Odds ‘N Ends

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I know, I know. A lot of you read my blog to see how we are working with the shipping containers, and there hasn’t been a lot of that lately. There will be, but not just yet.

Cynthia and I were remarking last week that other than the inside of my shop, nothing else is completely done. At two years into this project, and although we have accomplished a tremendous amount given our small crew, six-hour work days, long rainy seasons, and time out for health issues, everything has raw edges. We decided to focus for a few weeks on getting a few items DONE.

Columns: We thought it would be nice to drive up to the project and see the front entrance columns  done, so I started there. About a year ago, we built these two columns for the front gate:

May, 2011. Note how much has been done since then.

The columns still needed a concrete roof cap like the one on the electric service wall, so I set about making some forms. Here is one ready to be installed on a column:

It was somewhat strange working with wood again. I almost tried to weld it! For the nice tight corner joints I used my Kreg Pocket Hole Jig. You clamp your board in the jig, then insert the special drill bit into the appropriate hole in the jig and drill away:

Then you use special screws to screw the corners together:

Here are the forms in place and the concrete poured:

To prevent rainwater from flowing over the edges of the roof and staining the edges with dirt and mold, I pitched the concrete down toward the center line of the roof (to create an interior gutter) and toward the drain pipe.

Here is one of the roof-itos after I stripped the forms:

Of course, the columns are still too stark, so we went down the mountain and picked out a porcelain tile, to be delivered next week. We chose porcelain because the color goes all the way through the tile; regular ceramic tile has a thin layer of color that would be sure to chip when Armando cuts the grass and the weed whacker throws a stone at the tile. The photo doesn’t do it justice, but here is a peak anyway:

This tile will go on the two front gate columns, the electric service wall, and the two buttress columns at the carport.

Driveway: With the rainy season upon  us, the driveway has been muddy nearly every day. We had a big pile of crushed gravel, so Armando and I spread it on much of the driveway. I rolled it with the Honda Steamroller. Quite a difference from the first photo in this post:

Carport Wall: The carport columns and roof are in place, but we wanted a short wall in line with the columns. Because the carport roof is done, Armando was able to work even when it rained:

When the wall block work was done, Armando and I built a form and poured concrete for a shelf on top of the wall:

Here’s the wall and shelf with one side of the forms removed. It was raining cats and dogs all day so I couldn’t get to the outside forms:

Next week Armando will repello (stucco) the wall inside and out (weather permitting).

Plant Pots: I’ve had this little wall in my head for some time. I thought that the shelf would be a great place for plants that don’t need a lot of sun. One of us said, “How about bamboo?” Pots of a nice thin, leafy bamboo would look great on the shelf. It would create a natural curtain for the carport and create some mystery when viewed from the side road. That brings us to pots. We could spend a bunch of money on nice pots, so I said, “I could build them.” In the next photo I put some plastic on the floor of one of the containers and nailed forms to the floor. Armando and I will pour plant pot parts (say that three times fast) next week, then let them sit for a few weeks to cure. I plan to screw the concrete pieces together with plastic anchors and stainless steel screws unless any of you have a better idea:

I'll reinforce the concrete with 1/4" rebar. I'd like to mix in some strengthening fiber, but I haven't seen any in Panama.

Paint: Now that the shop is done and the repello has cured, its exterior walls can be painted, as can the container wall under the carport roof. This will do a lot to unify disparate parts of the project. Cynthia and I have had a Dickens of a time deciding on a color for the exterior of the house. Most Panamanian houses are white or cream or yellow or shocking pink or shocking green or, you get the point, and we would like something different. Any shade of gray was blah and reminded me of my military Navy days so that was out. A light yellow would be pleasant but it is overdone in our neighborhood. So after choosing the porcelain tile (but before we bought it), we went to a paint store to look at colors. Surprise of surprises, we chose a gray teal I guess you could call it. We think the house painted this color will blend nicely with the surrounding greenery. But as always with paint, we could hate it. So we bought a test quart and will withhold our decision until we see what it looks like on the exterior walls. 

Even though I am aching to get back to the windows in the containers, it felt good to work toward completing a few projects. I think seeing more pieces and parts finished will keep us jazzed and moving forward. Even Cynthia looks happier:

That’s all for now.

 

Carport Roof ~ Part 2 ~ Dry Underneath

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The carport roof is done, and it is such a pleasure to have all that dry space beneath it. Now we can mix concrete, only having to get wet when we get sand and gravel from out in the driveway. Here’s how we did part two of this project:

First, we built a second column the same as the first, except with slight adjustments for the slope of the land and the overall height. You can see all the column construction details at Part 1 so I’ll just show a couple photos here:

When the column was done, Armando and I installed the shop roofing out to the first column that we had built. In the next photo, notice that the temporary center support is still in place under the roof.

Next I welded 2″x6″ steel carriolas together to make strong main beams to support the new roof. In the next photo you can see that I welded one of these beams above the termination point of the roof over the shop, in effect making a truss. This made the roof strong enough to remove the temporary center post. It’s funny, but even after more than four years living in Panama, I’m still concerned about snow load on roofs! You can also see that I am in the process of raising the second beam between container 3 and the new column. By the way, the laser level came in very handy in setting the top of the new column level with the roof of the container.

I welded the front main beam to the pieces of rebar that extend the full length of the column and down into the footing a meter deep in the ground. The electrode cord on my welder wasn’t long enough to reach where I needed to weld, so I used the winch to raise the welder a few feet. This worked, but was time consuming and I had a lot more welding to do on the roof. Before I welded any more, I went to town and purchased wire to extend the electrode so I wouldn’t need the winch:

I like how the roof aligns with the front gate:

Then I fabricated three more beams for headers for the joists; one 4″x4″ (4×4) and two 4″x6″ (4×6), all 22-feet long. Here are the two 4x6s:

In the next photo you can see that the 4×4 went up against the house where I bolted it through the wall. You can also see that one of the 4×6 headers went in the center. I put the other 4×6 at the edge of the roof. I’ll weld the joists between these header beams, just as I did for the other part of the roof.

Of course, for the header beams to sit at the same height on the main beams, the larger 4x6s had to be notched two inches. These headers then sit on the main beams like Lincoln Logs:

Here I am cutting a notch in the beam.

Cynthia made sure that I wore my new safety harness and tied myself to the ladder in case the angle grinder kicked and threw me off balance. Ever the risk manager, I appreciate her attention to my safety. The harness was made in China and is brand named Savior. I knicknamed it Savior Ass:

From this point it was pretty straight forward to weld the joists in place. Then Armando and I hoisted the 22-foot sheetmetal panels onto the roof and screwed them into place. I’m glad it took only one day because I couldn’t raise my arms above my head the next!

You may have noticed that the two sections of the roof don’t meet at a ridge, but instead, the shop side of the roof is lower than the carport side, leaving a big horizontal clerestory opening. One big benefit of this is that when the sun hits the roof and heats the air below, all that hot air can escape through the clerestory opening, leaving the carport pleasantly cool below. Here are some photos of the completed roof.

The center beam doesn't look straight, but it is just an optical camera delusion.

This is a (somewhat nauseating because of the software-induced curvature) composite panorama.

I was concerned that the roof would look massive from the driveway, but the angle is just right and the roof doesn't draw attention to itself. Notice the mist in the air in the background; the rainy season is certainly upon us.

This is a telephoto view from the road. We CAN'T WAIT to paint a unifying color on the house and shop so that it doesn't look like Shantyville!

Now that all that is left to this big project is a front gutter and a small piece of roofing near the outside bathroom, the big question on our minds is, “What’s next?” I’ll let you know soon.

In other non-house news ~ Our neighborhood watch has another victory. We were awakened early the other morning at 4:30 to two gunshots right in front of our house. Seems that there was a thief or two in the area and someone in our neighborhood watch called the police. The police arrived, saw the thieves, and fired two shots in the air to get them to stop. (If there had been three thieves would the police have fired three shots?) But warning shots were to no avail; the thieves dropped their booty, including a large screen television, a large parrot, and some sacks of rice and beans, and disappeared into the nearby jungle. The police, using only the lights from their cell phones, were searching in tall grass for a discarded walkie talkie, but they couldn’t find it. I got our two, big, LED Maglite flashlights and loaned them to the police. They were loathe to return them to me and we had fun pulling them back and forth in mock jousting for possession! The police didn’t know which house had been broken into or where the stuff had come from, but I made some phone calls and was able to reunite everything with its owner. Although we didn’t get the bad guys locked up, at least they now know that the signs with the big eyeballs in our neighborhood are there for a reason.

And in other non-house news, Cedelinda, the Panamanian high school student who lives with us during the week, got a call from her father out in their pueblo of Chichi Bali. Seems that a snake had bitten their dog, Connie, and everyone was very upset. The snake killed one of their chickens and Connie ran in to help, getting bitten in the fracas. (Or should I say that there was a fracus and the dog was bitten on the nose?) I drove the now very much more rain damaged road to their home, picked up their dog, and took her to the local zoo. The zoo vet looked her over, and even I could see although there was now a third hole in her nose and some flowing blood, there was no swelling and she was in very good spirits. We decided that I would take the dog home, observe her for the day, and give him a call later that afternoon. The snake, it turns out, was a boa; a big fat one, five or six inches in diameter and at least six feet long according to Cedelinda’s dad. Luckily, boas don’t inject venom, but bite, hold on, and constrict their prey to crush it to death. The next morning Cedelinda and I returned Connie to Chichi Bali, not much worse for the experience but with a heck of a tale to tell her dog friends.

That’s all for now.

 

 

 

My Shop ~ Part 10 ~ OCCUPY

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I couldn’t stand it any longer. My new shop was finished and I wanted to start using it. But the workbench and a bunch of other tools were in my old shop at the house we are renting. I couldn’t wait to move from that old space. Although when we moved in I had poured a  concrete floor and patched the roof, it was still an old chicken coop with a very low ceiling and termites everywhere. Every time a mango fell from one of the overhanging trees, the paper-thin rusty roof got a new hole in it. The trees overhang the house, too, and when a mango hits the roof, one of us will exclaim, “Mango down!” Here’s the most flattering shot I could take of the space:

The inside was dismal and termites ruled:

Termite trails on the walls and holes in the roof

Armando, Sammy, and I got right to work. Everything was  a mess; I hadn’t used the shop much in the past two years and it was disorganized from moving necessities to the job site. I organized and they moved wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full of tools and supplies to to the truck. It took five trips in the Honda, including one trip just for the workbench and one trip just for the workbench top:

We unloaded everything into the new space. After two days of organizing it looks a lot better, but I still need another day or two to make it the way I want it. My plan now is to work on the carport roof, and one day soon it will rain early enough in the day that I can move back inside for the final touches. Here’s where it stands now:

The old Baldor bench grinder (go back up two photos) was looking a bit tattered so I gave it a couple coats of yellow paint:

The old Delta Homecraft drill press belonged to my grandfather. It is probably 60 years old.

I painted the big drawer in my workbench and waited a couple of days for it to dry. Next I cut some thin wooden strips and placed them in the drawer so that the tools and toolboxes wouldn’t scratch the fresh paint. Finally, I put a lot of my hand tools in the drawer. I’m really happy to have all this organized and in one place!

I have a wood turning lathe that I bought when I was sixteen. I remember it cost $310.87, all of it made at $0.90 per hour washing dishes after school in a restaurant! The lathe had been crated for some years now, and even though it was high in my shop it wasn’t dry. The termites had a field day with the crate, and it will take some work to clean all the rust off of it. Fortunately, the headstock bearings are still okay. The tailstock is rusted to the bed rails, so I sprayed it with some WD-40 and left it alone to think. I don’t know if I will get back to wood turning, but I have made some nice bowls over the years.

That’s it for now. More soon, thanks for stopping by. By the way, I welcome comments.

Slow News Day ~ Being Tourist

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I have some construction in the pipe, but it’s not yet ready to post. In the meantime, I was looking through some photos that our recent guest D and I took when she was visiting. A travel log of the area, this post is photos from her visit.

I’ve already posted about our visit to the pueblo of Chichi Bali.

Another road trip was to the annual celebration of Carnival in the town of Ocu’. Our guest really wanted to go, so I collected information from our Panamanian friends. Most had good memories of going to Ocu’ many years ago, so we headed out on Sunday morning for the two and a half hour drive. We made a pit stop at a gas station where D picked up a container of juice. She couldn’t stop laughing about the list of ingredients intended to be in both Spanish and in English. More prouf reading neded. Oops:

We had heard that Sunday was the day of Carnival that had the most traditional folk displays. But what we found was far from that. There was a mass of people gyrating in the street, with rock and heavy metal music blasting from closely-packed music venues. And between each venue was at least one boom truck (really, really big boom boxes on wheels), vibrating sheet metal bending to the thumping beats. Discerning one “song” from another was impossible, at least with our fingers firmly pushed into our ears.

The music was so loud that it vibrated internal organs, and with no folkloric events planned until later at night, we decided to leave. We just aren’t that young and that interested in sweaty dancing, drinking cheap beer all day, and being hosed down by fire trucks. Even 18-year-old Cedelinda thought it was all “tan mucho” (so much). The trip was worth the drive, though, and we had a good day when we weren’t around the boom business. On our way back to the car, I asked a jolly man if I could take a picture of him shucking yucca. He was delighted to oblige:

We also passed some floats. This one was asleep with eyes open, waiting for more nighttime revelry:

On the way home, we stopped at a beach-side restaurant for lunch. The road to the beach cuts through a wall of weather beaten sand or sandstone:

Two girls were enjoying the cool sand on a hot day:

Another day, I took D to the house of nearby friends. They have several watch dogs peacocks:

NBC peacock in the days of black and white TV?

And we went to the local frog sanctuary. Frogs are a big deal here, and they are in big trouble. Between losing habitat to human encroachment and a deadly fungal infection, the Golden Frog has been extinct in the wild since 2007. Because frogs are so important to the earth’s ecosystem, scientists say no frogs = no humans. Here are some frogs at the sanctuary:

Just hanging out on the front porch.

This is one of the few remaining golden frogs in the world.

If you take the main road into El Valle, then drive through town and out the other end, there is a recently improved back road going back up and out of the volcano and through the mountains to the city of Penonome’ about an hour away. Up on the rim there is a hill with two crosses that overlook the valley. One cross marks the spot where a young couple tragically took a wrong turn and careened off the mountain. I don’t know about the other cross. Here are two videos. The first one takes you through El Valle, and the second is the back road drive from El Valle to the crosses:

From our vantage we can see over the crater rim and down to the Pacific Ocean. Here is a panoramic photo looking down to El Valle in the crater:

Early one morning we went bird watching, or rather bird listening. The mountains were alive with the sound of birds, but their camouflage made them all but invisible. But it was a wonderful four hours in the wilderness, and luckily our guide knew where to take us to see a hummingbird feeding chicks in the nest:

An Oropendola sits on its nest, admiring the neighbor’s much better nest building skills:

And we went to the Canopy Adventure on the outskirts of town. This is an adventure where a guide hikes with you to the top of the mountain, pointing out flora and fauna along the way, then guides you on a zip line back down the mountain. It is a lot of fun. The highlight for me was crossing high over the big waterfall:

Here’s our guide zipping ahead to catch D when she arrived a few moments later:

And a nice walk back out to the road:

That’s all for now. More soon.

 

 

 

My Shop ~ Part 9 ~ The Workbench

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I made a workbench back in Colorado just before we moved to Panama. I’ve really enjoyed using the bench for the past few years, and now it is just about to have a new home in my new shop. So even though this isn’t current work, I thought I’d post it.

Most workbenches, including all the ones I have had in the past, are built up against a wall. Over the years I’ve found that this has a few shortcomings.

  • The size of the project that one can work on is limited to that typical two-foot depth.
  • The bench becomes a cluttered catchall.
  • I don’t like to work facing a wall; I’d rather be working out in the middle of the shop.
  • Benches are usually made of 2″x4″, 2″x6″, and 4″x4″ stock and are heavy as all get out. Most benches can’t easily be moved.

I set out to build a better bench, at least better for me. I had a general idea of what I wanted, so I made a couple sketches and was on my way. I designed a bench that was on wheels and had a 4′x8′ footprint. I needed a place to securely store my hand power tools so that they would be out of sight if someone looked through the windows; I was selling my old work van, so I cannibalized the large drawer that I had installed in it some years earlier. I also wanted some smaller drawers for quick access to hand tools.

I believe that to build strong you don’t need a lot of strong lumber or steel. A massive bench made of heavy stock such as 4″x4″ lumber for the legs can easily be redesigned and built with smaller stock if you use the principles employed in trusses. I had some extra hem-fir 2″x2″s and 2″x6″s, and some 1/2″ plywood hanging around, so that was a start.

First I used the 2″x6″s to make a base. I half-lapped the corners, glued the joints, drilled bolt holes through the lapped corners, and bolted on large castors. The bolts hold the corners together along with the glue.

Then using the 2″x2″s and the plywood, I made a lightweight but strong carcass. I glued the joints and screwed everything together with drywall screws. Here’s the start of the bench:

This end of the bench will have the smaller drawers.

Next I installed the big drawer. I bought the drawer online from Joey Bed Cargo Trays (a note on their website says that they suspended business in 2009). I think they are out of Oregon. The unit arrived knocked down and was easy to assemble using plywood that you supply. These drawers can carry a lot of weight:

Next I cut in some electrical boxes, trimmed out the drawer faces, and made the top. I’d seen the top design in a woodworking magazine. They said it was strong and stable. Strong it is. Very strong. But I built it in dry Colorado and moved it to wet Panama. Big mistake, as the whole top now has bowed up in the middle about five-sixteenths of an inch, making flat assemblies impossible. I’m planning to remediate the situation by building a metal top above the wooden top. Makes more sense because I now do more metalworking than woodworking and it will make welding and grinding easier. Here’s a photo:

Working by myself, I had to craft a way to lower the top piece of heavy MDF onto the grid after I applied wood glue to the grid. Here's what I came up with; the upright struts acted as hinges, placing the MDF perfectly when I pivoted the sheet downward.

I covered the top and the bottom of the bench top with plastic laminate (I did both sides so that it wouldn’t bow… yeah, right…), and trimmed the edges with some nice pine boards. Then I made the small drawers; poplar sides and one-quarter inch plywood bottoms.

Now, what to do with the raw plywood sides of the workbench? Well, I’m a big fan of aluminum diamond plate. You know, the stuff that the toolboxes in the back of contractors’ pickup trucks are made from. So because this bench is a mega-toolbox, I bought some 4′x4′ sheets and some pre-bent corner pieces of diamond plate from Online Metals and UPS delivered the package a few days later. After installing the aluminum (I cut the aluminum with a plywood cutting blade in the table saw and installed it with hundreds of pan head sheet metal screws), I installed the electrical outlets and trim covers, drawer handles, deadbolt locks, and the project was done. Here’s the finished bench from the small drawer end:

And the big drawer end:

With one drawer open:

OMG! Did he actually dovetail those drawers?

And with the big drawer open:

The workbench doesn’t look brand new anymore, but that’s okay, I don’t either:

That’s all for now.

Carport Roof ~ Part 1

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The heavy rains of a week ago turned out to be just a passing storm. We are back in a dry pattern and were able to get a lot done this week even though Armando only worked four days. In my most previous post, I said that we were going to erect part of the carport roof. Here’s what we have done so far:

We started by digging a footing for a column. The footing is one meter by one meter by one meter deep. We filled the hole with rebar, concrete, and large rocks. This mass will keep the roof rooted to the ground during heavy winds:

Then it was time to form the column. A friend had given us some plastic sewer pipe to use as a form for round columns, but this didn’t seem to have the look that I wanted.

We could make a square box column out of M2 panels (2″x4′x8′ Styrofoam sheets with a wire mesh on each side). We could leave a hole in the center of the box for the rebar to go up through, then pour concrete into the center of the form, embedding the rebar and making a good strong column. It would look like this:

To join the M2 panels at the corners, pieces of wire mesh bent at right angles are clipped to both panels. This makes a unit that is not likely to crack at the corners.

But wait. A plain round or square box column would certainly do the job, but these columns are just plain static. They don’t add much of a design element to the entire project because there is no sense of motion or tension or even something being comfortably at rest.

I’ve been playing with shapes and forms in my head for months, and one design kept pushing the others aside. This shape is the wedge, or flying buttress. This isn’t an original idea of course, and it can be seen throughout history and throughout Panama today. Most of the concrete block bus stops have the shape, as well as the gas station in the center of El Valle. So I laid two sheets of M2 on my shop floor and drew a diagonal line on them. I cut the metal mesh with the angle grinder and sliced through the Styrofoam with my pocket knife. When I snapped the panels on the cut line, I was left with four pieces; two for the front and two for the back side of the column. I think that this design gives a nice counterbalance and motion to the static mass of the shipping containers. My design looks like this:

You can see three pieces of rebar extending from the top of the form. We welded these pieces to the beam above the column. Now the roof is connected all the way through the column and into the concrete footing.

Armando and I clip the corner mesh pieces to the column. All totaled, the column took just three sheets of the M2 panel.

Cynthia thought I should include a picture of the clips that connect the corners together. Here they are. I think I look as if I am auditioning for a new character on The Simpsons.

Here Armando trowels on a first coat of repello (stucco):

If I move just a few more inches to the right, you can see the alignment of the flying buttress column with my shop. This is the effect, the optical illusion if you will, I was aiming for:

You can also see that it aligns perfectly when viewed from the front gate and the right side of the driveway curbing:

Did you notice in the photo above that Armando was performing his incredible “white bucket floating in mid air” trick? I would swear on a stack of Popular Mechanics magazines that this photo has not been manipulated and that there were no strings attached. Here is a closeup:

Floating a bucket in mid air. Look ma, no hands, no strings, no wires. Armando seems nonchalant as he reaches for more mortar to spread on the wall. You can see Sammy looking on in amazement. Such is the craft of the magician.

In the next photo, Armando applies the finish coat of repello to the column. You can also see that we have been busy welding beams and joists (2″x4″ carriolas) into place. We’ll put the roof metal on next week after we pour concrete into the center of the column form:

The long shadows give a clue as to the length of the day. Armando is tired.

That’s it for progress this week. Here are some odds and ends:

While welding up in the air, it is always a quandary where to keep extra welding rods. I solved the problem for myself by looking in the junk pile. An empty urethane tube (aluminum) and a piece of string made a perfect welding rod quiver to sling over my shoulder:

When we put the polymer sealer on the interior walls in my shop I got the idea to use the walls as a chalk board. It works perfectly; here I show Armando my plans for the column:

I checked my math twice. It's been many years since I did long division by hand!

The month of April holds one of the negatives of living in Panama. Just before the anticipated start of the rainy season, all the farmers and large landowners burn their fields and all the accumulated dry vegetable matter. Sometimes old tires will find their way into the piles, too. Here’s a view to the mountains. Note the smoke haze has nearly obscured the normally visible antenna towers:

Outtake (Cheap) Shot: Cynthia thought it would be an “art shot” to take this photo of me on the ladder. Reminded her of the book, Under the Bleachers by Seymour Butts:

That’s all for now. More next week.

In No Particular Order ~ The Past Few Weeks

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Panorama: First, reader Missy has been asking for an overall panorama shot of the entire project. I downloaded Serif PanoramaPlus Starter Edition, plugged in a couple photos, and a few seconds later the program delivered a panorama. Here you go Missy:

Here’s what you are looking at in the above photo:

Left: two containers that will be the kitchen, home office, and TV. Cyn will be able to watch Law and Order while she makes dinner. There will be a roof deck above these two containers.

Between the two sets of containers: this will be a parallelogram-shaped area for the front entry, living room, dining room, and staircase to the roof deck. We hope that the walls will have a lot of glass.

The back set of containers: this area is for two bedrooms, two bathrooms, the laundry, a big dry (dehumidifier) closet, a half bath, and storage for outdoor tools.

My shop is the block building on the right of the photo.

Now on to the grist of this post:

Septic: The new septic tank is done and covered with dirt. When Armando cut a hole in the sheet metal under the concrete to make the inspection/pumping lid, he recoiled as fast as he could. Seems that an opossum had crawled into the intake pipe and had fallen into the tank. I was fine with leaving it down there, start the septic-izing if you will, but Armando had Sammy fashion a hook and fish it out for disposal off site. Sammy donned a respirator and there was a lot of laughing and retching going on. It is good to get the septic tank project off the to do list.

By the way, the big plastic septic tank that we dug out has now been re-purposed. We cut the bottom off at the first reinforcing ring. This part is now a swimming pool for Armando’s young son. Then we cut the remaining part of the tank to make a ring two-feet tall. This ring is now a chicken corral for baby chicks at Armando’s house. All that is left is the cone at the top of the tank and maybe we will dream up a use for this, too.

Moving Dirt: This sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said: “There is a lot of dirt in a hole.” All the dirt that the guys dug out for the septic tank had to be moved. The guys put the better top soil on the garden and the junk dirt became fill for areas in the driveway. This gave a better entrance to my shop. I had them put a layer of crushed stone on top of the fill to keep muddy feet out of my shop. Here’s a picture:

My Shop: From the above photo you can see that I built a sliding door for my shop. You can also see that I painted the concrete floor with garage floor epoxy to keep moisture down and to make it easy to clean.

In my makeshift shop at the house we are renting, I had three small benches. They were painted black at the factory and rust was beginning to break through the paint. So I disassembled them, buffed the parts with a wire brush on the angle grinder, and primed and painted them yellow. Here I am reassembling them with all 96 bolts:

Now they have a nice home in my new shop. I still have to make new shelves and tops; termites demolished the old ones. You can also see that the floor is painted and lights and electrical receptacles are completed. You can’t see it in this photo, but I am using the walls as a chalkboard. The surface is perfect for sketching out plans and doing math. Bit by bit, I’ll move my tools and big workbench into the new space:

Concrete: The sheet metal roof overhangs the shop by five feet on the west side. I decided to pour a slab under the overhang. I plan on installing a deep sink in the space, and thought it would be a good place for a clothesline. But the more I thought about it, the space seems ideal for Cynthia’s hot glass studio. I’ll put up some walls later. Here’s the new slab:

We mixed a bit more concrete and made a ramp next to the slab to access the back yard:

In the photo above you may have noticed the concrete drips running down the side of the container. That’s because we poured a concrete roof on container four. Why? Shipping container roofs are metal. It gets hot as an oven inside. Also, the torrential tropical downpours pounding on the metal makes it unbearably noisy inside.

We started the concrete roof project by welding 2″x3″ steel carriolas around the edge of the container. This will hold the concrete and can be painted a house or trim color. Next we went to work cleaning any rusty spots on the roof and then painted on two good coats of polyurethane red oil primer. Next, we put sheets of one-inch Styrofoam on top of the container roof. We held the foam away from the edges to thicken the concrete in these places. Next, we cut rebar for embedding in the slab. We tied the rebar together with baling wire. Here it is at 6:00 a.m. the next morning, ready for concrete.

At 6:30, Armando and Sammy arrived, along with two additional men to help with mixing all that concrete:

This pile of concrete has 18 wheelbarrows full of sand and gravel! What a lot of work, and they still have to carry it up to the roof bucket by bucket.

Here’s Armando walking a five-gallon bucket of concrete to the far end of the container. As we poured concrete, we pulled the walking boards back and lifted the rebar into place in the slab. Some time ago, I found in the road an eight-foot piece of aluminum 2″x4″ rectangular tubing. It made a perfect screed to level the concrete:

Here is the finished roof slab. You can see that there is a pitch to the outside of about an inch. Later I’ll fashion a rain gutter so the rain doesn’t spill down the side of the container:

Of course, after not raining a drop for several months, just as I was about half way through putting a broom finish on the concrete, the rain gods decided to play a funny joke on ole Fred. So now the concrete has a broom finish with rain dots. But it didn’t turn out that bad really, and this is just a utility slab and doesn’t have to be pretty.

A Bit More Concrete: It is as if someone threw a switch. For the past week the rains have been frequent and heavy. This is right on schedule, even a bit early, as our neighbor Tomas told me a couple weeks ago, “We should expect rain some time after Easter.” Today is Easter. We are all hoping that this is a false start and that there will be more sunny days to pour more concrete.

The rains have made it perfectly clear that for the next months it will be difficult to go the few feet from container four to my shop without getting soaked. We have decided to construct some of the carport roof.

When we built the shop roof, we extended a 4″x4″ carriola beam beyond my shop another twelve feet or so over the driveway. This is the area that will get roofed.

First, we need a column to support the outside corner of the roof. In the next photo, Armando is digging a mega-footing, just like we did for the container support columns. It isn’t that this footing will carry much weight. Much to the contrary, the massive winds that  we experience here will put the roof under tremendous uplift forces. So the footing is mass that will keep the roof from blowing off:

This footing is a meter square and a meter deep. We'll fill it with concrete and large rocks. In the foreground is a rebar mat and rebar for the column.

Here’s the rebar in place and the hole filled with concrete and large rocks:

I have a design in mind for the column, stay tuned.

More Doorways And Stair Landings: While Armando and Sammy were moving dirt, I got to work and cut two more doorways from container 3. These doorways will connect the parallelogram area (living room, etc.) to the bedrooms. After I cut the metal shipping container siding, I made and installed door frames.

One important detail is that because of the slope of the land, the front containers were intentionally set 15-inches lower than the back set of containers. Eventually there will be three steps up from the living room to the bedrooms. To accomplish this, I needed to build stair landings. So, taking the angles of the parallelogram walls into account, I welded carriolas to make landings. Soon, when the carport roof area is finished, we can pouir concrete floors in container 3, and these floors will encompass the landings, too. Here are photos of the landings and doorways:

This hallway goes past the half bathroom to the master bedroom.

This doorway leads to the second bedroom.

Bonus Photos:

Walking to the house today I passed two big vultures having snake for breakfast:

After the dry season, the grass is becoming green again.

Walking home from the house yesterday, I picked a handful of tiny wildflower weeds for Cynthia. How romantic can a guy get?

Well, I think that that is just about enough for today. Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

 

I Was Rattled ~ Septic Redo

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About two weeks ago Armando was working on defining the left side of the driveway. He was digging a trench, pouring a foundation, and laying a row of blocks just as he had done on the right side of the driveway. While he was mixing concrete, we had a power outage. No power/no water pump. No water pump/no water.

Armando is nothing if not resourceful. The drainage ditches have run dry so there was no water there. And the little underground stream that in the rainy season fills the concrete cistern in the side of the mountain was dry too. But he remembered that there was water in the yet-unused septic tank; we filled it to keep it from popping out of the ground.

He removed the lid, leaned over, and dipped a five-gallon bucket into the tank. Startled by something, he pulled his hand out quickly. “There is something in there!” he exclaimed in Spanish. Of course, I immediately thought it might be Jimmy Hoffa or some similarly distasteful discovery. Then trying to lighten my first thought my mind went to, “What is it Lassie? Did Timmy fall down the well?”

Turns out, it wasn’t an object in the tank, but only the tank itself. Even though we had back filled with topsoil and not the expansive clay, the tank still gave way to the pressures of the soil and the high water table. The tank was crushed and split.

I was distressed. I didn’t want to dig up the whole mess and start over again. I was really rattled. How rattled? When Cynthia does the laundry, she dissolves some OxyClean powder in warm water then adds it to the washing machine. Yesterday she left the solution on top of the machine and it played quite a tune as it rattled during the spin cycle. I was this rattled:

I don’t know why, but that video made me smile.

After some discussion, we decided to remove the plastic tank and build the local tried and true concrete block septic tank. One benefit of all of this is that we can make a much larger tank and not have to pump the tank for a long time. Tank pumping is expensive, $300 to $500 seems the average here.

Wanting to beat the rainy season, the next day we started the redo. The tank was filled with water that would have to be removed. Also, we knew that we would be working on the project for two weeks or so, and every morning we would have to bail or pump hundreds of gallons of water from the pit. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a pump. I should have done it back when we were fabricating the columns to set the containers on.

I made a quick trip to town and bought a portable, gasoline engine powered water pump. Chinese, $236. I also bought some PVC pipe fittings and a couple lengths of pipe. Back at the job, the pump worked like a charm and emptied the tank in just a couple of minutes.

Whenever a new tool is brought to the job, the guys have a great time. Here, neighbor Ricardo stopped by to check out the excitement. We were all pumped.

After pumping, we started digging. While the guys dug, I made a tripod for a hoist, like for back yard car engine pulling in the old days. Even when we had the tank empty and dug free, the hoist just pulled the tubes into the ground and the tank stayed put. Eventually we dragged the tank out with a tow strap hooked to the Honda.

The other side was crushed, too. We're going to cut the tank at the first rib to make a swimming pool for Armando's young son.

Then the guys set about digging a larger pit for the new concrete block tank. They decided to work barefooted because the clay stuck to the rubber boots and it was just too arduous to work. I told them they should be paying me for the foot beauty treatment, and I offered to let Armando bring his wife to enjoy the spa too. For some reason he thought she would decline my generous offer:

As they dug, the men kept a rock nearby so they could bang the shovel on it. The clay soil stuck to each shovelful like glue. Finally, after four days of digging, we got to the point where we could set rebar and pour the floor:

Next came the walls. I noticed that Armando’s block work was much better than on the shop. I mentioned it to him, “Good block work, Armando,” and he said it had to be stronger because he didn’t want his work to collapse!

Here’s the repello in progress, inside and out. Outside, they worked their way up with the repello a few rows at a time as the blocks were laid.

And finally the roof. We installed a few 2×3 steel carriolas as joists and placed scrap pieces of roofing metal over the joists.

Here’s the finished roof. After the concrete cures a bit, I’ll remove the Styrofoam block, place some plastic over the hole, and pour the access hole cover for future pumping and inspection.

Now the only things left to do is to remove the forms, make a hatch cover, back fill around the tank with sand, move a lot of the dirt to low spots in the driveway near my shop, and spread the rest of the dirt over the tank to make grade.

After finishing the roof on the tank, we quit for the day. I had been wanting to investigate lock options for several of the doors in the new house, so I Googled my search. After watching a YouTube video on electric door strikes, a screen came up with other videos to watch. I was tired and wanted to sit a while longer so I clicked one. It turned out to be the Ukraine version of the TV show X Factor. It was so entertaining that I watched several of the performers and killed an hour. Cynthia pulled up a chair, too. Here is our favorite act:

That’s all for now.

 

 

Shipping Container Door Frames

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After our house guest left, I got busy with a slew of projects that could be lumped under the heading, Finishing My Shop. There are still a couple tasks remaining so I’ll wait a bit longer to post a final update on the shop. But for now, final completion of the shop waits for me to make a run to the city for materials.

I’ve been anxious to get back to installing the windows, but with the dry season rapidly passing, I felt the need to prepare a few areas inside the containers for concrete floors. It is no fun to mix concrete while rain is dripping off your nose. I chose to make some interior door frames.

At the pace of about a door frame a day, here’s how I went about it.

Using the big angle grinder with a metal cut off disk, I had months ago cut two of the three door openings in the side of container three. For the third opening, I decided to fire up my new oxy-acetylene torch for the first time. I’ve never used a torch before, so over the course of a few evenings I studied online the proper and safe way to light and shut down the torch. I made an instructional one-page Word document (actually, I use OpenOffice, free Microsoft-like software) and had the page laminated for future reference. Here’s an OpenOffice screenshot. Pretty much the only difference is the few hundred dollars I didn’t have to spend.

I marked the door opening with a felt-tipped marker. I fired the torch and proceeded to make my first cut. I had to adjust and readjust the flame to get the flame size and gas mixture just right as I really didn’t know what I was doing. I hadn’t foreseen, but of course the flame burned off the paint, taking the marked line with it. So I made a first pass burning off the paint, let the metal cool, wire brushed the metal and the adjoining paint, and remarked the line. Then I cut the metal. There was a learning curve, but by the time I finished the cutout I pretty much had the process sorted out as to how fast to move the torch and how to get a fairly straight line as I progressed. When I was done cutting with the torch, I buzzed a few rough places with the angle grinder, then put a flap-sander on the grinder and feathered the paint edges.

Next, I needed to make the door frames. Because I used 2″x2″x1/16″ square steel tubing to make the window frames, the same 2×2 made sense for the door frames. I measured the openings and cut the tubing on the metal chop saw.

I took the cut tubing into container three and used the floor as an assembly area. I squared the corners of the legs and the header and clamped a cross brace to keep everything square while I welded. Like this adjustment in progress:

After I finished welding the corners, I tack welded a piece of rebar at the bottom of the legs to keep the door opening even top to bottom during installation.

After welding, I placed the frame in the opening:

I plumbed and leveled the frame then tack welded it into place. I ground the tack welds smooth like this:

Next, there were the gaps to fill between the container wall and the door frame. At the Discovery Center (closest thing to DepotLowes that we have here) in Panama City I found some black urethane windshield adhesive. This is the thickest, stickiest, nastiest, gooey-est substance on the face of the earth. The tubes I got have a 2010 date printed on them. Date made? Expiration date? Who knows. But at $4.95 a tube I considered it a bargain. I’m glad that the manufacturer put a space between the PU and the STAR, other wise it could be read, PUS TAR. Although distasteful, it is not a bad description of this goo.

This goo tools nicely with your finger, but getting it out of the caulking tube is an extreme effort. So I bought a pneumatic caulking gun and connected it to my compressor:

The gun works like a charm, spewing out the adhesive at a good speed. It took about 15 seconds to spread the adhesive on one leg of the frame, verses minutes and a sore hand to do it manually. But I wonder if the system that Campbell Hausfeld’s crack design team created was ever field tested by real users. The trigger is tiny and placed way high on the handle. Perfect, say, for a four-year-old’s tiny fingers. Form follows function, please.

After gunning the adhesive, I ran a wet (spit) finger down the length of the frame, smoothing the goo in one swipe. I think it turned out well. In the next photo, container siding is on the left, the adhesive is the black stripe, and the shiny metal is the door frame:

I’m happy with the project. Here are the three frames completed and prime painted:

While I’ve been busy with the frames, Armando and Sammy have been working barefooted in hard pan clay for nearly a week. Here’s a teaser photo, more on this dasterdly project in a future post:

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

On Vacation

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I’m taking a few weeks off from construction of the container house while a friend visits us from the States. I’ll be back writing about the house after the first of March. Wow. March is so soon? I’ve got to get busy as the dry season is passing quickly!

I took our house guest for a drive in the country to Cedelinda’s (I’m tutoring her in English) house. Cedelinda lives in the small pueblo of Chichi Bali, a five-kilometer drive on a not-well-maintained dirt road. There is no bus or taxi service, and there is currently only one pickup truck that drives the road daily to and from the pueblo. There is a trip in the morning and a trip in the early evening. People can get a ride for a dollar. If you miss the ride or don’t have the dollar, your other option is to walk.

The purpose of our visit to the pueblo was because Cedelinda had invited Cynthia and me to see her in church as she became a catechist (started catechism education in the Catholic church). The church was packed with standing room only, but the priest had car trouble and couldn’t make it to the pueblo. So after the non-service, Cedelinda invited us to her house for refreshments.

I guess there are wonderful health benefits from having to walk. But the thought of a pregnant woman, or an older person with arthritis walking to and from Chichi Bali seems like too much to me. It gives new meaning to what old folks say to kids, “When I was going to school it was uphill both ways.” Well, for school kids from Chichi Bali, it still is uphill both ways!

After the trip, I remembered that the dash cam was recording all this, so here for your viewing pleasure is The Trip To Chichi Bali. Much of the road is carved into the side of the mountains and there are precipitous drops into deep valleys. There are a couple slight pauses while I stop to pick up a few people. Watching a video of driving a dirt road may not be everyone’s cup of tea but, in two parts because of the YouTube 15-minute limit, here is the trip from our house to Cedelinda’s house:

Toward the end of part 2 of the trip we stop at the church. After we leave the church we drive to Cedelinda’s house.

So, what’s the verdict? Would you like to walk this twice a day to and from work or school? Feel free to picture the walk in your mind. Throw in rain, darkness, mountain lions crossing your path…

Here are some photos we took at the church and at Cedelinda’s house (photos by me or D.H.):

Cedelinda with her niece looking on

Fresh local flowers picked for the occasion

Cede showing off two of her pet parrots

Everyone laughed at me but I don't mind

The parrots are so well treated that they don't fly away

Cede's dad, Ignacio, and her brother, Benjamin, pick some ripe star fruit off a tree at their back door

The next day, our house guest and I went to the orchid conservatory (because of poachers and other habitat problems, many of the orchids now exist only at the conservatory). This isn’t the flowering season, but a few orchids were in bloom:

Cynthia couldn't help but play with the previous photo in my photo manipulation program of choice -- Gimp. This is the result.

I’m enjoying a little time off from the hard work of building the house. But I’ll be back at it soon. That’s all for now.