Ruminations of an Expatriate

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And Even More Construction In Mexico

Monday, February 4th, 2008

You may remember the photos and commentary I posted relative to the construction of an addition to the apartment building where I live, here from December and here from last month.

The guys doing the work, with whom I have become quite familiar as I always stop to watch and ask questions, will tomorrow morning begin pouring the second story slab and the beams which will support the third story.

El jefe told me that they will be using a concrete pump truck to place the concrete, which is how concrete is typically placed on larger USA construction projects or in instances where the form work site is inaccessible to the concrete batch truck. As I had previously mentioned, to this point every bit of concrete placed in the project has been mixed by hand and placed in the forms using buckets.

The photo above shows the form work and reinforcement. The tops of the polystyrene plastic blocks, we know as styrofoam, are at the level of the bottom of the second floor slab. Their use enables the workers to pour the beams and floor slab in one pour without ending up with a floor slab thicker, and much heavier, than necessary. Once the form work below, shown in the January report, is removed the blocks will also be exposed, and removed.

The photo at right shows a roll of reinforcing mesh that will be spread across and a couple inches above the styrofoam blocks, mid-height in the finished floor slab.

This morning as I left for a bit of shopping the roll was laying in the street out front, with about seven fellows considering how to lift it up to the second story. When they saw me they asked me to lift for them and laughed. I don’t know how much the roll weighs but it took about seven of us to just lift it off the ground.

Ultimately three beams, perhaps 4″ x4″, were laid up against and lashed to the structure with tie wire. We moved the roll near to the beams at street level, stood the roll on its end, laid it against the three inclined beams, and slid the roll up to the fellows above, using poles to push it the last couple of feet beyond our reach.

When I went up on the roof this afternoon to take these photos I caught the guys taking a break playing cards in the shade.

Speaking of up on the roof, I thought I’d show you the roof of the apartment building. The large black tanks hold water which is pumped from street level. The water line serving the apartment building, with more than twenty units, is about 1/2″ diameter, whereas, typically, the line serving a single family residence in most USA cities would be 3/4″, and probably 2″ for an apartment building of the size where I live. Because the water mains in the streets here, and elsewhere in Mexico, are much smaller than the typical USA main, which are of at least 6″ to adequately supply fire hydrants, each building has an elevated tank into which the water is pumped and fed into the building through gravity. Here, with construction of masonry, thus less concern of fire, there are no fire hydrants.

The smaller white tank you may see at the center of the photo holds LPG gas. Periodically the gas delivery truck will stop by, one of its operators will climb to the roof, drops a rope to the other truck attendant to which he ties the gas delivery hose, and the fellow on the roof pulls up the hose and fills the tanks.

In the distance may be seen the top of the Catholic church in th next block.

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Posted in Construction, Xalapa, Mexico | 3 Comments »

Construction in Mexico

Sunday, December 23rd, 2007

The owner of the apartment building where I live is adding more apartments. The construction site is what used to be a parking area where I was able to store my pickup. The work began in the Summer, and every day since there have been from two to more than ten fellows working on the project.

The work began with the demolition of the areas of the parking lot slab where footings would be poured and a small structure that existed on the site. Demolition was completed by a group of fellows with hammers and chisels. No machinery was used.

There is almost ubiquitous here during weekdays and Saturdays the clinking of hammers on chisels and the thump of sledge hammers colliding with masonry, as workers demolish or remodel existing structures.

Keep in mind that labor here is inexpensive so everything is done quite labor intensively. I believe the minimum wage for construction workers here is about 47 pesos per day, roughly the equivalent of $4.35 US.

These photos show typical construction in Mexico, which consists of concrete columns, spanned by concrete beams, and topped with a structural slab floor or roof. The columns you see here will support the load of two additional stories and a roof. You can also see that lumber supports have been placed against the columns, upon which the beam forms will be placed. The spaces between the columns will be filled with either brick or concrete blocks, which will be finished with a layer of stucco.

Every bit of concrete that you can see in the photos, and a substantial quantity which can not be seen, has been mixed by hand and poured into the forms from buckets. The concrete is mixed on the existing concrete slab, where gravel is placed in a bowl shape; sand, cement, and water are added; and workers with scoop type shovels do the mixing. Such is how concrete is typically mixed here. A couple of days ago there was a group of workers mixing concrete in Calle Calijero, one of the main drags through the Centro shopping district, with which to patch a relatively large portion of one side of the street which had been excavated.

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Posted in Construction, Travel, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico | 2 Comments »

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