Building homes...
Trip Start
Oct 29, 2006
1
2
5
Trip End
Nov 05, 2006
Loading Map
Mumbai,
India
Monday, October 30, 2006
At the beginning..
With remarkable efficiency volunteers were divided up among the 100 houses, each house was assigned a house leader (usually an experienced Habitat volunteer) and about 15 crew, two paid masons and a hired labourer who would help to churn cement and mortar throughout the week. The home owners to-be introduced us to their skeleton house and after quick introductions and a safety briefing Day 1 was underway!
Build material
Day 1 and 2 was all about cement blocks! We lifted heavy blocks and laid them one on top of the other with cement to form walls - 12 blocks high. After 'levelling', 'pointing', 'smoothening' and lining up our cement blocks, the doors and windows were installed and by the end of Day 2..our house started taking shape. U blocks, corner blocks fitted with reinforcing bars topped off the walls and we were ready to pour in the concrete that would strengthen the structure.
Walls are up!
Its amazing how, with good instructions and a few experienced people - 20 odd people can build a house!!!
On Day 3 while the experienced builders scaled the scaffolding to measure and build triangular gables that would eventually support the roof, the rest of us developed our niches - painting doors and windows, mixing cement, finishing off cement walls, scraping cement off the floors, curing the blocks, supplying cement and blocks to the 'layers'...there was so much that needed to be done!
Painting....
By mid-day the sound of power drills filled our ears as roof perlins and steel rods were drilled into our newly built cement walls. Supported by brackets our house would soon have neat lil overhanging tiled roof!
Roofs perlins are up!
