Good Morning All. I am James, also known as exlrrp this is the Saturday Morning Home Repair Blog where the Dailykos community gets together to talk about all things construction and repair. Our genial and expert staff stand ready to aid you on your every problem
I spent most of January and some of February in Chile, my 11th time there, so i havent done much to tell you about. So heres a rerun from 3 years ago. My son got the house built, after a year, theyre living in it now
As some of you may know, I spent all of December and most of January in Santiago, Chile, helping my son build his house.
Its a woodframed house, which makes it rare in Chile. They go for block and brick, wood being expensive. they get a lot of their wood shipped from here in Oregon, pino de Oregon is what they call fir. Its actually a double house---two attached houses. They were just finishing the foundation when I got there with a slab to be laid over that for the first floor.
So the first major thing I did was prepare for the slab. I don’t usually do large concrete things myself tho being a concrete inspector, I know how its supposed to go. Concrete is something you don’t want to eff up because when it hardens up, its , you know, concrete.
We had to use clear plastic tubing to get the slab level. They never heard of a laser level in Chile and if they have a sight level (like a transit) there we couldn’t find one. When you rent tools here you have to put a $3000 deposit down---no I’m not kidding.
Working in Chile means not having a lot of stuff we are accustomed to. And also having stuff we’re not accustomed to---like this concrete pump. Now every concrete pump I ever saw used a hose---this uses pipes. they set it up, then the pipe swings on an arc around that pivot thing you see. So the load doesn’t get into the corners, you have to shovel it Oh yes, AND they want to lay the whole truckload out in 10 minutes.
Well this is a recipe for a fuckup---concrete takes time to lay down flat and get finished. And we had two large slabs to pour. I tossed any idea about getting these slabs to a nice finish. Just getting it into the forms and flat was going to be a job itself
And what a struggle it was. Usually you have an hours time to lay a truckload of concrete in, and you have a hose, so you can lay it in how and where you want. Not in Chile---you lay it all out in 10 minutes, then deal with it from there. This is really fucked because it takes 10 times as much shoveling as normal. Usually you don’t have to shovel at all, or very little---this way we had to shovel about 10 yards to get it all into place. So we could forget about getting it to a nice finish, just getting it in and flat was all we could do.
ANyway, that's not the worst thing about building in Chile. They have no nailguns. You know, those handy, gunlike things we use to shoot nails in. None there, nada, el zippo. they never heard of them. they have Hilti guns for shooting nails into concrete but they never heard of good ol’ nailguns for framing, finish or roofing. All they have is brad nailers. So I had my wife send me down one with a couple of 50 lb boxes of nails. This took almost a month, because it was over Christmas. $650 for the freight (USPS)
So this is the first nailgun in Chile. It got there the week before I left so I wound up framing the first floor by hand with a hammer. Of course the only hammers they sell in Chile are 20 oz with short handles. You know, “homeowner” style. (curls lip, sneers) Imagine framing with a short handle, lightweight hammer. Done it, now
So anyway, what you’re looking at here is the very first nailgun in Chile. This is a historic photo, this is bound to change Chile for the better. Think of me as the Simon Bolivar of Chilean carpenters, freeing them from the slavery of having to bang nails.
SO We got the first floor framed, then we started putting up the floorjoists for the 2d floor. These were what we call T-joists---made up girders. you can buy them here and they run up to 40’
I had to cut blocks for them, 140 of them. that's also the first wormdrive saw in Chile AND I brought the first Sawzall Chile has ever seen. (My son’s mother, my 2d exwife, actually brought these down in her luggage, but I paid for them) I had to get a transformer to run these and make up extensions cords, Chile works on 208v 50hz (Us: 120v, 60 hz) I had to nip off 4 1"corners on each of these so they fit between joists. you can see from the stack in the back, upper right how they look when finished. At home you can buy these precut.
Once the nailgun came things moved much faster.
I’m having trouble with photobucket so I won’t be able to post all the pictures I wanted to. Anyway, we got the 2d floor on, the plywood nailed down and were standing up the walls on the 2d floor when I left last Tuesday.
I felt pretty good about being able to frame houses at age 67 and still show the local boys how its done. I hammered more nails in 6 weeks than I’ve hammered in the last 20 years I bet, and all with a short handled, light hammer (grrrrr!)
It was quite an adventure building in Chile, I learned how grateful we should all be for Home Depot. They just don’t have stuff like we take for granted here, like speedsquares, laser levels, vinyl sinkers or duplex nails Not that its not a developed country---it is!--but in terms of DIY we’re about 30 years ahead of them
