Gotchas of Panamanian buildings - worst practices

In every industry, over time, best practices are developed and defined. The builders in Panama, however, seems to not have adopted much of what’s common practice in other countries. Well, there are two types of builders: the large construction firms that build skyscrapers, and the little guys who build homes by hand.

I have no idea about the large construction firms, I’m taking about the little guys. 

Many of the little farmers can not survive off their farm and are subsidizing their income by working in construction. Everybody out in the country seems to know how to work with concrete. Many know how to weld, or do plumbing, or electrical installations.

They have learned by watching and assisting somebody else, and then just doing it often. They never got proper training, or schooling about the theory.  They do as well as they know how!

At the same time, most people here don’t have a large enough income to be able to afford hiring a firm to build their homes. Instead, they save up a little money and buy some sand and rocks and a couple of blocks and bags of cement, and build as far as their material reaches. Then they wait until they have more money, to do the next.

As a consequence, work is performed in a way that is the least costly, and the easiest to perform.

My personal most feared “worst practices” are these:

Anywhere you go in the country you’ll find a trashcan next to the toilet bowl into which you’re supposed to place the used toiletpaper. you should not throw the paper into the toilet, as you’re used to do in europe, the US or similar countries. the reason for this is, that the drain pipes are sometimes too small and most of the times don’t have the correct declination. if that pipe is too steep (more than 3cm per m, 1” per 3 ft) or too shallow (less than 2cm per m, 3/4” per 3ft), the solids tend to get stuck. With paper it clogs the pipe frequently. Worst practice: drain pipes incorrect declination.

Declination of drain pipes does often not follow best practices, but rather the terrain

In my house I put extra care and effort to ensure the pipes have the right declination. So toiletpaper can be flushed down without problems! 

Also, I ensured that for every pipe there’s easy access for a snake tool,in case the pipe does get clogged for any reason at any time.

Electrical wires are color coded. White is neutral, bare or green is ground, and black (red, blue, or yellow) are phases. In local homes (and businesses as well) you often find cables used not according to their color. That makes troubleshooting very difficult and dangerous!

In this box, the leaving cable uses white for hot and red for neutral!

In my house I took great care that wires are used with the correct color coding. 

Also, I made sure in every junction-box and the breaker-box every wire is labeled with the circuit it belongs to. Again, to make maintenance and troubleshooting easier, should there ever be a problem, or the need to extend the system.

The floor in walk-in showers are supposed to decline towards the drain. Often it doesn’t, so there’s always a puddle on the floor. Over time that part of the floor gets grimy and slippery. 

In my house I had the mason adjust the subflooring multiple times, until there was the right declination in the whole bathroom! Also, I selected tiles that don’t get slippery when wet. That way slip-and-fall accidents are less likely.

There are more issues I noticed. I might add some more at another time… For now, these are the most annoying, and the easiest avoidable issues…