouts out to the Belizian, working behind the bar, "We're going to build a wall!".  At first I thought the guy had to be joking around proclaiming such a thing to a person of another nationality.  The look on my face must have betrayed my incredulous thoughts.  The guy then asked me if I was a democrat and I nodded a stunned affirmative.  He then said to me "You suck!".  I only looked at him sideways under a raised eyebrow while his wife issued a sound dressing down.  The validity of the Hillary's basket of deplorables remark gained much credence with me.  What has the Deplorable Cheato unleashed?
     I came to Belize with the idea that I would have the Mennonites build an inexpensive house for me.  These prefabricated houses are transported to the site by roads.  This limits the house width to 20 feet.  After playing around with this idea for a while, I decided the width limitation did not result in a comfortable living space and did not suit my shop space needs.  I revised my plans for a two story house with an additional 100 square feet of space on each floor.  The result looked very much like Belizian colonial houses that can be found everywhere.

     The elevated colonial houses typically have a porch and a small overhang hip roof supported by a porch perimeter beam.  Frilly column ornamentation is a common feature I don't intend to incorporate.  The house I'm having built will be of cement block construction on the ground floor and wood frame construction on the upper floor.  The termite proof ground floor will be shop and garage space, the upper living space will feature two bedrooms, a screened 12' deep front deck and an 8', full house width, rear deck.  A single hip roof will cover the living space and both decks.  The bedrooms will be without ceilings to promote cooling air flow from the prevailing bay breeze.  The roof will feature louvered dormers or gablets (to be determined) to further promote air flow.  But first ....... :

Foundation excavations must be made .....

Reinforcement bars must be assembled .....

Reinforcements are wired in place .....

Footings are poured .....

Blocks, later filled, extend the foundation to ground elevation .....

The backhoe returns to back fill the foundation and level the yard as floor pour preparations are made ......

The floor pour proceeds at a furious pace ......

Bing bang boom, instant floor .......

Blocks are staged for next day's wall construction .....

It is the Belizians who build a wall!  Wall constriction is halted at this elevation to install electrical outlets above the counter elevation, and to cast window sills.  The wall openings are for a door way and the garage door.  The area forward of the wall is under a future porch and will receive a concrete pad as well as covered stair flights to provide access to the upper living space.  The hard working crew will have a rare two days off in a row with Monday's Columbus day holiday.  This is the first week of construction and I expect to report great progress at the end of the next shortened work week!