Gringos de Marimán

We got a good taste of winter this past week, starting with roaring puelche winds, freezing temperatures, and we ended the week with several days of downpours. You can see one unfortunate result in the pirca wall.

Obviously the rain caused a bit of slippage here, but Kenny felt that the frost contributed as well. One other factor, instead of using the same porous tierra excavated from the hillside (notice that there are no puddles anywhere?), we used top soil to fill between the rocks. Oh well, now I get to enjoy watching the rebuilding of this section.

But let's start at the beginning of the week. You might remember we were covering things up last week, so the crew started this week by adding more plywood on the walls.

You can see the sun was shining, but there were also strong winds blowing and slowing the progress a bit.

The next day we drove to the big city, Temuco, which is about an hour and a half from Pucón. We spent the day looking at materials to be used to finish the house (tile, flooring, curtains, etc.). More on these choices in a later entry, but for now I'll just say that I hope the exchange rate for dollars to pesos improves soon.

So I missed all day Tuesday and then Wednesday the skies opened up to drench everything in sight. I figured there wouldn't be much progress, so I waited until there was a slight break on Thursday afternoon. When I arrived the crew was nailing up plywood on the pasillo roof area.

In fact they were most of the way done with the facade.

Here's the view after the weather cleared over the weekend.

Not only had I missed the framing of the front part of the roof, but I'd also skipped the mounting of the steel beams on top of the roof. But here's a view of the roof and the weather conditions on Thursday, so you can appreciate why I stayed home in front of the fire.

Ok, enough excuses, let's take a look at the work done. Imagine lifting up each of these beams by hand!!!

Each beam sits on top of the pillars at the front and back of the house and is bolted into the framework over the pasillo.

Also, over the pasillo sits another small section of tablones. Hey this is a good spot to hide from that pinhead. Wait, who's that other dog?

On the backside the beams were bolted down onto the frame.

You'll notice that the beams also have tabs with holes for connecting all the vigas between each beam.

And here's our full line of steel. By the way, the roof covering will actually go below the steel over the aluminum paper. If you're wondering why the steel goes on top, remember that we'll be watching the stars from the terazza on top.

Here's a couple of views from the pasillo, showing the beams bolted in and the slanted (drainage of course) tablones. Another agua canale will be added to drain all that rain.

The guys also installed a couple of steel columns to support the solar sistema.

One more roof beam sits in the back corner, parallel to the poor fallen pirca wall.

This beam would support the rampa leading from the hill, but we've now decided to postpone that installation. Blame it on fear of heights. At least we'll have the support in place if we change our minds later.

So that's it for week 15. Pay no attention to that puppy in the foreground. I'm certain that we would never consider adding another dog after the pinhead experience. Will we ever learn??? Hasta la proxima!!