Ciudad Vieja Eco House part two.....

First off I would like to apologise for the delay in writing the blog. To be honest these photos are already a little out dated but I will have a new post up to date before the weekend is out... Right so... Above is a pic of mother and new baby, all well and good.

This is myself and the kids. Been great to have the kids around in the mornings before they go to school. They remind you why were doing it and are always eager to help....

One day we had help from a few members of the families church. With their help we managed to dig the septic pit. The septic pit is 3 metres deep and about 1.2m square. The bottom metre is made up of large rocks, gravel and sand. This seperated the solids from fluids allowing for quicker break down of waste.

All hands on deck... Rusty Mary and the kids passing rocks inside the building to build up the level of floor. Using rocks and not for instance soil also reduces the risk of rising damp.

Mary digging the second pit. This pit is to catch water from the shower area and piela (traditional outside sink and washing station). By seperating the clean waste we will prolong the life of the septic pit which would fill up much more quickly unnesecarily.

Below is the shower/piela/toilet area. The picture directly below you can see the shower area. It consists of 1 metre cubed of layered rock and gravel to catch the water. There is a rock in the middel for standing on while washing. The ground beside is also sloped so that the water from the washing station goes directly into it.

Rusty and myself putting up the last of the floor joists..

Kusha taking a deserved break from her hard work and getting chased around by horny street dogs...

Minga feeding the chickens......

Structural frame complete with floor boards......... To Be Continued.....

Ciudad Vieja Eco House - Getting Started.......

A couple of weeks back we started the 2nd house in Guatemala. The woman who made this project possible is Mary Mullan. I met Mary while working in the bar one day. She came in because she heard there were two boys from her home town in Derry working there (Deane and Gavin). While we were waiting for the two boys to come in we got chatting. First off we figured out her sister lives in Ashford. Small world... She also explained that she had raised funds from friends and family before she came out but was having a bit of hassle finding the right people to build the house. I told her about the project in Huehue and she asked if it would be interested in building a house in Ciudad Vieja (15 mins from antigua). I jumped at the chance to build a house without having to get envloved with fundraising again. Mary is vounteering in Hermano Pedro hospital working with sick children and will be here for next few months. She met the family when she asked her spanish teacher if she new a family who needed help. The teacher asked her local priest who put them in contact with the family. The family consists of the father Francisco who works cutting coffee, the mother Herionita who normally works making tortillas and seven kids, Hectar, Anna. Maria, Jose, Juan, Dominga and a new born baby. Between them the parents earn around 60Q (6 euro/8 dollars) a day for a full days work. Herionita hasnt been working for the last few weeks however because of the new born baby. She said she will be back to work in a couple of weeks though (month in total after baby). The reason the baby hasnt a name yet is that the indigineous people of Guatamala consider it bad luck to give a baby a name before an actual christening. Right thats the back round we will get on with the construction project now.

First thing to do was clean up the site. Pretty messy at first glance but when you think of it if you have nothing much of value you would be reluctant to throw anything away either...

Next step was to dig the foundations and reduce the levels of the site. Below Jose and Olga can be seen working hard. Big thanks to Jose, Olga, Joep, Diego, Ale, Ramo and Lori who have all given there time and swet at various times so far. Special thanks to Rusty who has given up his life to work on the project and will be until it is finished. It is currently only myself and Rusty full time at the minute so if anyone around antigua is interested in giving a few hours or a few weeks we pick up volunteers at 7 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon outside cafe condesa. We normally work from 7 to 12 and from 2 to 5 to avoid the midday sun.

The foundations are a similar design to what we used in Huehue. Difference being the soil type. Easyt o dig but we did have to buy imported stone on the down side. The build up of the foundation is a RC ring beam with rebar uprights at base.

Stone layed with cement mortar for mass of foundations. 400mm wide by 600mm deep. Top layer of slate (DPC) with a 4 x 6 inch base plate on top tied down by bending the upright rebar over the top. This system is robust and enables the house to be mechanically fixed to the foundations which is important in earthquake resistent design. Also by using the stone we cut down on the use of cement making it cheaper and more eco friendly.  

Fag break... From left... Juan, Dominga, Rusty, Hecter, Remo, Diego and Ale.....

Above. Finished foundations...

 Above can be seen the base plate timber and the first corner column.

Two corner columns and the wall plate..........

All hands on deck. Kids have been great workers throughout the project so far. From mixing concrete for the foundations to loading stone there have been ever present and enthusiastic.

Start of a new year.... old friends and new projects...

With working in the bar i didnt get a chance to call up to see Dona Eulalia and the kids during christmas but myself and Diego went up in early January for a couple of days. Gavins chickens are coming on well, getting big. Two died but that would be normal enough out of 20 chickens. They made some improvements to the chicken house as can be seen below. Putting blankets on the walls to keep out the cold and a new water holder. We had slight concerns at first about buying the chickens in case Done Eulalia didnt see the long term benefit of keeping them for a long period to get eggs to sell, and getting a system together where there was an income coming in from the eggs along with a turn over of new chickens. But i am delighted to say, all credit to Dona Eulalia, she now even has 9 new chicks from her one original chicken so the mini enterprise seems to be flying by all accounts...

Feeding time at the zoo.............

We brought a few presents with us for the family it being christmas and all that... bike for the kids. Inititially i wanted to buy it for luis because i dropped him to soccer one day on the motor bike and it took me ten minutes. Then i seen him later on that day walking beside a friend who had a bike. luis in particular, but really all the kids worked really hard every day they weren't in school while building the house. I know it was there house anyway but still nice to give them some kind of pay for their hardwork. Dona Eulalia was telling me that the 3 youngest all go to school on the bike every morning now : ) She also told me she has poor oul Luis wore out with jobs to do on the bike, like going to the shop etc... kimberly has also just learned how to ride a bike for the first time...

We also got dona eulalia a blender. She was forever getting a lend of the next door neighbours for jobs while we were there so i thought it was a practical present. Only cost 20 euro and the bike was only 50 so compared to the kind of money I would have spent at home it really is pittens but I think it meant a good bit to them....

In december I paid for Sylvia to do computer and english classes during the holidays. This was her first trip to the internet cafe. She is flying now on FB and everything. (If you want her details let me know and i will put you in contact with her as long as I know you and you have contributed something towards the family.) As much as the house and evertyhing helps the family the only real way to stop the cycle of poverty is education. Sylvia is a smart girl and she is taking the opportunity by the scruff of the neck so this is the best way I can see the future of the family changing forever......




This week the dream team of myself Diego and Gavin were back in action. A friend here in Guatemala. Amy Holly asked us to help out with a building project near antigua. http://www.eftc.org.uk/ Amy is the director of Education for the Children Foundation here in Guatemala. The project, as the name suggests is mainly concerned with education. They have a school in jocotenagno which takes the poorest children from the surrounding areas and provides education as well as providing a range of other services complimentary to this goal. One part of this is from time to time providing repairs or actual houses for families. On Tuesday and Wednesday we had two different projects to do. The money for the projects was raised by a number of people involved with the charity in the states.

This first project was the structural repair and re roofing of an existing house. We basically took the existing building apart, rebuilt the damaged timber frame with new timbers, re used the best of the galvinised sheeting from the roof on the walls and put new galvinised sheeting on the roof.

The bottle lights were made possible from a donation from my cousin Verity in England. Verity has started a hypnotherapy business recently and kindly offered to charge her first clients on a donation basis. Older donations went towards the construction of Dona Eulalaias house in Chiantla.

I had the 40 euro donation since before christmas but didnt really know how to spend it well. The money paid for the tools required to make the bottle lights such as silicone gun, a hammer and a snips (large siccors) to cut the lamina along with the glue and silcone to make the actual lights.

Above and below you can see the finished house. It isnt pretty by all accounts but the roof will not leak anymore, there is some light during the day inside the building and where there was once plastic on the walls there is now glavinised sheeting. The total cost of the project was in the region of 500 euros.

On tuesday myslef Gavin, Mellisa and Nathan had a similar but smaller project to undertake.

The leaky roof was repaired with new sheets and the good sheets from the roof were used to repair the walls along with a kitchen area adjacent to the actual house.

To paraphrase Christy Moore..... I wasnt gonna say it but im gonna say it... We had a bit of drama in the morning working on this house. The woman of the house had a bit of a melt down when we told her we planned on using the old laminas on the adjacent kitchen. She said that the kitchen was her brothers and that as she only rents the property and one of her walls now is a boundary wall belonging to another property she needed all the laminas she could get because if she ever had to move she would be a wall short. Now there are two sides to this, on the one hand she was getting 14 new sheets for her roof so it would have been nice for her to show some charity to her family in turn, and give the sheets for a kitchen she used daily. On the other the galvinised sheets probably are the extent of her worldly possessions and if she had to move she wouldn't be able to afford the price of the new sheets missing so would be a wall short of a house.  In the end we were able to double the sheets on the back wall and repair the kitchen so the drama was resolved. For me this kind of thing is never easy, there is no right or wrong and I try to stick to what I know about which is doing the actual building work and leave the social side of it to the experts : )