Lost in Iowa: The houses

Let me tell you a little about the homes we built. If you read my blog while I was gone, you know that after the first day, we only had 1/2 of a house built. The math doesn't work out if you try to finish 5 houses in 5 days if you are averaging 1/2 a house a day. We didn't have 10 days to complete this, so we hoped that the lessons learned on day one translated into a bigger number completed in days 2 thru 5. I'm happy to report that day 2 was a 2 1/2 house day. We were able the first house we had started, plus 2 more, giving us 3 days to finish the remaining 2 houses. We didn't chance that we could slow down and still get them done, so we had all 5 houses done by 3pm on Wed. I can't tell you how happy we were that the actual construction was done. The last 2 days were spent cleaning, finishing the rock work and then the dedication. Here are a few picks: Delivery of the houses.

Day one of the work.

First completed house.

All 5 houses done.

The dedication.

Inside of a finished house.

The construction of the houses was pretty easy, in design, but we had to use pop rivets to hold it together. The tool you use to apply the rivets hurts your hand after a couple of hundred, so my hands were aching after day one and we still had a long way to go. You can see, what I call the spines, arrived assembled and the crew from the manufacturer put them in place. When we arrived, we bolted them together and then bolted them to the ground. If you have ever bolted something together that had pre-drilled holes, you know that rarely goes smoothly. These, however, bolted together with almost no effort. There were a few we had to persuade into working, but not much trouble. We then bolted them to the ground, which I have a lot of experience in. In Mexico, we bolt the house we build to the concrete, so I've drilled hundreds of holes over the past 5 years. After that, we cut the shipping braces out and started the outside panels. You start at the top and try to get the first piece centered as best you can. Chad and Brad from our group figured out that if you measured the beam going across the front of the house, found the middle, then dropped a plumb line from the top of the arch, then all you had to do was line up the center of the first sheet with that line and your good to go. That isn't exactly how we started this, but we figured it out by house 3, so it went much faster. Then you just add layer upon layer of the sheets, drilling holes through the metal sheeting and steel spine and riveting it all together. Once we got the hang of it, we flew through the process. Like I said in an earlier post, if you have 7 people working on a house, you can have it done in 3 hours, maybe a bit more depending on bit breakage and supplies. It took us a bit more than 3 hours because people were being pulled away for other projects. Not a bad thing, just perspective.

Here is a picture of an impromptu concert givin by the kids.