Here we go…

It seems that the long wait has finally come to an end and we will both manage to keep the walls, and start building the retaining wall tomorrow.

It took a lot of work to get the entire act together though now I’m confident that it will happen.

On my short site visit this morning I was happy to see that all the slabs are now broken and so as soon as the digging is completed (not long now) we’ll be able to carry on at full speed. Tomorrow we will start setting out the steels for the new retaining wall, and then we’ll take it from there.

I would just like to make a further comment on the fill, it has come to my attention that the fill being made as we are doing it now, makes the retaining wall almost redundant. This because our fill is now a solid dry construction stone wall, however it is good to know that if any pressure does occur, that will be on the new retaining wall and not the other.

When I visited the site this morning I was supposed to tell Ntate Sello and Ntate Tau that we had to wait because we still not sure if we were going to keep the walls. Sello wasn’t there so I left him a note. But the face of Tau was that of pure disappointment. I asked him not to tell the men about it, so as not to lower their moral. But fortunately that won’t happen and we’ll just carry on.

I hope that as soon as we conclude these slabs we’ll be able to move a lot faster towards completion and try and make up for the lost time.

Digging!

Digging is not as easy as you would imagine… I went on site today, to meet with the contractor to negotiate a price for the retaining wall (that went successfully) but also to let George have another different type of work experience.

As I had already I finished the meeting with the contractor, and was waiting for the foreman, I decided to also give a hand in the digging! It was a lot more hard work than I had imagined, but I do think I’ll do it again! It beats being in an office getting frustrated about things not getting done or being delayed! I think next time I feel that I’m just fighting the system; I’ll just go to site, role up my sleeves and at least do something that matters!

Whilst I was there I also saw how the new fills were being made. Quite impressive. Interlocking stones (for photos click here)! Not just effective but actually look good! The contractor told me that it was actually cheaper for him to do it like that than compacted earth! So one can only wonder why it was not done from the beginning?

Digging went one for a few hours and just before lunch, because I could wait no longer as I had to meet other people, George and I just went to get a little moral booster (drinks for all the men on site). They were needing it! And they might actually need it even more if we actually need to bring the walls down… Martin raised the question and now Mike has got an UK engineer to look at it. It seems that the retaining wall might not be as safe as I was hoping it to be… I still feel pretty confident with it, and so did the engineer here, but it is some times better to get a second opinion.

My afternoon was a funny one. After spending the morning digging I met Prince Seeiso in the afternoon. Quite a change from the morning. You dig all day and then get to shake hands with Royalty. Quite an interesting experience wouldn’t you say so?

After that I met the QEII staff for another meeting on the Playground. Slowly we seem to be getting somewhere. This week I will test the tyre solution with a 1:1 model (after yesterday’s meeting with MacCloy I think that I have found a solution for a higher barrier, two tyres on in the other still need to test it anyway).

But I must say the highlight of my day was a meeting with Molope. Molope is one of the students that I’m helping to design Lydia’s new house. They are quite busy at the moment with exams, but he found some time to meet me today, and discuss that project. I showed him an initial sketch and we chatted about how I felt we should develop it. This was quite an important meeting because I was nearly about to think of it as a lost cause. Molope’s commitment to it has just motivated me to continue and have hope that it will actually get done.

Not quite sure if we’ll be putting up the steels tomorrow for the reinforcement of not, but let’s wait and see.

Done, to be done and will be done…

Final screws have been tightened and the kitchen is now fully operational at Sentebale. However I still had one final disappointment, yesterday when the guy came to rewire the cables he decided just to drill a whole straight through the cupboard instead of using one of the existing ones round the back. I tell this episode to illustrate the little attention to detail that some people have, I’ve learnt a lesson from it. I need to be there to see things being done.

So that’s now done (tiles still need repairing from the last disaster but I consider it finished anyway). Tomorrow I will spend a good part of my day on site discussing what will happen, and in what order. I will also meet the contractor because he did not show up today, and try to make a new program of the work to be done!

But since the slabs are now nearly all out, the compressor never arrived, and we have no walls anymore I’ve decided that we have the opportunity to do a little re-design exercise… So I have now changed the layouts slightly both to adapt to the new situation but also to help resolve one or two of the problems. I will run them through Martin, Lydia and A4A so that they can be “signed off” and be drawn on to the “blueprints”.

The end of the day was a meeting with John MacCloy, British architect that has been in the country for over 20 years and that had been invited by one of the doctors to help out with what will be done at the playground at QEII. He agreed with the general aspects of the design and was just worried about the barrier not being high enough… Will larger tyres do the trick? Not sure will have to test it…

Snow, needs and heat…

When we left Maseru to go to the Red Cross clinic of Mapholaneng the car’s thermometer was telling us that it was 0 degrees, as we approached the mountains these temperatures drop to as little as -5, however by the time we had climbed up to the top (with a little pause for a small snow ball fight) and fulfilled our inspection of the clinic the exact same thermometer was now showing 24!

It felt really nice to be back in a T-shirt after a week of freezing cold. We had gone up to visit this clinic to assess the needs for its refurbishment, as a charity had offered to pay for it.

When I say us (or we) I mean Harper, representing Sentebale, Silas, for Lesotho Red Cross, George, a friend of the Brown Family that was brave enough to come here on a 3 week work-experience, and me.

The trip to the clinic was once again a beautiful one, this time sprinkled with patches of snow, left over from the previous week. The Clinic itself was in better shape than expected, apart from two buildings (one of which is not included in the refurbishment), and the works will be simple paintjobs, roof maintenance, and floor tiling.

The nurses insist that we install Burglar-proof bars, however I do not feel that this should be a priority specially when you have roof leakage, water problems and a building with serious structural damage!

The building which is damaged has one of its corners in eminent state of collapse, which is also causing the ceiling and roof to come down with it. I’m not sure how we will juggle the budget, but this is an issue that should not go unattended. All the other problems are in one way or another easier to solve.

One other major problem that we encountered here, which seems to be a common practice in Lesotho, was the facility being wired for electricity but no electricity. This happens because the Fee for the connection is too high for these institutions to pay. Some times the wiring can be fitted up to 2-3 years before they can find someone to fund the connection fee.

This was one of the same problems we encountered at a school at Butha-Buthe for disabled children. One knows how hard life can be for some of these children back in Europe so one can only start to imagine how much worse it is here.

Lack of facilities, toys, and educators are only some of the problems that the school faces. “We could spend loads of money on this place” and all of it would be well spent seemed to be the idea on everyone’s mind, when we left the premises…

Just a final note on the LCCU, still no compressor, however Ntate Sello and his men have nearly finished breaking the slabs by pure force! Thank you to all of them… Tomorrow I will try and go and check the progress and I will also meet the Director Mr Linakane as there are some issues that still need to be discussed.

more pictures from the mountains on this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/pck.clarke/SnowUpClose

Final touches…a lot of work, cold and rammed earth!

All my day was spent finishing Sentebale’s kitchen. Before anyone asks the LCCU is at a bit of a stand still at the moment. Still waiting for the compressor… I did meet Ndate Sello and he told me that he was doing his best to get that compressor to the site. It seems that it has a flat tyre and no one told the guy in charge of it to fix it so that we can have it, his boss is away so he will not do it out of his own initiative. But Ndate Sello told me that he would handle it. As he is the foreman I have decided to let him try and if he does not succeed I will have to do it myself.

So to make the most out of the day I decided to finish the kitchen. Finding the appropriate parts for it was no easy task, some of the bits are not for sale and others are only non-standard sizes, so some of the details and fixings are experimental ones. Even though I managed too solve most issues the washers they use for the taps are paper and it seems that we might need a rubber one to stop the leakage in full. When I finished all the work today it was already too late to get some so I will have to do it another day. The old remaining wall cupboard is now painted orange and it gives the kitchen a warm modern look. Just need to wait for the telecommunications people to come on Monday and rewire the space and it will be complete. But as it is it is now operational and that’s what really matters.

Monday I will also embark on another excursion to the mountains with Harper, this time our objective is to assess how best the Red Cross can spend their money refurbishing this one clinic. I know that I should stop accepting extra work but since I’m here I might as well do my best and help out as much as possible.

The cold weather that we have had in the last couple of days seems to be moving away or at least during the day. In the morning I still have to defreeze the ice off the car but in a couple of hours it is warm enough again to be outside with only a sweater.

My day was also marked by the reception of two letters. One from the Architect I met yesterday, restating the wish to continue some of the discussions that we have started previously, which will be nice and will also give me the opportunity to enquire about the way this country’s architecture has been evolving. The other was form Thea Guest, Sentebale, following up on a discussion that we had started months ago, during my first visit.

The topic of the discussion was rammed earth construction. And now that I have seen some more examples I do believe that there is both an intellectual justification and practical reason why we should maybe try and import this technology to the country. Traditionally some of the Basotho houses were built with thick load bearing mud walls. The rammed earth wall could to some extent be seen as a modernization of that technology.

Even though we might be a little to late to implement it in our project I will discuss this with a few people (experts, partners, A4A London) because as a principle, if the weather and geological conditions allow for it, this technology, with it’s added thermal benefits, could have a great impact on this country.

But let’s not get our hopes to high yet, let’s wait and see what happens.

an eye opening experience…

This post was to be called finishing touches but for certain reasons that I’ll explain in due course I had to postpone that task to tomorrow.

I will focus instead on the meeting I had at QEII hospital concerning the new playground. I was surprised both at the amount of people, hierarchies and burocrassy involved in the construction of such a small play area.

But before I go onto that I’d like to say that today I met another quite interesting character, I met an English architect, Peter Hancock, which has been here for around 40 years I would say. So when I have time I will go and meet him in his office, and see if he can shine some light on those years, see if he can help me understand when it was that, for example, the block and tin roof became the main habitat of the Basotho.

Two weeks ago Paola, the Clinton Foundation and I managed to get the Dr. Mosotho, the Hospital Superintendent, to agree on letting us build it. At the time I had thought that in a matter of weeks I would come around with a few people to help and with bang it up in place and then move on.

That’s where I got it wrong… It will go through a much more complex process of approvals and fundraising, consultation with another architect that had been invited to do it before us. Then in almost a month time we’ll meet again and decide on a date to build it… This building task will not be also as simple as imagined. Children and adults are to be involved and what was to be a swift job has now transformed itself into a mega-operation.

I don’t believe its anybodies fault, just mine probably for being naïve and expecting things to be done in a quick and simple way. I guess that like this it does bring some advantages, it will get the publicity that it needs and once it has been set up more people will be able to call it theirs, therefore enhancing both the sense of community and ownership.

The only thing I just can’t quite understand (me not being a very religious person) is why we ended this meeting with a prayer… All 8 of us (yes 8 people were needed for this particular task, next meetings we’ll be 9 because one person had wrongly not been invited) rose, closed the eyes and thanked God for the opportunity to do this and asked him for help in completing it. My mind at the time must have been elsewhere because I didn’t understand what was happening, luckily I was the only one so I managed to get away with it.

Not a bad day…

It would have been a better day if not for the mistakes by the kitchen crew at Sentebale.
They managed to chip the floor tiles and damage the work tops whilst installing the new kitchen. Apart from that the kitchen is now finished, just awaiting that we pick a new mixer and find the dual sink connection pipes.

Siza’s first project was a gate I built a kitchen… Can’t say it has the same quality but it’s nice to have finished something!

I have to say that I should by now not be surprised at the poor workmanship, but I still have difficulty in accepting it and if I hadn’t gone out to take care of the LCCU, this matter would not have ended this way.

But enough about trivial things. The main project, the LCCU also had some major advances today. I managed to receive an updated version of the new costs, they look a bit better but the whole concept of a discount is still wrong. I’ll try and meet with Mr. Linakane tomorrow to sort that out.

The other main development on this scheme was my meeting for approval of the details with Eng. Lebohang Phooko. We have agreed on them now and I have issued them to the contractor. Unfortunately the compressor didn’t arrive on site either. But I’m still confident that next week we might start to build again.

Tomorrow I’ll meet with the Clinton foundation and the Medical Staff but also with a team of Architects/builders that had been invited to help out with the playground or so it seems by the medical staff.

The cold seems to be here to stay though I would appreciate if we had a few warm day next weeks to lay the concrete slabs. If not we will just have to improvise.

Snow in the distance

Freezing! Today was just freezing…

The mountains are now covered in snow, and that seems to delay just about everything. The kitchen people didn’t manage to make it for 8:30 as planned, 11AM was more the time they showed up. They blamed the cold for the glue machines not warming up… I guess that they are probably right… Judging by the amount of insulation an average house has I would not be surprised if with this cold your everyday factory would not be able to achieve temperatures above freezing level.

But it seems that the kitchen was not the only thing delayed by the cold today. The delivery on site of the compressor/jack-hammer didn’t seem to happen. I spoke to both Director and Foreman and they were positively sure that it would arrive today… Maybe it got kidnapped by some stray Xmas reindeers looking for the North Pole… One can only guess!

One thing got done today though. I finally managed to get an appointment with the QS, I wanted to discuss with him his figures for the extra costs of the retaining wall. When he first delivered them to me, and then whizzed off before I could even ask any questions, last Friday I had a quick look, and it was evident that something was just slightly odd. The area he was proposing to demolish was bigger than the area of the building. So I did what we should have done long before and went through the whole area schedule of the building. I have now amended his estimate, given it back to him, and explained that a discount is made by subtracting from the final value and not adding on to it, and then presenting it the other way around!

Let’s see what I receive tomorrow…

Just a little misunderstanding…

I travelled out to site today in hope of meeting the workers and discuss what would be our next steps… Monday the compressor arrives and that should allow us to finish the demolition once and for all.

The site is looking good the two biggest slabs are gone, one and half rondavels have also been cleared, we’re left with two and half rondavels and 3 smaller slabs.

All was great apart from the fact that there were no builders there! I was surprised so I called Ntate Sello, who told me that Saturdays they only worked half day.

I was almost certain that that was only Sundays… Oh well!
(it’s better to rest now and then work harder later)

What we have not achieved…

It’s been a month and we have not built a single wall, the roof is no where to be seen, we have not finished to dig out all the slabs or to correct the previous builders mistakes, we have not been able to provide extra shelter for the children, we have not managed to get to an agreement on what to build Lydia as a replacement for her old house, nor have we accomplished any of the other small projects that I’ve been parallel working on.

We have not managed to discuss with TED about the Biogas system, or agree on a price for the extra repairs on site…

But don’t distress! I don’t! ‘Cause I know that we are getting there!

All the things that happened or didn’t happen in this first month were necessities in a way… Without the rains, the structural problems would not have been evident and we might have ended up building an unsafe house (for all I know the roof might have just made the whole thing collapse). The children might be in a tight space (but no point re-housing them if their caretaker says that they would not like the new accommodation). Lydia’s new house might have ended up being just too big for anyone or too small for her (to achieve balance one sometimes needs to give in). The playground still needs testing before we can actually build it (the idea is good now let’s see if it works).

As for TED I’ve finally received a call and I must say the delay has served them well as they are almost on track now. And the price, that one will slowly have to adjust itself and that’s as certain as the fact that be building will not expand from 390m2 to 442m2.

There are two Portuguese traditional sayings that summarize this quite well “Há males que vêm por bem!” and “devagar se vai ao longe…”(Ruff translation: some bad things happen to be good! And slowly we will get there…)

Just helping out…

Yesterday’s post was a little delayed (I’ve only posted it now with this one) not because I didn’t write it before but because I had a few internet problems and today I spent all my day on my hands and knees helping out at Sentebale.

Today was a public holiday here in Lesotho, and Baba and I decided we would help out Sentebale and do a job that needed to be done.

The new kitchen will arrive tomorrow and so today was our last chance of dismantling the old one and installing the new floor tiles. It was harder than we expected but in the end I think that we did quite a good job.

I also tried to contact the builders on site but without luck, we were expecting a jack-hammer, and I was curious to discover it had arrived or not?

If it did I expect that all the slabs should be broken up by now and all we need to do now is shovel it out so that we can start to rebuild! Really looking forward to that… If not I do hope to have it tomorrow because as I have already said before it will save us time that we don’t have!

Still waiting to know what will be the extra costs, so that we can discuss it and then present it to the bank.

Helicopters and the fastest project on earth…

Today was my first time on a helicopter, quite an amazing experience I must say! The way they take off and land is quite unbelievable and to see this beautiful country from the sky is just stunning.

We flew out to Mantsase so that, Sir Tom and Geoffrey, could see one of the projects that Sentebale are helping out with… But my accompanying them was not just pleasure. I went with the objective of helping them out with the design of a new dorm.

18 months ago they built one, and it is now too small for their needs, so they were hoping to build another one. I was asked to come up with a sketch design so that they can start raising money and organizing what to do. I had a look at what they had, and have to say how sad I felt to see that next to a really beautiful example of vernacular architecture they built a new anonymous block, that in less than 2 years is showing 1cm cracks all around that look like more than your average shrinkage crack. Walking through the building I could almost pinpoint the place where the slab probably settled or some other problem that the building already has.

My wish would be to tell them not to build anymore like that and to invest in the traditional, but this is a point that people have difficulty in understanding. I guess you have to learn for your self. People just can’t be taught, they need to discover by themselves.

I sat down on the grass, and with 3 kids around me, did a quick sketch of what they could need. Now back at home I think about it and I can’t stop to think that although it does reply to brief and in some way to the site it seems inadequate and I’m not 100% happy with that first idea…

I will nevertheless try and help them with this design, to the limits of my time and capacities, but I will try and make it clear from day one that there are more adequate solutions than the most obvious ones. Or that maybe what you should be looking at for inspiration is just there across the courtyard.

How I will do this I am not sure, neither of the form nor of the techniques that should be used for this building, but one thing I’m sure of. It’s 1000 times better to have a well build vernacular building than a badly built western one!

for more photos of this trip check this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/pck.clarke/LesothoFromTheSky
note: any similarity to Litema patterns is pure coincidence :)

And today’s findings are…

When you think that you have seen it all, think again and you’ll realize that there is much more there than meets the eye.

If I have learnt one thing from this building so far is that you always have to dig a little deeper… Because when you do you’ll discover a wall without foundations, or a 260mm gap between the slab and the compacted fill.

Sad but true. The slab issue is already being dealt with and the foundations problem will be easily fixed by underpinning it, so no major setback or disappointment there, but it’s always a little demotivating to always find new problems that have to be dealt with.

I also found time to go and visit Lydia to discuss what she wants for her new house. I feel it’s a little too much, but if it’s what she wants and she can afford it then it’s none of my business. I’ve done my best at advising on cheaper and better solutions. They were not sufficient so now we just need to wait for the students to finish their exams and we’ll start sorting out her new dream home. I hope she’ll like what we’ll build for her in the end…

I need to start thinking about making some mock up panels of the finishes so that when the time comes at least those will go on smoothly!

(Good luck Sebatha and all the best for the future, once more thank you for letting me speak on your radio show.)

Not quite

We are back on the right track but things are still a little behind schedule…
The “power-sledge hammer” didn’t show up today but we are waiting for it tomorrow… we did however make our most astonishing discovery yet. The “foundation tree”, in the middle of all the fill that we have dug out we found a live rooted tree. Only a small one, but growing nevertheless. I wonder if it would be through the slab to celebrate Xmas?

My day was divided between students, the site and the “official visit”.

To be honest the people that came out from Sentebale, Sir Tom and Geoffrey, did make my day. It was nice to show people around the site, letting them know what they are investing in. And in the end for them to understand what we are doing and to be happy with it was quite rewarding.

Tomorrow are all the hard battles. First I’ll probably meet the contractor to try and negotiate through the escalation. Then Lydia to settle the program for her new house…

Back on the right track!

Last week in order not to stop the works, I asked the foreman to start digging out all the slabs. It was a risk, because we might have to knock down all the building and what good would it do if we had cut out the slabs? In all honesty not much…

But it was a (calculated) risk worth taking! With bit of creativity and good will we have now found a solution that the engineer is comfortable with and will allow us to save the building (without too big a cost thus allowing us to actually continue work).

Tomorrow if all goes as planned a mechanical sledge hammer will be on site to relief the man of some of the hard work and then we’ll hopefully be able to restart building instead of demolishing.

(I’d like to thank once more Eng. Lebohang Phooko for his help and cooperation in helping solve yet another problem that we’ve encountered, just hope that it was actually the last one.)

Containers and Lectures…

My day was pretty much divided between these two events.

In the morning I went to check out the delivery of the containers to the old LCCU site. Quite an unbelievable experience! The amount of stuff that was actually in them was unthinkable and some of it pardon me saying so, quite useless, a walking aid (same as used by old people) for a children’s home??? What were people thinking!

But on the other hand it’s nice that so much stuff has been sent out, it will definitely help and furnish the building once it is finished… Just a pity that it has all arrived leaving us with a storage problem, that seems to have no easy solution… We’ll manage no doubt an in a few months stuff will be being moved in to the new building.

I also went on a short visit to the site, only to discover that the men where, as I had asked them to, demolishing the old slabs… It occurred to me that all their work and sweat could be saved, and our work capacity increase, if we could actually organize to have on site a pneumatic-hammer, it would probably do the work in less that a 1/10 of the time! I’ll suggest it to the contractor and hope that he accepts it so that we can carry on with the important task of rebuilding, and not demolishing.

In the afternoon however I had the high point of my day! I manage to go through the lecture without making too much of a fool of myself! I’m sure I did a few mistakes but none that I’m deeply ashamed of!

So all of that went well… Let’s see how the weekend goes! I need to meet the students tomorrow to see if we come up with a solution for Lydia’s house and also on Sunday I’ll be meeting the engineer.

Wish me luck! Goodnight!

A small victory

Although reluctantly the QEII Superintendent has agreed that we can go ahead with the new playground.

It’s only a small victory but at a time when all the other projects seem to be having problems having one go forwards is actually a good source of motivation.

Tomorrow I’ll also be giving a small lecture/slideshow on European Architecture at the Lerotholi Polytechnic 14h. I thought that since I was here I could share some of the buildingd that I have had the luck to visit with the students of the architecture course.

The LCCU is at a bit of a stand-still, the work is still ongoing and at a good rhythm but untill I meet with the engineer, to try and find a solution, there’s no guarantee that the building will not have to be fully demolished. But after a meeting today with the Bank that is not really an option…

Maybe?

“Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t! Maybe you’ll have children maybe you won’t!” Maybe will save the building maybe we won’t!

The fact that the bricks bellow the DPC are actually concrete might give us the option that by building a retaining, “L” shaped, wall (using the existing as lost shuttering) will save what has been done up to now… It would mean big costs and time savings.

I’m going to discuss this with the engineer (Unfortunately his only available on Sunday) and see what can be done…

But in the mean time, maybe “We’ll build a playground, maybe we won’t!”

The Sketch design for the QEII playground has been drafted and tomorrow I’ll show it to the Clinton Foundation but also to the QEII Superintendent! So if he is a man of his word, soon we might be putting this playground up!

Keep your fingers cross for both these projects!

A bit of good news…

A deal for the installation of a playpump has been agreed provided that the water and the borehole test positive for clean drinkable water and for a plausible depth.

Trevor Field, from Playpumps came out today to see the site and also to meet with Sentebale in order to partner up with them to try and install 100 of these pumps in the country. As explained before in earlier posts the pumps work by children going round on a roundabout that then pumps water up into the tank, providing them with clean drinking water.

He was very pleased with the site and promised to install it even before we get a deal on the other 99 pumps. Good news for a change!

The only issue he brought up was that he believes that the borehole might not be sufficient to provide running water for all the facilities in the house… This might mean that we’ll need a second system or have to ration the water once the building is in use.

The other piece of good news, yet to be confirmed to what extent that changes things, is that there actually is a DPC installed in that retaining wall and that below it the blocks used are concrete and not sand. I was determined to have it rechecked today in proper light, and a quick inspection proved me right. It’s a bit of hope but not a certainty that it will mean it’s salvageable… Something will happen but maybe a sandwiched concrete retaining wall might do the trick? Sunday I’ll meet the engineer and try and see what we can do about it.

In the mean time I think I will just advise the builder to start knocking out the slabs… As for me I’ll just try and think out various solutions for the various scenarios.

$#!7 hit the fan!

Must start by apologizing for the language but to be honest it’s really how it seems today…

I’d been trying to avoid giving an engineer have a look at the building but the structural problems were so many that it was really a necessity… The reason why I didn’t really want them to have a look at it is that whilst you are ignorant you can cope with it, now that I know the extent of the problem I really don’t know what to do!

In less than 5 minutes he was saying that the only responsible thing was to pull it down and restart! Honest! He said that everywhere that we had retaining walls that they needed to be done properly otherwise we couldn’t guarantee that they would last more than 10 years… Sue the previous builder? Yes that should happen!

He met me on site today and although it was already really dark this was his immediate opinion. Imagine if there had been plenty of light??? He said that the concrete blocks 150mm, being made of river sand would not be stable if they started being contaminated by water… now since there are no DPMs or DPCs in place that is not an if but a when…

I’m really not feeling happy with the whole situation but we are already trying to sort it out the best possible way… Let you know tomorrow how we are going to tackle this… the builder has already claimed that he might try to absorb some of the costs in his social responsibility policy but what really concerns me now is the time to complete it!

Recharge

The first 3 weeks here have been quite a lot of work and the next ones I believe will be even worst. The slab problem needs a resolution, and all the rest will follow after that, so this weekend I took a trip to Durban, to surf and recharge my batteries…

Durban is quite a special place, Segregation would have to be the word I’d chose to define it. Founded on the Indian Ocean it became one of the biggest melting pots of Africa. Zulus, Brits, Afrikaners and Indians all came to live here. However they never quite mixed with each other.

The city has parts for some and parts for others. It’s difficult to feel welcome in all parts of the city. I was fortunate to meet people at the hostel and at the beach that made my stay more interesting and multicultural, if not for these I might have felt that the city was a quite unwelcoming place.

The city has a mix of colonial style architecture, skyscrapers, villas and shacks… The mix makes it quite a strange place to visit… Being a costal city it has also that added fascination of the sea, and all that it brings. Being the biggest Port of Africa it’s also quite an attraction and movement in and out of the city is huge.

The waves were great and I’m now ready for whatever the next few months might have in stall.

Bonk, Bonk, Bonk!

We spent the morning knocking about with a sledge hammer to test for the resistance of the slabs and also checking for any space under them.

The results were not comforting. It seems that 75% of the slabs are either week or sitting on air. Monday with and engineer we’ll try and understand the true extent of the problem and its possible solution.

It seems to me at the moment that there are 2 main options. Take all the slabs away and fill properly casting then a slab on what would be a stable ground. Or creating columns and beams on which we would then cast our new slab, this one not ground bearing thus not being exposed to any problems of terrain settlements.

In the mean time we are proceeding with work on other sectors of the building in order not to slow down too much the site.

Please call Tau…

Tau, is the second in command on site. Last weekend when I went on site I engraved my phone number on the wall and told me to call me if he found any problems.

Today at 10:20am I received the message that is now the title of this post: Please call Tau… The problem was not a small one. The slab in one of the rooms that was to be replaced did not have a mesh, or a DPM for that matter.

Fearing that it was not just a slip, but that it might have been a common practice of the previous builder, I asked them to open up the other big slab. We found a weak spot and at the end of the day I received another phone call saying that it also lacked a mesh and a DPM.

Tomorrow I’ll go on site first thing in the morning and try and decide what to do. I can’t really guarantee that the rest is not the same. Neither can I guarantee by what I’ve seen that the terrain is properly compacted, the slab well cast (and using an appropriate mix) so that we could leave it as it is. As far as I can predict with the next rains the soil on which the slabs are laid might wash away and the problem worsen…

I’ve asked Baba to see if an engineer can come with me on site tomorrow. Let’s do a few tests and see what we can do… But it’s not looking good!

May Day

Work on site seems to be progressing well. The preparation for the ring beam is almost over and the holes for the new slabs are nearly finished.

Today was dedicated to surveying Lydia’s house’s site. I can’t say it went all that well but it was sufficient to allow me to draw up an existing plan.

The students have another presentation so in order to advance some work I decided to do the existing plans myself. Now with plans made I’ll give them to them and then try and coordinate the results. I have sketched out a solution for a non-extension proposal. But what I hear from Lydia and what I hear from others doesn’t match… So I really don’t know if in the end we’ll be building and extension or not.