Concrete and cakes.

The concrete floor on the palapa deck is now laid and we have a working stairway to the palapa sundeck. One might think the stair would be the first thing to be built so that materials can be easily transported, but no.

All the equipment and materials needed for work on the deck are hoisted aloft via the stepladder, including the many buckets of concrete needed to lay the floor. The stair is completed last to avoid it being damaged by constant wear and tear of transporting materials to and forth.

(Yes I know, you are looking at the photo of the stair and wondering what possible damage could make this look worse! ... It will get prettier I promise!)

The nice rounded stair edge is cunningly formed using plain old plastic pipe cut in half and filled with concrete. I love the simplicity of the way things are done here!

Concrete tends to be mixed in the street here … no-one minds this and the occasional traffic down our way has to manoeuvre delicately between the paraphernalia of my project and that of my neighbour.

Mixing concrete is an art; too much water or too much sand will ruin the mix or weaken the structure. The technique is rather like that of a good cook who senses the right consistency of a cake; a good builder can tell when the concrete is right. And no ready mix cakes here … we are building with raw ingredients, cement cemento, sand arena, concrete dust polvo or cal, gravel grava, and of course water agua.

The master builder (Maestro) supervises the whole mixing process with the care of an expert chef. The truth of this pudding is in the hurricane … so to speak! They mix a lot of cement down here, and they are not stopping anytime soon, so if you’re into the markets, Cemex (nasdaq CX) is probably a reasonable bet!

The floor of the carport was originally pitched at an angle for the rain. To avoid too much depth and weight of concrete on one side when we leveled it we have use polystyrene blocks to make up the difference. A metal mesh has also been laid below the new concrete for strength. All the wiring and plumbing connections then disappear under this concrete layer, never to be seen again.

Coming from a background of “housing with easily accessible wiring and plumbing”, it still causes me a bit of discomfort to see everything disappearing under a couple of inches of solid concrete … still, if there is a problem we will just dig it all up again. We don’t have to deal with variations in temperature, frosts etc and on the whole, it certainly seems to work.

A few days after the first batch, the palaperos turn up with another load of zacate for the roof. Some of it looks ok this time but much is still bad. I remind them I am here for another four/five weeks and I am willing to wait for the right stuff. I suggest they keep the good bits and work on finishing the palapa roof and the balcony while we wait for more. I ask my builder to monitor what they use when I leave he house. When I get back at noon, this load, like the last is gone.

During our venture onto the now floored and accessible roof, we decided to alter the design and eliminate the plan for an open sun deck. We decide to thatch the whole roof. (Sorry sun lovers … but with skin cancer rife you will thank me later … oh yes you will!).

The acrobatic palaperos get to work on the changes with gusto and by next day my balcony and extra roof are finished and looking great!