Mamposteo Foundation

 

The foundation is almost finished. The trenches are quite deep so building up the mamposteo takes a bit longer. In the next photo can be seen the foundation for the living room, the kitchen/dining room in the middle and part of the bathroom.

The openings at various intervals will serve to anchor the castillos or supports made of 4 re-bars and steel rings (actually, they’re rectangular) around which concrete will be poured all the way up to the height of the walls, e.g. 2,50 metres in addition to the 1 metre depth of the mamposteo. The men will fashion the support and I’ll take photos of the process.

At the bottom of the photo above is where the bathroom will be. On the photo below is the mamposteo for the bathroom. Note that I had the mason install the PVC pipes that will take care of the grey water from the bathroom sink and the shower.

The only trenches still to be filled are the north and east walls of the bedroom. The photo below shows how deep and wide the trench had to be. The excavation was difficult and the Bobcat could not position itself sideways so as to dig more in terms of an appropriate width.

This particular trench is the deepest of the lot at 1,20 m.

There will not be any work performed for the next two weeks. I have the mason and his helper two weeks out of the month. Next, they will be working on some of Peter’s plans.

 

Here are my costs:-

I needed three and a half loads of stones for a total of $2750 pesos

8 bags of cement were $912 pesos

24 bags of cal were also $912 pesos

Labour for the second week – 44 hours a week came to $2600 pesos.

I’ll see if I can rig up some music for Marcelino and Jorge when they come next. Friday was the last day until July 25th. We celebrated with roast chicken. My treat.

With no progress to report until then, I will spend more time on my other blog.

LiveJournal Tags: Building mamposteo,Construction in Mexico,Costs