With a daily wage of 20$ for 8 hours of hard work in the sun, the three top priorities of locals when building a house are how much it costs, how much they have to pay for it, and how much money is needed. The rest is pretty much irrelevant!
I am not swimming in money myself, but, I am able to consider other factors and arrange priorities a little differently with our house.
My thought is, construction of the house is taking a few months. But you’ll live in it many, many years. So, if you make the construction easier and cheaper, you get the benefit during these few months while building. If, however, you make maintainability and adjustability a higher priority, you reap the benefits for all the years you live there.
Of course, a company who builds homes to sell, doesn’t care about anything after the sale. But I do!
Here are some of the topics that I considered, and the ideas and solutions I came up with:
Electrical and water pipes:
They are usually inside the walls. When the walls are sticks with drywall on top it already is a lot of trouble to fix any problems with these pipes or to extend them in some way. Here in Panama, the walls are concrete. If you need to open one to get at pipes, you need a jackhammer! And whatever was not yet broken about the pipe is surely going to be completely destroyed once the wall is open!
I chose to put my pipes outside the wall, and cover them up with wooden cladding, which is fastened by screws, not nails. If you need to get at them, simply unscrew three, four screws and there you go!
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| electrical pipes covered behind wood |
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| Waterpipes visible, thus in copper instead of pvc |
Drain clean-outs:
There’s no maintenance issue more troublesome to me than clogged drain pipes. Except, clogged drainpipes that are not accessible!
For that reason, i put clean-out plugs everywhere! Every toilet and shower drain has such a access point right outside, on the other side of the bathroom wall. On every corner and every endpoint of the main drain pipe there’s an access point as well.
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| zoom in to see the access points for the snake |
I put a lot of effort into ensuring the drains are all following the 2-3% declination rule, so I’m thinking (hoping) I won’t have many issues of clogged pipes. But if there’s one, at least it’s easy to get the snake to where the clog is!
Wall coloring:
painting your house is a very costly and/or work intense job. Having concrete walls, it’s possible to avoid having to paint your house for as long as you live! The trick is, using “tinta” with white concrete. That way, the wall “is” colored by itself, and does not need coats of paint. No paint, no need to renew paint!
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| I used yellow tinta - it goes well with the green of the land and the red of the roof and tile floor |
Sun, rain, and high humidity:
There are three big issues in the tropics with which your building has to cope: Sun, rain, and humidity.
The sun heats up roof and walls, making the inside be like a baking oven - if your architecture doesn’t have a way to get rid of the heat easily and without lots of equipment and energy effort.
I raised the roof a bit above the concrete, and leave the space between them free, so hot air can easily escape to be replaced by fresh, cooler air.
Secondly, I put a wooden ceiling on top of the rooms. That insulates the concrete walls and the air inside the room from the heat radiation of the hot roof.
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| sufficient space between roof and concrete |
No need for expensive - to buy, to install, and to operate - air conditioning systems!
The frequent, sometimes very heavy rain, turns any terrain into either a river (if it’s sloped) or a lake (if it’s level), or both!
I put the slab on top of a thick layer of gravel, which lets water run through easily. In addition, I put drainage pipes around the perimeter of the house, so that most of water is running of right away and not even getting to the gravel cushion.
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| notice the canal for the drainage pipes |
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| Slab is floating on thick cushion of gravel |
No need for sump-pumps or similar equipment to deal with the abundance of water!
The humidity facilitates the growth of mold and mildew. In my experience, once the air is not moving, mold is developing very quickly. And once you have it, it’s virtually impossible to get rid of!
I put large windows, and designed them to be able to be opened completely. That way, it is easy to keep the air moving in the rooms - simply leave the windows open…
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| Side windows can by tilted up - 100% open, sash needs no space as it hangs close to the ceiling |
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| front window is 1,8 by 3m (6 by 10 ft) |
No need for expensive dehydration equipment!
No systems installed, means the least amount of maintenance effort required!
Summarizing
I tried to build a sustainable, easy to maintain, comfortable, and healthy home. I’m sure there are many more topics and ideas that could be considered and dealt with. But so far, it feels really good living in the space!
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| tranquil, sustainable, comfortable, affordable tropical living |
