Bonswa…

Wow, what a day! Today we went out to the site where we are constructing a home for Pastor Pierre Paul. Two of the team members are builders (Britt Dahlin and Jamin Wight) so last night we spent a couple of hours working over the plans and strategy for building stick frame homes here. Today we sent Chris and Jamin with Guercy to the “hardware” store to get the supplies we need for the concrete and to price out the supplies to build the home. As is usual in these kinds of countries we have ended up switching to Plan “B”. The cost for a sheet of plywood (1/2”) down here is $31.50 and 16’ 2”x4”’s cost $13.85 each. Plan “B” will be to construct the home out of concrete block instead of wood.

For those of you that offered your engineering/construction expertise, please feel free to give your advice. We are going to stay with a 12’ x 20’ home. We will start by pouring 6” footings to put the walls on and still do the same type of structure with a door and window in the front on the tall wall and windows on each end. We will still do a shed roof. So far our design is to put rebar coming up out of the footing every four feet and 2-3 feet tall. We will then build the wall by slipping the CMU’s over these rebar and when we get toward the end of them attach an extension by tying them together and continue this until we get to the top of the wall. On the top of the wall we will put anchor bolts out to tie a 2”x6” top plate to. This will be used to anchor the rafters (2”x6”) notched on each wall and then tie the rafters together with 1”x6” stringers to attach the corrugated roofing to.

I know this is quite a rough description, but any thoughts would be appreciated.

Today was very hot and we still have not had any rain. We did get the lot leveled and the framing in as if we were going to pour a slab. Tomorrow we will adapt it to pour the footings.

The women spent a lot of time throughout the day hanging out with the kids and women in the area, which was really cool. Please pray for the health of the team. The weather is pretty hot and the worksite is all in the sun. Tomorrow the women will be working at the Oasis compound doing an inventory of our medical supplies and getting them organized.

Thanks...