The Big Roof ~ Part 5 ~ And Thank You Zach!

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First, I want to shout out a big thank you to friend Zach. Zach reads my blog and saw that this site was having difficulty staying live. Zach, being the very good Geek that he is, volunteered to move my blog to another host and server where I might have better results. In the process of starting the move, he did a chat with the current host, DreamHost. During the chat, it was discovered that PageSpeed Optimization, whatever that is, was enabled, and that doesn’t work well with WordPress. They unchecked the box and this site has been up and stable for days now. So thank you Zach for speaking fluent Geek and helping me with this!

Now on to the big roof: In Part 4, we were left with something that looked like this:

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It was time to weld that upper left corner of the roof (previous photo) that I have been putting off because of the swarm of bees in the trees. The bees were fewer, but still a threat, so I set up a tarp on a plank. I wormed my way under the tarp and made the weld. The bees didn’t even know I was there:

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I thought I was in a B pirate movie; Arrrrrrrrrr, crawl the plank, matey!

Working at the very top of the ladders, I welded the rafters into place. Then Armando and I placed five more roofing panels. I used the sawzall to cut the panel on the angle:

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Armando screwed the edge of the panel to the beam.

At this point the roof looks like this:

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The next part of this Big Roof task is to frame the roof over the roof deck on container #1. This involves raising this long beam above the outside edge of container #1:

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I decided to sit the beam on four 2″x2″ columns, and these 2x2s will be integrated into the railing that will go around the deck. You can see the columns welded into place in the next photo. You can also see that I have moved the beam closer to where it will go, set up a ladder at the right end of the container, and am assembling a scaffolding at the left end of the container:

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Now we have arrived at an interesting (difficult, dangerous, and dumb-if-I-do-it-wrong) point. I have to balance the heavy beam on top of the 2×2 columns and weld it into place. Hmmmm. That’s not going to happen with just Armando and me. With metal against metal, the beam could too easily end up on the ground and I hate it when that happens. So what I decided to do was to cut four square 2″x2″ (plus a whisker) holes in the bottom of the beam; the beam will then just slip over the columns and give me all the time in the world to weld the beam to the columns.

I moved the beam a bit closer to its final resting point and called Armando into play. In the next photo I explain the process to him: we’ll lift the beam onto the top of the scaffold and the ladder and then onto the top of the columns. He, on the scaffolding, will slip the first column into the first hole, and I will keep my end high enough for him to then move and place the second and third columns into their sockets. Then I will drop the beam over the remaining column. Here we go:

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Discussing the action plan…

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Lifting the beam into the air…

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Now my end…

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Just a little more… 

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Today, Armando…

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One down…

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And another…

And here we admire our handwork:

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The beam sits about twelve-feet off the top of the container.

With the beam in place, we can now extend the long, angled beams. Here is the first one:

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If you take a closer look you will see that I cut away the top and bottom of the beam so that it would slip into the end of the already-in-place beam and reduce to zero the time Armando would have had to hold it in place while I welded it:

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Tab A into socket B, like this:

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Here it is all placed in its socket and ready for me to weld it tight:

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Now you can see that the roof continues to sweep up into the air. This beam is now 52-feet long!

Rinse and repeat three more times:

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Next it is just a matter of welding the rafters into place just as I did on the rest of the roof. Here I have a good start:

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I’m beginning to see the end of this Big Roof project. Now I need to weld in the rest of the rafters and then frame the far end of this part of the roof. When it is all framed, I will trim the ends of the beams that are sticking out on the left (above photo) and weld on a 2×6 facia. Armando and I are chomping at the bit to get the last of the roof panels in place. You know what that means? No rest for the weary; time to tackle the Big Floor!

In the mean time, Armando has been building a kitchen onto his house and he needed a door. Manufactured doors can be bought for around a hundred dollars, but that is out of his price range. So he bought three pine boards for fifteen dollars. I helped him cut them to size and assemble the door. Here is the outside of the door:

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To take the warping power out of the wood, I made a cut (about one-third of the thickness of the board) down the middle of each of the three boards.

We assembled the three boards with bevel-edged cleats attached with drywall screws. The screws stuck through the other side a little bit so I had him grind them down with the angle grinder:

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On this side of each board I made two cuts about a third of the way through the thickness of the board to further control any warpage. Armando was mighty happy and proud to take the door home for his wife’s kitchen. “Better than a store-bought door!” he proclaimed (even if the screw pattern isn’t quite perfect…).

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by and THANKS AGAIN ZACH!

The In Between Roof

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Note: My site is experiencing a major problem and crashes frequently. The tech folks that host my site are working on it, but say the the real fix will be to upgrade to new server software, which will take a significant amount of time. In the meantime, when I notice that the site is down again I am to contact the techs and ask for a system reboot. So sorry for the coming and going of my site. I’ll try to sneak in a new post as often as the system allows!

New post: I’m still working on the Big Roof, making progress between rain drops. But every time it rains, a lot of water makes its way into what will be the inside of the house. So I took two days and focused on the roof over container #3.

In the next photo you can see that two pitched roofs are now dumping water on top of container #3 (#3 is the red container roof in the lower right corner of the photo):

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The first thing I did was to put Plycem (cement board) on the wall under the eaves of the big roof. The wall under the smaller roof was already sheathed. Then I screwed a 40-foot 2″x4″ metal carriola to each Plycem wall, pitching the 2x4s down toward the far end of the container. Then I cut carriola rafters and welded them into place between the 40-footers. It looked like this:

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At 6:00 sharp the next morning, I swept all the water off of the roof and let it dry for a while. When Armando arrived, he and I rolled out a radiant barrier on top of the container. This barrier is like aluminized bubble wrap. Correction; this barrier is an aluminized bubble wrap. The bubbles themselves don’t do much insulation work, but the aluminum barrier radiates the heat back up to the zinc roofing panels. It should be plenty for our minimal insulation needs here in the mountains. Here we are placing the radiant barrier:

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We also got a coat of paint on the weld joints to keep them from rusting. We used a propane torch to dry the welds before painting them.

The weather was looking a bit dicey, so Armando and I looked at each other and decided to put the hustle on installing the roof panels. We didn’t want a lot of water falling on the container. Sure, it would evaporate over time, but I didn’t want a moldy mess in the meantime.

The 20-foot panels are just heavy enough to be a lot of work hefting them onto the roof:

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Cynthia wants to make sure that you see my hands…

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You can see that we let the zinc panels curl up the walls a little bit. This should prevent any water from finding its way to the container roof below.

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Doing the hustle...

Doing the Hustle…

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We installed the last screw not a moment too soon:

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Cynthia contemplates taking a shower… We of course will install a gutter and downspout to get the water away from the house.

In Other News, Armando continues to dig the fish pond. This is a muddy proposition for him; as he digs lower into the mud he has to hit every shovelful on the side of the wheelbarrow to get the dirt off. But he is making good progress:

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It looks to me like there is one piece of lasagna left in the pan. Or maybe it is chocolate cake.

Every morning that Armando works on the fishpond, we have to pump the pit:

We’ve had a visitor in the trees in the lot directly behind us:

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These are telephoto shots, but still, this is one big sloth!

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And if you are a real glutton for punishment, here is a video of a recent drive down the mountain to a hardware and materials store in San Carlos. If you are interested in the area or want to see the condition of the roads here, then OK, maybe a viewing is justified. But I warned you, it’s just a dash cam video:

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

The Big Roof ~ Part 4

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The Big Roof isn’t done yet, but progress is perceivable. I like the next photo that Cynthia took of me welding an X brace onto the roof. I used 1/16″x1″ flat stock (called platina), welding it to each rafter as it crossed the roof. This will keep the roof “square” and keep it from wracking in the wind:

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I’ve welded in a lot more of the rafters:

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One nice day Armando, our neighbor Tomas, and I started at 6:00 a.m. and screwed down nine, twenty-foot roofing panels. Each panel is 42-inches wide. Although that’s a lot of sheets and square feet, you can see that there is still a lot to go. It’s a big roof!

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Since I took this photo, I have completed the rafters in the little square area to the left of the sheets.

The next picture gives a better perspective on the size of the roof. I still have to weld in the rafters on the left section, plus I have to build the roof that will cover the roof deck:

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The rains have been washing the tree blossoms away, so that means that the bees are almost gone too. I am going to try to get to that upper left corner of the roof (previous photo) tomorrow and see if I can weld without raising the ire of the remaining bees. Wish me luck. If I can, then I will start welding in the remaining rafters in that area that overhangs the front of the house. Then more panels, then the section over the roof deck. I figure that I have until the fifteenth of June to work on the roof, then I’ll have to start working on doors and windows so that we can move in the fifteenth of July. Maybe the end of July.

Here is what the place looks like from the front steps:

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I took a short 360-degree panarama video from the Big Roof. I can’t believe that we live here:

In other news, Armando has been digging the fish pond. He is putting the dirt in the big gardens and also across the street to improve his yucca and guandu (wan-doo — pigeon pea) garden:

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We have a pump to extract the water when it gets too deep.

And he has been cutting the grass and weeding the gardens, both growing rapidly with the arrival of the rains:

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Where’s Armando?

The photo above reminds me of one of my favorite artists, Henri Rousseau (link):

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And when it has been too rainy for me to weld outside, I’ve been doing odds and ends inside, including preparing the stuccoed walls for paint by wet grinding them. This process uses an angle grinder with a diamond grinding/polishing pad. A garden hose is attached to the grinder to wash away the gritty debris. It is all a big mess and is quite scary — water and electricity is never a good idea — even though I have the tool plugged into a GFCI protector. Here are a few photos that Cynthia took:

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I’m wearing the latest in fashion: rubber gloves, rubber boots, boxer skivvies, and a plastic trash bag cut for my head and arms.

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Cyn insisted that I post this photo. She said I was “cute.” Go figure!

And then there is this NSFW atrocity:

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I’ll leave you with that last photo to ponder. What I will do for art. That’s all for now.

A Slight Diversion ~ I Play Plumber At The Rental House

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First, this site has been down a lot for the past two weeks. I have been on tech support many times. We finally came to the conclusion that there was a conflict in the WordPress software that I use to write this blog. More specifically, the problem seems to be one of the plugins that enhance the software. So I have disabled most of the plugins and will be adding them back in one at a time to see which one I am allergic to. So please bear with me as I sort this thing out. Thanks.

There is progress on the big roof. Slow but sure. The rain has arrived and is making up for lost time with a vengeance. So some days I can’t weld, and others I can weld some.

I also had to take three days away from the job to install a new well pump at the house that we rent. The pump would cycle, cycle, and cycle even when no water was being used. The electric bill was astronomical for several months.

Our landlady is elderly and lives several hours away. If we want something done here, it is best to just do it ourselves. On day one, I tried to fix it. I Googled and figured that water was leaking out the bottom of one of the two pipes that go 90-feet down into the well. I removed  the pump house roof so that I could pull the pipes up and out of the well, then pulled the pipes. I replaced the suspicious-looking check valve at the bottom of the larger pipe and replaced the pipes down into the well. I had to stop several times to repair the pipes as they were old and fragile. This took three trips into town for parts and three trips to my shop for tools. Nothing changed, the pump still cycled. I also noticed that the pressure tank was full of water; normally it has an inflated air bag inside of the tank, but I couldn’t pump air into it. Obviously the bag had rotted and the tank needed to be replaced. This could mean that the pressure relay wasn’t responding correctly. That night and the next morning we showered at the new house.

Pump houses can be dangerous places. The gardener at the last house that we rented told me to always check for snakes before I enter the structure. It is a nice, dry hangout for them. Here is the pump house:

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About two years ago the roof blew off of the pump house. Armando and I installed a new one, which made removing it to run the pipes much easier. Everything at this house is antique and falling apart. Touch one thing and two other things break. I wouldn’t want to be the next renter.

In addition to snakes you need to watch for stinging/biting insects. In the next photo are two nests; the larger is home for biting flies that love to swarm and bite your head, the smaller is a mud wasp nest:

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I tried, but I’m not a pump guy, so early on day two I called Hector, a plumber from town. He came shortly later. We pulled the pipes again, no small task because the pipes were filled with water and were very heavy. Although I did it myself the first time, this time it took the Hector, Armando, and me. No wonder I struggled the first time! He diagnosed that the foot valve at the bottom of the pipe (different from the check valve) was shot and needed to be replaced, along with the pressure tank. We agreed that I would seek new parts and that he would return the next day at 2:00 p.m. sharp.

I headed down the mountain to the pool and well supply store in Coronado, I told my tale of woe and intrigue and showed them the foot valve that I had brought with me. Three people retreated to the office with the foot valve and pulled out many reference books. They also called many suppliers who all promised to get right back to them. They called again and again, and kept checking the books for the part number stamped on the foot valve. As I waited many hours, six to be exact, the verdict was in. The foot valve was discontinued. None existed.

And because the foot valve is matched to the pump, the still-working pump was now unusable. Here is the antique pump:

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The manager worked up a quote for me. $1,500 for a new pump, pressure tank, control module, pump-protection module, wire, and a few other odds and ends. I asked her if she would be so kind as to call our landlady, Carmen, and explain the situation. I speak almost enough Spanish and Carmen speaks some English, but I knew this would be a tough go because she doesn’t like to spend money on the property. The manager called Carmen and led her through the story, three times as is customary in Panama, gave her the price, and told her that I would do the labor at no charge, saving her many hundreds of dollars. Several calls later, as Carmen needed to consult with family, she gave her blessing to the project. I said that I could buy the parts but that I needed to be reimbursed right away. The deal that we struck is that I would front the money. We would deduct two-month’s rent, meaning that I wouldn’t have to pay for the next two months. And finally, Carmen owns a bakery that makes deliveries here to El Valle every week. The driver would stop here at the rental house the next delivery day and pay me the balance. Deal. I figured that even if I didn’t get reimbursed, I could pull the equipment and use it as a backup at the new house.

So after eight hours in the store, I left loaded down with the same system that I installed at our new house.

The third day I knew that Hector would arrive at 2:00 that afternoon. There was a lot I could do myself, so I got to work at 6:00 a.m. sharp. I gutted the old system from the pump house, mounted the control boxes on the wall, drove into town and bought a hundred feet of new pipe and fittings and 100-feet of polypropylene rope.

Back at the house I glued the pipe sections together, assembled the submersible pump to the motor, connected the wire to the motor, and attached the pump/motor assembly to the bottom end of the 100-feet of pipe. I tied the rope to the motor as insurance in case the pipe should break. It was now about 2:30. No tech yet.

Cynthia and I lowered the motor into the 4-inch well pipe, followed by the 100-feet of pipe, the wire, and the rope. At about 90-feet I tied the rope to one of the roof rafters, thereby suspending the pump off the bottom of the well.

Still no Hector, I connected the pipe to the pressure tank and to the house plumbing. Still no Hector, I went to the new house, made a diagram of how I had wired the control boxes to the breaker panel, returned to the pump house and proceeded to wire the system. It started to rain so I re-installed the roof panel, cleaned up my mess of tools. Still no Hector. Here is my installation:

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The mess in the background is from previous repairs and the current install. I left it there as evidence that I did something.

You can buy a sanitary cap for the top of the pipe to keep possums and insects out of the well. I couldn’t find one so I took a regular four-inch PVC pipe cap and drilled holes in it. I sealed the openings with plumber’s putty. I also installed a universal joint for easy removal of the pump the next time:

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It was now 6:30 p.m., nearly dark, and the moment of truth had arrived. It was time to flip the breaker, a nerve-wracking proposition because if I wired anything incorrectly I could fry the pump or one of the control panels, and that would be on my dime.

I rechecked all the wiring, and even though I am not superstitious, for the drama of it I crossed my fingers, and flipped the breaker.

The appropriate lights lighted on the pump protection panel. The pressure tank filled and triggered the relay, thereby shutting off the pump. I opened a faucet.

And water flowed.

P.S. On Tuesday, Carmen’s bakery truck driver stopped at the house. We exchanged the receipts for a big wad of cash. Hector still hasn’t returned.

That’s all for now. See you on the roof!

The Big Roof ~ Part 3

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The roof shows progress, but not enough, not fast enough. Whenever you work off the ground, multiply the time times two. Or three. For every rafter that I weld into place, I have to move the scaffolding, advancing two feet at a time. So it is up the scaffolding, down the scaffolding; I’m getting more-than-enough Jungle Jim Fred time in on this project! And sometimes I get to the top of the scaffolding and find that I have forgotten to turn on the welder. Down the scaffolding, up the scaffolding.

And the rain is making its debut. Friday and Saturday I lost much of the day to huge downpours that lasted several hours. But I am not complaining, we need the rain; Panama is currently in a drought because of the several-week delay in the seasonal rains. We get 50% of our electric power from hydroelectric dams, and the reservoirs are perilously low. School has been cancelled and government offices have shortened work hours. Air conditioning in businesses has been restricted, fish are dying in rivers because of low water and/or warmer water than usual, and cattle are dying due to the lack of water and grass. If we all don’t cut back enough, there will be rolling 4-hour electrical blackouts. So I won’t complain about losing time; the greater good is much more important.

In my last post, I had three of the main beams in place. In the next photo I have a lot of the rafters welded in place and I am in the process of sliding the east beam into place:

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Looking down, you can see the welder on the top of container #2 — the future loft. Yes, I’ve been wearing my safety harness!

I had difficulty getting the eastern-most beam into place. There are a lot of bees in the trees at the front of the house, and all bees in Panama are Africanized. They were paying a bit more attention to me than I would like, darting rapidly closer and closer to me; they even swarmed at the end of the carriola where I had placed my hands. So I moved the beam the last few feet with a long 2×4, then tied the beam into place. I’ll weld it later when/if the bees go away. Here is a photo taken from the carport roof:

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The yellow tow strap and the come-along are holding the roof “square.”

Because of the bees, I decided to work at the far end of the roof. I welded together two more 40-foot 2x6s to make the last beam, plus I welded together two, 8-foot 2x4s for a column on top of container #2. Armando and I raised the beam to its perch and I clamped it, then welded it into place:

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Here is the last beam, ready to receive columns below to create the west wall of the living room:

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Because there isn’t much Armando can do on the roof while I weld, he has been busy digging the fish pond that will be near the hydroponic greenhouse. No photos yet, it’s just a hole in the ground.

In other news, I couldn’t sleep last night (Saturday) so I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood from midnight to about 3:00 a.m. With the recent rains, the frogs and toads and other water-loving night creatures have come alive. Here is a video of the raucous sounds of nighttime in the tropics just a few steps from our rental house. Actually, it was too dark to make a video but the audio came through loud and clear. Turn up your speakers:

And by the way, Ramiro (with the head injury) just came to our house with a big bag of star fruit (fruta de china [chee-na]). I gave him an extra hardhat that I had. The wound is healing very well and he plans to be back to work soon.

It is now 2:00 Sunday afternoon and the sky has just opened to a downpour. I guess that Armando and I will have to switch to our rainy-season start time of 6:00 or 7:00 a.m.

That’s all for now. More welding next week.

Heads Up Armando ~ Let’s Double Down On Accident Prevention

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This has been a not-much-progress week so far. Monday was a holiday. No Armando, and I decided to take the day off to rest. Tuesday I managed to get six rafters welded into place, and today, Wednesday, I visited a neighbor in the hospital.

Hospital? Si. Yesterday just before 5:00 in the afternoon Cynthia heard a loud crash. We were just starting to prepare dinner at the rental house. Cynthia heard someone yell, “Fred!!! Fred!!! Fred!!!” It was our neighbor, Ramiro. Ramiro and another man have been working on Ramiro’s house, painting and doing general maintenance. It’s not actually Ramiro’s house; he works for the owner. He lives there full time as the caretaker. Anyway, the guys had a section of pipe scaffolding about 20-feet high set up at the side of the house.

Ramiro was working on the ground under the scaffolding. Somehow, the details are unclear to me and perhaps everyone, a metal, ten-foot-long, double 2×4 carriola, similar to the ones I have been using, fell from the top of the scaffolding. If you are squeamish, let me just say that Ramiro was badly hurt. You can stop reading now.

The double carriola came down end first on the top of Ramiro’s head, and like a cookie cutter, cut a four-inch by two-inch “L” shaped gash down to the skull.

After an unbelievable belt on the head, Ramiro didn’t pass out, but began yelling for me. The other man ran to our house and yelled out what had happened. Although I didn’t understand everything he said, I knew to roll Ambulancia de Fred.

Ramiro’s sister was visiting him, and she got a big bath towel wrapped around his head. Ramiro got into the car and I flew down into town, horn blowing and flashers flashing, to Central Salud, our local bare-bones (no pun intended) emergency clinic.

Head wounds bleed profusely and he lost a lot of blood. The towel was saturated. I’ll stop with that description there.

I blew the horn when I arrived at the clinic and a nurse responded immediately. We got him inside and the doctor dropped what he was doing (stitching a cut on another man’s hand) and got to work on Ramiro.

Many stitches later, the bleeding had stopped. The doctor said that they were going to transport Ramiro by ambulance to the hospital in Penonome’ that serves this area of our province.

The doctor thought it would be best if I followed the ambulance so that I would be on hand to help in case Ramiro passed out and couldn’t give his particulars. The cost to Ramiro for the stitching up, which they said he could pay later, was $1.50. That’s a dollar. And fifty cents.

The ambulance managed the usually-an-hour-and-a-half trip in under an hour. The ambulance driver said that I was pegamento (glue) on his bumper.

Ramiro was taken by wheelchair through the emergency room and into the Trauma Center. I know it was the Trauma Center because there was a sign on the door. The small room had two cots. This room also doubled as a supply room, and I could have easily filled my pockets with syringes and other supplies that were lying about the floor and on shelves in cardboard boxes.

The only piece of medical equipment in the room was a large tank of oxygen. It was standing, unsecured, against a wall. While we were waiting, I heard an oxygen tank fall down in another room. Ramiro and I ducked for cover.

The first order of business was to record Ramiro’s name and other particulars. The nurse took his social security card and made a copy of it.

In Panama, full-time employees are required to be enrolled in social security. One of the benefits is that the poor and the very poor can get nearly-free medical care at any age. There are two types of hospitals in Panama: top-tier hospitals similar to better stateside hospitals, and the social security hospitals that leave a lot to be desired in all categories. Ramiro was in the second category.

In due time IVs were hung, shots were given, and X-rays were taken. I was asked to help wheel the gurney to and from X-ray as there was a shortage of available personnel.

At 9:00 Ramiro was really hungry, and so was I, so I set out to find a place to buy some fruit juice that Ramiro could drink through a straw, and I found some white rice for myself. It was quick. When I returned, Ramiro was just about to take a sip of his fresh pineapple juice when the nurse wagged her finger at him. Water only. So I enjoyed the rice and pineapple juice, a fine repast.

At 11:00 p.m. the doctor informed us that Ramiro would need to stay at least overnight, so I went on my way back home. Unfortunately I had to obey the speed limit as I had no ambulance to follow.

This morning Ramiro called and told me that he would be staying another day. Would I bring him a change of clothing? Sure. So back I went. He was still in his blood-soaked work clothes from the day before and hadn’t been allowed a shower. In the social security hospitals, there are no gowns to change into. If you want sheets on your bed or a pillow, a family member needs to bring them from home. If you want anything beyond medical care, toiletries or toilet paper for example, your family must provide it.

A tech came in to change the dressing while I was there. He needed an extra pair of hands, and had me, without gloves, hold the gauze on Ramiro’s head while he applied the stocking net.

Ramiro frequently comes by our house with a ripe papaya or a bag of oranges. Cynthia and I practice our Spanish and he his English. If we need anything, we can always count on Ramiro, and he lights up when we make a pizza for him. I bought him a newspaper and a $3 card to recharge his phone and because he looked tired, I went on my way.

Here’s a photo of Ramiro, already overnight in the hospital, and still in his bloody work clothes:

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The man with nine lives. Remarkably lucky. It could have been worse.

So this morning I told the tale to Armando. “Let’s wear our hardhats from now on.” I am always cautious on the job. But after having this experience, we’re going to double down before a double 2×4 comes down on one of us.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to get some work done tomorrow.

If you are game, here’s a picture of the wound:

 

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The doctor told me that he purposely left space between the stitches so that the wound would “weep.” He was very concerned about the potential for a hematoma so close to the brain.

The Big Roof ~ Part Two

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Monday I moved the welder back onto the top of container #1. Although the welder is really heavy, I pretty much lifted it with just one finger:

Once the welder was on the roof, I wanted to move it to the other side of the wall. How? Cut the doorway between the roof deck and the loft, of course. I felt my anxiety level rise because if I spent time cutting the doorway, I wasn’t working on the big roof. And if I wasn’t working on the roof, I was losing the race against the rain.

But as I have said elsewhere in this blog, I don’t run the job, the job runs the job. It takes the time it takes; you have to do things in the order that makes sense. Otherwise, you will work a lot harder to accomplish the same results.

Here is the doorway opening completed:

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I made a video of me cutting part of the doorway. Notice how I let the heavy angle grinder and gravity do the work. You may also notice that I take breaks to gasp for air; I hold my breath as I cut. I would wear a mask, but I am allergic to latex:

Ever wonder what a latex respirator allergy looks like? Check this awkward mug shot of me taken about six years ago:

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Yes, it is painful and burns like a bad sunburn. Itches like crazy too. My eyes are watering. It took a good three or four days to go away.

Now back to the roof… Um, not yet. First I needed to weld more of the big wall to the containers below; when I raised the wall I had only tacked it at the floor in a few places. That took about a day of welding on my hands and knees. This was a hot job with the sun beating down and the heat from the metal roof reflecting up at me.

Finally it was on to the roof. Armando and I lifted the three beams that I had previously welded together, onto the roof. Armando went back to cleaning the drainage ditches, and one by one I nudged two of the beams into place, each ten-feet from the previous one. I temporarily affixed them with clamps and ratchet-straps. But before I welded the beam to the 2×2 frames under the beams, I had to make the wall plumb. I used a tow strap and a come-along to ratchet the wall to be perfectly vertical. The next photo is a panorama composite; the beams really aren’t curved. But you can see the first of the three up in the air, as well as the come-along and the yellow tow strap connected all the way over to container #3:

Panorama -- Roof Rafters

When I was happy with the plumb of the wall, I spent an hour or two welding the ends of the beams to the supports below. I paid quite a bit of attention to this task. I would look darn silly if a strong wind sent the roof flying; this is a big roof and the lift on it will be substantial. Here is how it looks with the front wall done and the two new beams in place:

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I find it hard to believe, but plumbing the wall and affixing the two beams took an entire day. Much of the time was eaten up playing the Up-The-Ladder-Down-The-Ladder game. There went Wednesday!

Thursday was taken up with other business. Friday morning I noticed that the two new beams were bouncing and swaying in the wind. Here is a video of how much a 40-foot, unsupported double carriola bounces. The birds in the nearby trees are my constant companions:

I decided that this was the appropriate time to install a previously-planned-for column, at the edge of the loft, for each of the two beams. Again I paid a lot of attention to detail making good thick welds, difficult to do without burning holes in the thin metal carriolas. For each weld, I welded for a while, then ground the weld with the angle grinder to make sure the weld was sound, then welded and ground some more. I’m not a stress engineer, but I am sure that thin, wimpy welds wouldn’t stand the test of time; metal fatigue, generated by any roof flexing in the wind, would tear inferior joints apart. These welds took a lot of time. Here are the two columns in place:

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That’s where the roof stands as of Saturday afternoon. Next week I’ll be welding the roof rafters in place.

In other news, Armando is nearly done cleaning the drainage ditches (cunetas [coo-net-ahs]). We are adding one new ditch; when it rains, all the water has to drain from the hills behind us, past our lot, flow under the road, and work its way to the main road where it goes under the road and starts a new river.

One of the several bottlenecks is where the water crosses the dirt road in front of our house; the water backs up into our yard. Our neighbor to the east and I replaced the twelve-inch under-the-road drainage pipes at our adjoining lot line with eighteen-inch pipes; better, but the water still backs up. Much of the water comes through the lot to the west of us, so Armando and I decided it would be a good idea to put another under-the-road drainage pipe at our west lot line. Here’s Armando hard at it:

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Photo taken from the roof deck on container #1. By the way, that square of concrete is the top of our well.

Mango season has started. Down at the lower elevations, the mangoes are already in. These are big mangoes and cost a dollar and a half to two dollars if you buy them at the market. Better prices can be had by buying from small roadside stands. Mangoes at our elevation of about 2,200 feet (670 meters) will be ready closer to June. Here is one of the super-sweet beauties I bought the other day. Made a great breakfast:

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These mangoes are big. How big? So big that the mango can’t fit through the mango slicer!

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One mango fills a soup bowl. Ripe, sweet, and juicy. Delicious!

That’s all for now, more next week.

Big Metal In The Air ~ I Begin The Big Roof ~ Part 1

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With the big wall upright, I can now start the Big Roof. There is still some welding to be done on the big wall, but I will get to that when the welder is again on the roof. I started by welding together 2x4s to make columns for the front wall of the house and 2x6s to make the first roof beam. Here are the 2x4s: P1020033 And here is the first pair of 40-foot 2x6s welded together:

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I was getting a little tired at the end of the day and I burned a couple of holes in the metal. This won’t affect anything except my ego.

I sent Armando home early last Friday. He had a massive swelling of his right jaw, probably an abscessed tooth. Today is Tuesday and he still isn’t back to work, so I am on my own. My first task today was to raise the 40-foot beam into the air and rest it on the appropriate walls. I did this with pulleys where I could and my shoulder where I couldn’t use the pulleys. I figure that the beam weighs about 140 pounds, so it was slow but sure (I just learned the equivalent Spanish, “lento pero seguro”). Here’s a progress shot with the left end of the beam on a ladder and the right end up where it belongs:

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At this point I took a break and had four of our delicious bananas. They are ripening rapidly and I can’t eat them fast enough!

Here is the two pulley arrangement that I used to lift the beam to the top of the big wall. It sure made life easier: P1020039 Here is the beam lifted and placed: P1020047 Metal on metal slides very easily, so I used clamps to hold the ends in place. And because the beams are on an angle relative to the 2×2 that they are sitting on, I had to use metal shims to straighten the beam. In the next photo you can see the beam before I placed the shims under the right edge of the beam: P1020049 I spent the rest of the day cutting to length and raising two of the columns that will form the framing for the front door and the windows on the front wall of the house. In the next photo you can see that the column on the left is all welded in place. The column on the right is welded at the bottom; a rope is holding the top of the column:

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Yes, I know there is a splotch in a lot of my photos. I’ve tried to clean the lens, but it appears that the dust spot is on the inside of the lens. Welcome to the world of throw away electronics.

I made sure to make the column on the left plumb and square with the framing that it is sitting on. Then, before I welded the top of the right hand column, I cut a spacer from a piece of tubing. I moved the spacer up on the wall as high as I could reach and tacked it into place, thereby perfectly setting the width between the columns. Then I welded the top of the second column to the beam above. By the way, I felt really nervous welding at this height; my balance is distorted inside the welding helmet, so I got into my safety harness and tied myself to the beam. I just wasn’t up for a fall from eighteen feet:

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You can see the spacer tubing about half way up the wall.

Along the way I kept checking for plumb and square. These openings have to be perfect because there is no trimming the big glass panels when they arrive on the job:

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This collapsible 45- 90-degree square is one of my favorite tools.

On Wednesday, I walked to the house with Jabo. We played tug-a-rope all the way there, but when I went to open the front gate I realized that I was really tired. I decided to take some time off. Back at the rental house, I got a 45-minute nap before Armando arrived for work. He still has the bad tooth; the dentist is treating him with antibiotics to reduce the infection before he pulls the tooth. I gave the keys to Armando and instructed him to clean the drainage ditch on the other side of our back fence. I think that he likes it when I give him autonomy; he always tells me not to worry about him for the day and to go back to sleep. I went back to the hammock. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I was back to erecting columns and welding them in place. I had to curtail operations and cover the tools with a tarp a few times as thunderstorms rolled through in the afternoons. Here are progress photos: This is the alignment that I like to see:

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Looking dead on at the wall and only one post can be seen.

But move a bit to the side and you can see that all the posts are in perfect alignment. This took a lot of time and a lot of fiddling to get it right: P1020063 Here is the end of the day on Friday:

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Even though the columns are standing, I still have a bunch of welding to do to complete all the joints. Plus, I have to weld a line of double 2x4s at the same elevation as the header over the door.

And here is the front wall/first roof beam in place at the end of Saturday:

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Here is the wall viewed from the living room. Yes, I have been welding between raindrops:

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You can see where the front door will go. All the other panels will get glass. The door and the lower panels are all eight-feet tall.

In other news, the rainy season is coming and I have been wanting to seal the concrete roof on container #4. No appreciable amount of rain has hit the roof for nearly four months, so now is a perfect time to apply waterproofing. Looking at all the products at Cochez, I decided to use an elastomeric coating called Siliconizer. Over the course of two days, I applied the primer/sealer and two coats of Siliconizer. The primer is blue; in the next photo I am applying the first top coat:

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I had a long pole attached to the roller, but the cheap imported crap of a pole broke off at the cheap plastic crappy threads. What is it about Marginally Engineered Products these days? A paint roller used to last years, but now they are cheap imported crap and you are lucky to get one use out of them. Rant rant rant.

I cleaned the joint where the metal 2×3 meets the roof. If you look at the photo above you can see where some concrete had spilled during the pour. Here it is cleaned and ready for sealing: P1020031 I ran a bead of urethane caulk in the seam. When the caulk is fully cured, I’ll continue the Siliconizer over the edge of the roof:

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I used the pneumatic caulking gun; it sure made dispensing the thick urethane effortless. I used high quality Sikaflex urethane caulk, now being stocked at Cochez.

That’s all for now. Next week… the roof begins in earnest!

Big Wall Upright

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Whew! I can finally cross this project off the list. The 40-foot long wall that we removed from container #2 and dragged onto the roof is finally standing upright. Here’s my stand up routine:

In order to strengthen the floppy wet noodle wall section I needed to weld a frame of 2″x2″ square steel tubing onto the two ends and onto the top of the wall. At the same time, I needed to make a way for the under-the-roof heat to escape. I decided to make a seven-inch-high space that would remain always open, always venting. Why seven inches? It’s big enough to move a lot of air but small enough that an enterprising thief can’t climb through. I can make and attach some window screens to keep the bugs and bats out. The next photo shows this framework in process:

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To start I needed to weld two, 20-foot lengths of tubing together end to end. I clamped other pieces of tubing onto these two to keep the line straight.

Here’s a close up of the butt joint just before welding:

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The next photo shows the assembly a day later as I welded the seven-inch uprights between two 40-foot lengths of tubing:

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There really is no way to do this without putting in the time and effort. With the work on saw horses (burros in Spanish) I made a total of 72, two-inch welds and then ground them all flat with the angle grinder. This part of the project, including cutting, welding, and grinding, took me about two-and-a-half days.

With the tubing assembly completed but still up on the horses, the last piece of the puzzle before welding the framework to the wall section was to deal with the bottom of the wall where it will touch the floor. I needed some way to keep the bottom of the wall straight and well-attached to the container below. There must be eleven different ways to do this; I settled on welding 2″x2″ angle iron to the roof of container #2. Then, when I finally lift the wall I can weld the wall to the angle iron. The angle iron will also keep the bottom of the wall right where I want it while I raise the wall. Here’s a photo of the angle iron as I weld it to the roof of #2:

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After the wall is up and welded to the angle iron, I’ll paint everything really well. The angle iron will disappear under the concrete floor slab

Finally it was time to weld the square tubing framework to the container wall. Here I clamp the frame to the wall in preparation for welding:

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In the next photo I have the frame all welded to the wall, a come-along connected to the 4″x4″ (4×4) steel post that I welded to the container, and we are ready to raise the wall. You can also see a piece of 5/8-inch rebar (near Armando) that I welded to the top of the wall. When the wall is vertical, I will weld the free end of the rebar to the 4×4 post:

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I started cranking on the come-along. The top of the wall raised a few inches off the floor, but then the pipe that I was bracing the 4×4 with bent in the middle. It snapped up pretty fast and belted me in the chin. Some ice and some homeopathic Arnica and all is well. Still no serious injuries on the job.

So I let the wall back down and spent about an hour welding some rebar braces between the bottom of the 4×4 and the pipe. The braces look like this:

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Back to the come-along, I managed to lift the top of the wall a couple feet, but then the cranking got difficult. So I connected another come-along, this one at the center of the top of the wall. A few cranks on one, then a few cranks on the other. Back and forth and the wall lifted almost effortlessly.

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We had to stop midway to adjust one of the come-alongs, so we put a couple supports under the wall:

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It was anticlimactic after that until we got the wall almost vertical. Armando was really nervous that a gust of wind would catch the wall and send it too far, but I was cranking the come-alongs with one hand and had the rebar aligning with the 4×4 post with the other hand. As the rebar touched the 4×4 I gave one final crank on the come-along and then welded the rebar to the post. We supported the ends of the wall with planks, then we welded the wall to the angle iron at five points to secure the bottom of the wall. Here’s the final product standing proud:

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In the photo above, the far side of the wall will be a roof deck. The near side of the wall will be a loft. My next task will be to cut two, eight-foot long sections from the wall in container #1, and move them up on the roof to make end walls in the loft. And of course I will have to cut windows and a door in the wall too. The fun never ends!

In other news, Armando has been working on cleaning the drainage ditches. The rainy season is on its way; the sky is cloudier in general, black clouds are gathering in the south-east in the afternoons, and passing sprinkles are becoming more common. One day I welded all day in a persistent light mist, called bajareque (ba-ha-RAY-kay). I’ve got to get the roof on soon! Here’s Armando’s current project:

Before:

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After:

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Armando has been putting most of the extra dirt on the other side of the road by his yucca plants. The plants have been too low and too wet to produce a good crop.

Armando has a lot more digging to do, but by the time he is done I may be ready to have him help screw down a few roof panels on The Big Roof.

And here’s something you don’t see every day; a white frog hung out for a day on one of the container doors:

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That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.

Big Wall Up But Not Upright Yet

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The move-a-wall saga continues. Last week was Easter week, a big event in Panama, so Armando took a lot of time off. And I was really tired from cutting out the big wall and the doors and window, so I took four days off myself. When I was ready to go back to work there was a power outage that lasted most of my work day, so it was more hammock time.

But this morning there was no escaping it. It was time to lift the 800-pound wall, that I cut out last week, onto the roof. The project took about two-and-a-half hours from start to finish and there were no injuries! Here is how we did it:

First, I put a v-groove wheel at the edge of the container to guide the cable to the winch below on the ground. A funny thing happened; as I put the screw into the shipping container metal tubing, I heard a hissing sound. What happened is that that the tubing was so well welded that when I drilled into it here at about 2,200 feet above seal level*, the now-pressurized Chinese air was released:

*(About a week after publishing this post, I noticed a typo in the paragraph above. I wrote, “seal level” instead of “sea level.” I proof many times and then Cyn has a run at my post, too. But we missed this one; I think I’ll leave it as is, because I have never seen a seal swimming in the mountain lakes around here, only at sea level.)

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Then we wanted to move about ten-feet of the wall out of the container. We first tried with crowbars, but the wall was just too heavy. Nothing happened. So I got the come-along and tow straps out of the trunk of the car. We hooked onto the wall where I had welded one of the tie-down loops that I had cut off inside the container, then through the chain link fence, and onto a tree in the lot next door. Here is the wall pulled out and the cable connected from the winch up and over the container:

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I had Armando stand clear, then tapped a few times on the Up button on the winch and the wall raised effortlessly into the air:

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Cynthia got into the action, too, pushing the Up button:

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When the wall got to the top, and a few feet over the container, we didn’t notice that the wall got hung up on a small piece of metal. There was too much strain on the cable and it started to fray. Oops! Here is how bad it was:

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Here is the big winch freed from its mooring. You can see the frayed cable just below the window. Although not completely severed, the cable was too damaged to use. Time for Plan B.

Here’s Plan B. We switched to the come-along and tow straps that we had used earlier to pull the metal out of the container. I cranked the come-along and Armando used a big pry bar to encourage the wall up onto the roof:

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At this point the pulling got difficult; we needed to move more of the wall out of the container. I cut the damaged cable and Armando tied it off at the far end of the roof so that we wouldn’t lose any ground when I removed the come-along. Then we took the come-along and tow strap downstairs and hooked them up like this:

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Armando had to stand on the wall so that it wouldn’t lift into the air. I told him I was going to deduct 25-cents from his pay for the ride. He said it was like riding on the new MetroBus system in the city.

It was very hot and strenuous work so we took a break:

Armando likes a drink called Valle Fresh. We buy the orange-colored drink in three-liter bottles. We pour it into smaller bottles and freeze it; Armando likes that it stays cold throughout the morning.

Armando likes a drink called Valle Fresh. We buy the anything-but-fresh orange-colored drink in three-liter bottles. We pour it into smaller bottles and freeze it; Armando likes that it stays cold throughout the morning.

Back to work, we moved the come-along back up to the roof and inched the wall bit by bit. This was a good cardiac workout:

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Here the panel is almost all the way up:

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It’s a great sight from inside, too:

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After rearranging the tow strap and come-along one final time like this,

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The come-along is at the top of the yellow strap; the cable rides on the v-groove wheel at the top of the container.

we finally had this 800-pound gorilla completely moved onto the roof:

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Whew! That was a hot and grueling task! Armando and I did a big high-five and Cynthia said that I was her man. Life couldn’t be better.

…Did you notice how rusty the roofs of containers 1 and 2 are? Armando and I sanded and painted them about two years ago. In some places big flakes of metal are peeling off. Shipping containers are made of coreten steel, alloys that resist corrosion. Even so, if you are planning a container project, know that containers are not without maintenance issues. I’ll be cleaning and repainting the roofs before pouring concrete slabs over them.

The Banana Report: Harvest time! Armando said that because all of the petals had fallen off the flower at the bottom of the bananas, it was time to harvest them. Although they aren’t quite ripe yet, birds had already pecked away at one of the bananas. I cut the crop, moved them into the shop, and hung them by a rope from the ceiling. Another week or so and they will be ready to eat!

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How much does 30 pounds of bananas cost in the States?

Next step? I have to weld a frame of 2″x2″ steel tubing around the wall that we just lifted onto the roof, then lift it vertically to make the wall between the loft and the roof deck. The fun isn’t over yet!

That’s all for now. Thanks for stopping by.