Jack posts
An awful lot of material has been delivered at the building site: steel, beams, jack postst, wood. And within a few weeks all this material has been transformed. Steel bending, construction shuttering, beam laying, bar bending, and hammering all those pieces of wood together to the necessary molding for the concrete of the roof. Suddenly our project is covered up. Now we no longer are on the house, we are in the house! You find an overview of all the steps on the page Building development.
It is not an easy process though. Often, when Luís arrives at the site, under the impression that there is a lot of work going on, finds the place totally empty. The machine to lift the concrete beams is coming tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow. There is a bank holiday on Thursday, and then they also take a day off on Friday. And the week thereafter again. So several weeks pass by without a lot of activities. It is so hard to get control over agreements and appointments, and all the communications around them. We already know that this is the Portuguese style of building. But o senhor arquitecto is much too often very much irritated and annoyed. A lot of things are promised and announced, but how, when, what time, and who, often remains uncertain till the very end. And these weird (Portuguese) Dutchies like to keep their businesses strictly under control! Of course all will turn out well in the end. But sometimes it is very hard to maintain your patience.
Augmenting prices and descending stocks
In the meantime another exciting issue arises: fast and steep augmenting prices for building materials. We hear sad stories of people who cannot finish their building because they can not finance the rise in costs. Or about provoking long waiting times for raw materials. Chips for machines, containers that can’t leave the harbor. And, at the start of the chain: the quotations, which are having a very short validity. We decide to buy everything we can, or at least make a deposit, to confirm the quotation. The pool, kitchen appliances, the septic tank, all to be delivered in a later stadium. The prices for houses in Lisbon, Porto and the Algarve are rising fast. Soon comfortable living will be only available for the happy few big spenders. Bad situation!
Dowsing rod
We had a guess when we bought the land. There was a strange hole in the ground with a part of a tree trunk in it (so that who falls in, can climb out?) and specific plant stems growing on the side. The ones you often come across close to a pond or stream. When starting the work we equalized the ground, and filled up the hole. Built a great stone wall along. Still it was strange that at that specific spot the great stones changed in color. And that this particular soil did not want to dry up as fast as the other ground.
One of our building men, Tony, solved the mystery with a two thin L-shaped steel sticks; a dowsing rod. There appears to be a well under the ground! Pretty cool, actually, now we can punch a well. So we will be able to water our planned vegetable garden, located just in the right spot!