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27 September, 2007

The Last Little Bit and a Complication

It seems to me that the last bit of the well house project is taking an excruciatingly long time. Yesterday, the 26th, I got to the site and one worker was already there, parging away. Then about 9:00AM, Isidoro showed up. With both doing the parging they managed about an hour's work. That was it for the day. Mostly, because the roof needs another day or two to set up.

So, I went home and did some reading and watching movies on the tube. Don't get to do much of either it seems when you're working on construction projects.

Then today, I got there about 7:30AM, and again a worker was there hard at the parging. Being a repeat of the previous day, Isidoro showed up and they were able to parge some more and to pour the hatch in the roof that is over the well. That was it for the project.

Tomorrow, they will finish the well house, pulling off the rest of the forms, and finishing the parging on the well house as well as the back side of the septic tank.

As we left the property, Isidoro guided me into town to meet the guy that makes steel doors, since I need to get two made for the well house.

I met Rafie, who runs a little factory off of College Street (Vasco Windows and Doors) making not only steel doors, but burglar bars, hurricane shutters, windows, and roll-type shutters, etc. He has about six or seven guys working there, cutting and assembling all sorts of windows and doors.

Rafie had his estimator go with me back to the property to take measurements of the doorways and to find out exactly what I was looking for. When we got back to his shop, the estimator turned over his drawings to the office clerk, who phoned Rafie (on his way to work in the Free Zone) to discuss the price. Turns out for the two doors, all metal, jambs, locks, and installation included, the cost is going to be about $450BZ. They apologized for the fact that they won't be able to install them till sometime next week. Of course, I get to inspect the doors prior to installation. So, that's basically all taken care of.

I also talked to Isidoro about doing a concrete and chain-link fence for our property. He's interested, but can't start till week after next. We're going to talk about it this weekend. Something else getting ready to be checked off. Geez, I'm making progress.

The only downer today was the fact that about 12:30AM last night we lost water. I thought maybe it was us, a broken pipe or something. Not so, I found out when I met with the worker this morning. He said it was out all over Corozal.

After I got back to the house from doing the doors, I called Belize Water Service to see if they had an estimate on when water service would be restored. A little after noon the lady on the phone told me. Noon came and went... About 2:30PM, I called again and and was told the latest estimate was for 5:00PM. Guess what came and went too.

Finally, we managed to get a trickle of water, enough to flush the toilet about 8:30PM tonight. I hope it's enough to manage a shower apiece tonight. Going the whole day with no shower is no fun at all

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