Overseas construction blog part 5: Cause and effect
This is the fifth of a series of posts in which David Steckler shares his experiences of building a vacation home at Hacienda Iguana resort on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast. Here are the first, second, third and fourth. The goal of this candid construction blog is to reduce the anxiety levels of people who have bought Nicaragua real estate and plan to build, but are afraid of making mistakes along the way.
Cause and effect
Cause/effect refers to the philosophical concept of causality, in which an action or event will produce a certain response to the action in the form of another event.
I got a dash of this not so philosophical concept during the month of March, but thankfully it precipitated positive outcomes. It all started innocently with a small, but pivotal shift of the house’s orientation to improve the views and location of a group of shade tree to the east of our pool, see below. The effect of this shift caused the screened wood privacy wall we had planned for the West side of the house, see brick layout below, to run smack dab into one of our desirable shade trees at that location.
Our only other option was to move the privacy wall west, but that put us into the buffer zone with our neighbors, which would have not been permitted. We decided to eliminate the screened wall altogether – I love simple solutions! – and plant more ‘privacy’ trees instead. The BBQ station, being an integral part of this outdoor area, was moved to the west side of the stone deck, not a bad thing as it offered better access to the kitchen and it’s created a small privacy wall on the deck!
During our Architects’ second visit to the construction site he noticed that while viewing the river from the living room the staked square corners of the future stone deck allowed him to see the potential problem of our line of sight down to the river being blocked…. so Jose decided to eliminate these corners and replace them with a soft curve, see Plan View below.
As I’m planning on a site visit in April I’ve been busy purchasing faucets for the kitchens and Bathrooms thru www.everyfaucet.com, which I thought offered a quality product, great pricing and free delivery. As you may have noticed I also took the opportunity to design a drip irrigation system for our future raised bed landscaping that will automatically water our plants, see Plan View-beds in green, on a battery back-up and rain sensitive controller during the 3 + months of dry season. I found www.dripirrigation.com for this project and they were very helpful with the initial design work before I placed my order.
My conclusions so far … When things move from the drawing board to the ground things do happen and you’ve got to be flexible and open to thinking outside the box. The cause/effect phenomenon we’ve been talking about here, which some folks call Murphy’s Law, is a force that needs to be reckoned with during the construction phase and the team you’ve assembled is critical during these impromptu episodes.
I’ll have lots to talk about next month after my 10 days visiting the construction site in April……sweat equity here I come!
Category : Blog &Overseas construction in Nicaragua
Sophie
Apr 08, 2011
I would say that a lot of what you are going through – the need to make adjustments etc – would happen anywhere in the world. It seems that construction projects anywhere cost more than anticipated and take longer than anticipated. Thanks for sharing this process with us.
David Steckler
Apr 10, 2011
Hi Sophie, Thanks!…I’m now actually in Nicaragua visiting the construction site for the first time and I’m very pleased with the work. It was great to meet the skilled workmen and women making my dream come true and watch them so focused on their work, but also still leaving time for singing and kidding each other along the way. Today it’s Sunday so I might saunter over to the house and try my hand at some cement work on the walls without embarassing myself with an audience. Lots to tell on my next blog.
Realnet
Apr 27, 2011
That is really an exciting opportunity, to be able to plan and actually take part in the building process. And it’s even better that y’all are able to joke, sing and have fun at the same time!
Isn’t it interesting though, that the construction process seems to be the same everywhere? Costs never stay within the limits you expect, or the time limit you expect. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Carmen Brodeur
Jun 19, 2011
That is incredibly brave of you to build a home, largely from afar. You are definitely a trusting individual.
David Steckler
Jul 18, 2011
Hi Carmen,
I tend to be trusting of others, but my gut instincts must be good cause I rarely get burned. I did spend several years getting the lay of the land in Nicaragua before jumping into this construction project. Besides Horizon Group I must have interviewed 4 other builders who came with great referrals before settling with Horizon and they’ve been great to me.