Week 4

The water and waste management team joined us on site including Cory VonAchen and Greg Ewing (check out their blog which is linked on the left side of the page). Their first major project was to brave the intense stench of the septic tank to move it from the back of the house (where we will be building Phase 2 and therefore need to fill with concrete) to the north side of the house and new building. They have also been running tests on water flow rates and scoping out materials needed for their sand filter. The GIEU study abroad group, including 14 undergraduate students (from all different departments) and 1 instructor, Mindy Matice, has also joined us on site. The extra hands have made the work progress much more quickly. We finally reached a completion point with interior trench digging for Phase 1 and began slab formwork. We have reached the rebar level and will soon be pouring column footings. We got our first electrically operated tool – a concrete mixer! Unfortunately, the primary generator is down and the smaller, temporary one, may not be able to take it. That will be fixed “soon” though. In the meantime, we will continue to mix concrete by hand.
We were recently visited on site by another pedreiro who is currently working on a project down the street at another lodge. He approved of our work thus far but recommended that we dig shallow footings for the veranda columns and confirmed that the veranda columns should be full of concrete as well (regardless of whether they are constructed with brick + rebar or if constructed with PVC pipe – an option we are currently looking into. We have also had mixed responses to what concrete and mortar mixes are typically used and finally received a confirmation that our mixes were good – 4 sand, 1 sikal (equivalent to lime), 1 cement for mortar, and 3 sand, 2 aggregate, and 1 cement for concrete.

Our days of manual labor and nights of computer and drawing-related labor have been getting longer as we have been working out more construction details but we have managed to enjoy a few more world cup games – happily seeing Brazil and the USA continue onto the round of 16. We were also joined by a group of five enthusiastic writers, photographers, and videographers. They are making an epic journey through South America in an orange 1982 Volkwagon Westfalia and happened to get wind of the project we are working on. They stopped and worked with us for a day – helping finish up the trenches for the veranda columns (check out their website – inverdant.com). Milton (the cook) and Maria (the housekeeper) also hosted a little festa at their house (they live in the house on the building site) this week – there was loud music from car speakers, dancing, and cachaça. Saúde (pronounced “saw-oo-gee”)!

Pictured here are Cory and Greg with the gear they used to remove all the waste – buckets and masks; material arriving and being unloaded (it seems that material delivery is the one and only thing in here which happens as scheduled, we have been very impressed); mixing mortar using the “volcano” method (basically, piling materials, mixing materials into a mountainous heap, creating a crater in the middle, pouring water in the crater, shovel and mix materials, then repeat; the group enjoying a brick laying demonstration; an expert mason, in the making