Week 11.... Lime plaster and child labour

Myself and Gavin headed back to Antigua last week for a number of reasons. It was the lovely Ellie's birthday (housemate on my right) number one. (pic above)

We also went to a second hand bike shop in Chimaltenango. We wanted to buy a bike for the kids for one. The kids have all been working really hard with us since we got back as they are one their summer holidays now. Particularly Luis, who seems to know where every tool and material is at any given time. He really enjoys helping and learning too. Sylvia is similar in this regard, but she has been doing English classes in the afternoons of late. When I first got back she was back working in Huehue for pittens which kind of defeated the purpose of everything in my book so she is doing English classes and is starting computer classes next week too. She will start writing monthly e mails before the year is out I promise. So anyway rather than paying the kids money we thought buying them a second hand bike would be cool, as well it is coming up to xmas as well in case you haven't heard.  

The shop also make bike operated blenders, corn crushers etc as you can see being lovely demonstrated by Deane and Gavin. The reason we want to buy one of these; possibly Dona Eulalias xmas present; is that she uses a blender nearly every day and if she does that with the new solar panel kit it will possibly drain the battery very quickly. That was the final reason we were back to go pay a deposit and talk to the solar panel guys in Guate city. So that is ordered now should be with us in a week hopefully.

Right so back to the actual house. This week we concentrated on plastering. We started by patching any deep holes or crevesis in the walls with a clay, fine sand and lime mix.

This prepared the walls for the first coat of lime plaster. As you can see below there is a lot of heat and dust coming off the lime when it is re hydrated. It is pretty nasty stuff to work with to be honest. Our hands are in rag order from burns at this stage.

We also managed to finish off some jobs that were on the to do list for a long time. These included making and installing the door up stairs in luis's bedroom. This door is first and foremost a fire escape but it also acts as a good air vent during the day when the windows would have the upstairs very hot if not opened.

Some finishing touches were applied to the windows downstairs too. A window sill was fitted and door stop was fitted around the frame to stop drafts as well as tidy them up a bit.

We also fitted the base or table top for the plancha, being lovely modeled by Mari here above. The plancha is a wood fire with steel top for cooking. 

As I mentioned the kids have been helping us work all week which has been a great help in all honesty. Luis was working so hard one morning he built an entire village before breakfast (Below)

Above you can see the kids working together to sieve the bigger stones out of the sand so that is was easier to plaster with. Below is Luis and Sylvia helping me put fix the timber for the internal wall between the kitchen and Dona Eulalias bedroom.

Above is a picture if the internal wall nearly finshed from inside the bedroom.

 Below is all the kids and Pedro plastering the outside of the house.

I always wondered why they were so protective of the weeds growing about the place. Apparently thats where water melons grow. Who would have thought. I persumed they came on trees to be honest.

Below are a few pics of the house from the outside. Looking well I do think......

As of today Saturday the house will be fully plastered inside and out with two coats of lime wash on the internal walls. Next week tiling is the biggest job but there is a lot of tidying up work and loose ends also. Gavins chicken house, truth windows, kitchen cabinetry, plancha, 2nd fix plumbing.... the list goes on. Deane is coming up to help too but it will be tight either ways for Saturday. See ye next week....

Week 10

Right so continuing on from last week... Last Sunday we brought the kids and the Guatemalan lads we are working with to the swimming pool for the day. Above is Luis, myself and Sylvia on the bike the other 30 10 of them were in the pick up ahead. Real Beverly hill billy stuff : ) Below is us after eating the BBQ that Dona Eulalia cooked for everyone.

Back to the work bit now. On Monday we finished off the remainder of the limecrete floor and also poured a pad for the piela. A Piela is basically a big sink with two drains used for washing dishes, clothes, babies you name it. Essential to every Guatemalan house though. Kids didn't miss the chance for a bit more beautiful artwork. The barrel for the guttering down pipe will be in front of the dirty looking orange vent pipe in case your wondering....

Pedro also made the first of the windows/shutters. Above is Gavin installing it. Bit of snagging on it to be done to make it weather tight and reasonably air tight but its looking good for the minute at least.

Below is Luis, Marie and Sylvia pre-soaking the clay bricks to be used for packing around the wall plate and for the plancha.

Below is the start of the plancha. A Plancha is another essential piece of equipment for any Guatemalan house. It is a wood burning fire with a steel hot plate and a flu to take away the smoke. Ours will have be a little different in that it will have an air intake flu running thought the plancha too. This will do two things. Firstly it will prevent drafts from doors as windows as there will be an air supple equal in size to the flu. Secondly the in coming air will be pre heated meaing that even in the cold months the placha will require less fuel. We first poured a lime/concrete pad for it to sit. Then we built 3 walls to support the shuttering required for a base. Will explain this better when we have more progress and pictures.

With the floors ready the rest of the week we mainly concentrated on getting the adobe/lime mix filled into the wall cavity. We on average lifted the walls about 2 foot a day. This involved mixing the sand, clay, lime and water with hoes, then stamping it to mix it further, then pushing and tamping it into the wooden shutters. Leaving it to dry overnight. Next day raising the shutters and so on. We also fixed chicken wire to the outside of the dry adobe help the plaster stick and to hold the wall in place along with the horizontal wooden straps seen below.  

As of Thursday evening we have the walls complete... Myself and Gavin came to Antigua to sort out a Solar Panel and we also need to let the walls and floor dry for a few days.

Next week we hope to have the plastering and tiling done. The week after will leave us with snagging, and bits like finishing off chicken coop, plancha, moving the piela, lime washing etc. Going well on schedule at last thanks to the hard work of Gavin and Pedro and the hard earned cash of everybody who has donated. Thanks again see ye next week...

Back in Action..... (week 9)

Right to start with I would just like to say from here until finish the blog will be about the building and the family no more drama from me. Right so. Myself and Gavin arrived in Huehue on Tuesday night. Wednesday morning we met up with Pedro and Luis, and we all headed to get some materials. 

While we were in the hardware store there was an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the rictor scale. It lasted for about 20 seconds or so. No major drama just a few tiles falling off the shelf but we followed the crowd out the door all the same. We made sure Luis was safe from aftershocks when we went back in, as you can see above. No messing with health and safety with us boys.

We picked up what we needed from the hardware store and headed on.

We also had a few deliveries of soil and sand which I will explain the use of later on.....

Above is us sitting on the wood so that we didn't have to go to the bother of tying it down..... Below is me observing the work we would have to do to pick it up again after it fell off at the bottom of the hill. Hindsight is a great thing sure.

Along with flashing to finish off the roof and the toilet furniture, we also bought two barrels. The drain pipes from the guttering will run into the barrels at the front and back of house. When it is filled there will be an overflow pipe near the top to bring the water away from the house. The reason for this is that the water supply in Chiantla, although drinkable, is very unreliable. So, even when there is a prolonged water outage there will at least be two barrels full of water for the family to use.

The soil we bought is to make adobe for the walls. The mix is 3 clay, 1 fine sand, and 1/3 of a bag of lime all mixed with water. This mix is used to fill in the spaces in the walls making the building airtight. The materials are all local, cheap and easy to use. The cured adobe has good thermal mass, meaning it will store the heat from the stove and the sun and keep the building warmer at night time when the temperature drops.

Above is Pedro stamping the mixture to get it thoroughly mixed after is was first turned over using hoes... no the garden tool.

Above you can see that there is heavy duty mesh on one side of the wall already. This is to prevent the entire walls from collapsing inwards during an earthquake and also will help for the lime plaster to stick. We formed a shutter using plywood and tablas either side and then filled and compacted the mixture as you can see below.

After the walls are completed we will fix two 1" wooden straps width ways across the wall at the top and bottom along with chicken wire. These two elements act similar to the heavy duty mesh in preventing outward collapse and helping the lime render to bond to the wall.

We also had a delivery of a more coarse sand. This sand was mixed with hydrated lime at a mix of 3 to 1 with water also added to the mix. We used limecrete because, (A) we are trying to build as sustainably as the budget will allow and (B) a concrete floor would inevitably rot the base plate timbers as the timbers could not breathe. This mix will take about a week to set fully and then sun dried clay tiles will be laid as the finished floor.

 

Lovely screeding job even if I do say so myslef. We left the limecrete down 50mm to allow for the width of the tile (40mm) and some bonding agent (10mm).

As you can see above the entire ground floor including front porch will have a limecrete under clay tile floor.

We also had time to form the lid for the septic tank. It doesn't quite look like this now. Has four children's names artistically inscribed into the top : )

Pedro never ceases to amaze with the amount of tools he has, and his ability to actually use them. Myself and Gav would have been dicussing how to go about it and he would have had them all finished truth be told. Handy out. Anyway below, the first door hung and swinging. Not quite possible to use the toilet though few walls missing yet...

Toilet door from inside, with lock, below...

The next door to go on was the front door. Half doors to keep the chickens and dogs out. (And for sprocket. Loves a good half door that lad does)

Below you can see the progress to date. Roof totally finished, walls rising as the shuttering is risen up daily.

Tomorrow we are going to take the day off, bring the kids to the swimming pool and have a bit of a BBQ. Next week we will start by finishing the limecrete floor on Monday and will hopefully have the adobe walls completed by the end of the week. We also intend to have the windows and doors completed. The week after we hope to get the tiling and plastering done. Which leaves us with a week for snagging and other bits and pieces as we now have a deadline of the 30th of November. Kimberly's first Holy communion is on this date and we would love to have the house ready for that. If we keep going the way we are we will not have any problems however. 

Big thank you to everybody who gave generous donations over the last month so that the project could be completed. Really cant express in words how much this all means to the family. 

Muchas Gracias muy amable mis amigos.....

"Batman and Robbin" (week 8.... + )

Firstly I would like to apologise for long delay in getting a new post up in so long. Before I explain the reasons for that I would like to go through a few pics that I took over the last two days I worked over a month ago now.

Above is the septic tank with shuttering, ready for concrete to be poured.

Above is the septic tank complete with concrete base. Monies were tight at this stage so we tried to finish off a few jobs with the materials we already had lting around.

These jobs included, using planks that were left over to builf the bathroom walls and using stones on the site to form a pathway and entrance to the house.

Ok so now the explaining part..........

The weekend after I took these photos I went to Antigua to kill time waiting for funds to come through and for some R and R. On the Saturday night I was in Reillys having a few pints and about 12.30 I decided to take a walk for some food. I was walking along the street and the next thing I knew I was stabbed in the leg. (calm down Liz im fine) The boy with the knife started waving the knife at me so I told him to calm down and take what he wanted. His girlfreind (they get my vote for couple of the year award in OK magazine) then proceeded to go through my pockets, took my phone, left my credit card and about 35 euro in my pocket. They werent exactly cat burglars has to be said. I then met a couple who rang an ambulance and I asked them to go tell one of the lads (Deane) what happened and to follow me out. The hospital was the finest of services. Id expect less from a hospital in Ireland truth be told. I had to get a tetnis injection and 3 stitches. The next day I couldnt really walk so I got a lend of crutches off a friend. I was on them for about 3 weeks in total. I then went to a specialist to see was everything ok and he confirmed it was thankfully and that I just needed to do some excercises to build back up the muscle and take care of it for at least 3 weeks. I suppose I took so long to write about this because I wanted to have some perspective on the whole matter that I couldnt have had around the time and also because I didnt want anyone worrying back home. I am telling it now mainly because there are a lot of people that have an interest in the work im doing due to sending funds etc so I feel I need to explain why the project has been on hold for so long without word.

How do I feel about the whole thing now? I am still pretty pissed off that it happened at all and I hope the two fools that did it die a slow and painful death. I argued in the past that when people were getting robbed near volcan agua that it wasnt a simple case of right and wrong, as the families in the region were probably desperate to feed there families as the area had been badly hit by landslides in the months previous. In that case the roberies, I heard of at least, were non violent and they simply asked for the money etc. Literally the first thing I knew about being robbed was a steak knife in my leg. Pure stupidity as they could have killed me if they had hit an artery, and I would have given them the shitty phone without a word if they had of asked. In saying this I have to take a lot of blame for putting myself in the situation in the first place. I had a good few pints in me and should have known better to be walking around antigua at night by myself. Im sure that they seen I had a few pints in me before they decided to rob me and that if I hadn't of been alone it would nt have happened either.

How do I feel about Guatemala now? I can honestly say I feel the same way about Guatelemala now as I did a month ago. I love the place. I got robbed in a dangerous city because I was stupid. Would it happen in Dublin, New York or London in similar circumstances? Yes of course it would. If I had of been robbed by the people I am here to work with in Huehue that would be totally different. It is not the case however and it would be totally unfair to think otherwise. Would it be fair for me to feel guilty over what Larry Murphy has done? No. I dont regret anything I have done here or plan to do as I know I have recieved more from Guatemala than I could ever give back.

O and by the way I was going to post a pic of the scar but it is so pathetic looking that im not going to bother. Looks like I had an altercation with a kitten over a spool of wool. Pathetic, I was hoping at least to get a decent looking scar to go along with the story. But nope.... O yea went down to visit some frineds opening a bar in nicargau last week. Got bit by a vampire bat. Month of rabies shots. Thank got October is over : ) All good too, 2 more shots to get and im grand.

Right so moving on............

Myself and Gavin arrived in Huehue today and we will be here until the project is finshed, hopefully before December. I will have a new post up on the blog this weekend and will have one every sunday thereafter.