Last Pour Your Own Day

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July 7 & 8 2010

Floor joists in on Thursday








Box beams on Wednesday.

July 1 & 2 Trailer woes

Our 20' flat rack was MIA; when we found the rack and driver he was stuck about 1/2mile down the road from Concordia, claimed the lumber was loaded incorrectly with too much weight in the back end and he was unable to make the final hill to the property. He agreed to back it down the hill to a flat lot but then left it at a steep angle on off the road. Bad for us. Not our property, and we're unable to unload this without risk of losing the load or worse, someone getting hurt. Our guys made those braces to stabilize the load.

Fortunately Lucien Sylvester of Enterprise Trucking came to save the day, driving out on a Carnival Week Holiday Friday afternoon with a stronger tractor to pull this rack to our yard so it could be unloaded.





Alex Brooks of Creative Builders arrived, 4pm on same holiday Friday, driving it himself since his crew left early on Fri and he had promised to help. He seemed to be ready to make fast work of this when...




He got stuck in the soft soil (lots of rain the past month). Took almost and hour to get him out with help from Lucien. They both stayed until almost dark to complete the job. Amazing people to work with.

Thanks to Lucien, Alex and Segundo, who put in a 12 hour day including a concrete pour. Amazing.


We end this long day with Alex's beautiful daughter, keeping busy while dad does his superhero work. Looks like she'll be ready for the Carnival parade next year.



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July 1 Pouring again

The Thursday pour went so well we decided to try it again on Friday to complete the boardwalk footings. 3 yards this time but no buckets, we could shoot it right down the hill into the footings.

Pour your own - June 30, 2010

No concrete available this week to pour our columns so our new Carpentry Contractor John Fitzgerald (Fitz) brought over his mixer, sand, gravel, sand and cement and the guys batched it themselves. Thanks to our regular crew, Fitz's crew, four wonderful young guys from our Maho Bay 4hr worker program and lots of buckets the columns are poured on building 1 and we're still ahead of schedule.

Had a bit of a scare when we discovered over 2 dozen eggs in the sand. Fearing they were turtle eggs, we collected them carefully and buried them on a nearby beach. We checked with the head of natural resources for the VINP and he confirmed they were iguana eggs, very likely laid after the sand arrived on island. With luck, these baby iguanas will start life on the beach.

Forming the Columns - Rebar and Boxes

For all footings over 3 ft tall we place the stirrups 6" apart for the lowest 25% of the column height, then 8" apart for the middle 50% then 6" apart for the upper 25%. We use #5 rebar. The lumber is untreated, termite food, so when we're finished with it we'll take the 2x4 pieces not covered in concrete to our Maho Art Center to use in the Clay Studio wood burning kiln.

Pouring Footings

Geoff arrives (the shirtless one) with his son and pump truck. He's a terrific guy to work with. Always shows up when scheduled and works so hard, he keeps the whole crew on their toes (they're on their toes anyway but if they weren't..). It's getting tough to get concrete on St. John these days. Majestic Construction is the only show on island and they can't seem to get material here. They would only give us 9 yards ($265 per yard plus pump truck) when we needed 12. We'll have to pour the 10 12x12 boardwalk footings and EcoStudio deck footings when we pour the columns next week. Our Loft Duplex and Deluxe Studio units are in the background.

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