Day 21 & 22

Here is a portion of the old thatch with bamboo rafters an the tarp covered bamboo posts with the wire mesh and rebar.

Workers laying the wire mesh and rebar.

Second level on the roof with the 1st layer of cement on the farthest and with the 2nd layer of cement forefront of picture.

We kept the bamboo posts to provide support for the ferrocement roof.

This is how our roof looks like today. The workers are all in the back portion of the house, as seen on the pictures above. 

Because we are like our own contractors for this project, we find out the we always have to go to town to get supplies like cement, rebar, tie-wires, etc. Fortunately diesel prices or all gas prices have gone down considerably that it does not hurt to be driving up and down the mountain almost everyday. This also gives us the chance to check on our email, post in our blog, etc. So all is good!

We also realize that we do need to keep reminding the workers how to do things, and to make sure the follow our instructions. Sometimes they would give their own suggestions or opinions based on how they do things around here, but because they have never worked on ferrocement, they had to be convinced of what works. We insisted they measure the proportion of cement to sand and to slowly add in enough water to make a crumble mix, but as usual, they preferred a more "wet" mix. Well, for almost vertical areas the wet mix will not work. They realized this when the mix fell. So now they are convinced that a drier mix will hold more. As contractors and foremen of our own project, we do have to make sure they follow our instructions to the "T".