Building the foundation - Week Two

Our first albaniel turned out to be fast but very little thought was going into what he was doing. There were not enough support columns (castillos) for our spans and bathrooms were not planned. We added 7 new columns - 5 down the middle and two on either side of the large front room.

The bottom foto is of the reinforced 'header' (dala) that goes above the block, the top of which will be the floor level. I rented the wood for forms but will buy some next time as we'll use them multiple times.

Adding the extra castillos

The dala - header

Building a house in Pinal Villa, Costalegre, Jalisco

Building the foundation

This is three days of foundation work but they are nearly finished after the first week. The delay is mostly because of the hand digging required because the backhoe didn't go deep enough towards the rear of the lot which is higher than the front. The albañil (mason)says the backhoe guy wasn't experienced enough ... but the albañil left me to oversee the digging and I didn't know what they had planned.

So here they are laying out the perimeters and finding level with the "water in the hose" trick. The castillos (support columns) are almost a meter deeper than the bottom of the foundation and spaced 5 meters of less

Water level

Finishing off the ditches

Foundation and castillos

The second 1000 blocks arrive