Bond beam getting poured

The boat came back from Atauro with a number of water filters and some grinders being sold.  Other products were left with key people in each village who may sell them over the next month.

This week on the training centre the team poured the “bond beam”.  This is a steel reinforced beam around the the bottom of all the walls.  The trick with this is to make sure any plumbing and electrical (and communications and sound) that are coming up from the floor are already set into the beam.  Anen has done a great job with trying to get all the wires and pipes in the right places (considering these people are more skilled at building grass huts than 2 storey buildings).

Pouring the concrete to make the bond beam.  Note the electrical cabling is set in wherever they hope to put a power point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reo steel is made of 10mm steel rod and 6 or 8mm loops that curve around the outside.  As I am Australian and the builders are Timorese we constantly have disagreements about what is important for strength.  I try to stay patient and positive at this point.

Reo is tied up with dedication – apparently the more loops the stronger it is!

“Boxes” of plywood are made up around the steel to pour the bond beam.  Note that they do not lay a slab at this point.  In fact, in this part of Asia they rarely lay a slab preferring instead to lay floor tiles later on a 50mm bed of mortar.  This is partly because their building process is quite messy with lots of concrete being splashed everywhere.

Plywood “boxes” ready for concrete to go in.

Anen wants to fill up all the inside of the building with soil after this and lay down a thin layer of concrete to help with the rest of the building process.

Its a steaming hot country but they choose to wear long sleeves, with Apoli on the right working in a thick hoodie.

Lucas’s recording studio with pipes in the ground to take sound cables from the desk to the sound room (behind) and from the desk to the front of the training room.

 

The costs are already exceeding my estimations but I hope I’ll make it up further down the line.

Budget for the building (US$):

Costs so far: $9500

Contributions: $7500