Archive for the ‘Nicaragua in the news’ Category
Earthship construction: Day 11
Monday, December 17th, 2007
Today this unique Nicaraguan real estate project entered a new phase. Of the 11 Earthship experts from Taos, New Mexico, USA, only three remain. Ted Elsasser, Justin S, and Demian Larsen have all stayed on to continue to teach the local crew. Two new locals have joined the workforce. They had been observing the work on the site all week and volunteering their hands here and there. It seemed appropriate to make their involvement official.
It’s Monday and there is a different energy surrounding the site. With increased responsibility on the Nicaraguan crew, everything seems a little slow before lunch as adjustments are made. It is a great opportunity to observe how each person handles the new team dynamic.
By mid morning, it is announced that we are out of engineering fibers - a very difficult item to obtain in Nicaragua where most people simply use blocks and rebar.In our case, we are using bottles, cans, and even rebar as “forms” for the concrete pours, so we rely on the strength of the concrete we form. The fibers help strengthen the mix.
Ted, our architect on site, decides to reinforce a portion of the front wall with steel in order to continue working. Looks like we’ll be making a trip to Managua in the morning to find a replacement…
The afternoon seems slow as well. And then it’s 4:00p and we have a look around at the progress made.The vapor barrier has been placed and partially buried. A new truckload of cement and sand has arrived. The site is clean and organized with a good inventory of supplies. It looks like we’re in position to make some good progress this week.
Technorati Tags: Earthship, green, green building, green movement, green real estate, Nicaragua, nicaragua property, nicaragua real estate, sustainable construction, sustainable housing
Earthship construction: Day 10
Friday, December 14th, 2007
The nightly rains caused delays in the delivery of supplies and the lack of materials were today’s limiting factor.
Everyone was acutely aware that it was their last day on the site together. The majority of the Taos crew departs this weekend and, as a result, the crew seemed to push harder than ever to realize their daily goals.
The second dome was lifted before lunch to create the bedroom roof. The locals continued to mold the steal arches around the southern wall. An adobe mud mixture was made with local dirt and straw which was used to pack out the living and utility room.
The living room dome received a floated cement plaster coat. The outside cap of the cooling tube was removed confirming and demonstrating to the locals how cool air could enter and thereby lower the temperature of the Earthship. We placed our heads against the entryway to feel the flow of air entering the dome.
The learning curve has been steep but forgiving and the connections between the foreigners and locals have grown deep enough for a few individuals of the Toas crew to commit to designing a locally applicable structure that can be utilized in the Carizal community.
The Earthship spirit continues.
Earthship construction: Day 9
Thursday, December 13th, 2007Day Nine dawns, another bright and beautiful morning in El Carrizal, Nicaragua. The Earthship crew arrives and the Nicas are already at it. They bring out all of the tools for us every morning, which is great.
The building is starting to really take shape, highlighted by the main room with it’s twin arched entrance and dome. The dome gets another coat of cement shaping today, by Rory, Phil and Seth. Ted and Demian work on the rebar arches for the front face, and are forming and pouring the columns. Lionel and Jose help them and by the end of the day, the columns are poured up to three feet, ready for can and bottle work tomorrow.
Amy and Lydia work on finishing up the bottle brick wall in the bedroom. Seth and Demian have gone to great expense and endured tremendous hardship to personally buy and empty two large Patron bottles for a special central bottle brick that Amy puts in today.
Chris (that’s me) grooms the bottle bricks in the main room. Jonah and Mike are working on the flying buttress can arch that will later receive the truss roof, connecting the main building to the front face arches. Justin begins work on the living room skylight with Fernando helping him. Justin, Fernando and Faustino also bent flashing for the skylight on a pile of lumber. No easy feat. Lots of packing out of the walls is still being done.
The tireless Nicaraguan crew are throwing loads of cement all day long, with Eliseo at the helm. He comes to me to borrow my hammer, my “matilla,” and he always thanks me in English…which sounds like “Sank You,” but hey, I’m pretty sure my mangled Spanish is way worse.
It’s another scorching hot day and Dave brings in some ice cold water for us. He pours some on me. Mike is loving the cold water. He and his helper, Marlo are a four-handed can laying machine. Marlo is a sweetheart, who everyone likes, although all of the Nicas are unfailingly helpful, friendly and polite. At one point in my day, my “cemento” has become a big hard unworkable mess. I ask the Nicas for help, and they’re quick to come and rescue me. Of course, I have lent out my fascinating cordless drill a lot…
After lunch, Seth and Phil started on forming the second bond beam for the bedroom dome. We don’t have enough cans to do it in that method, so we’re using scraps of leftover plywood to form it. Amy is trying to get the leftover cement off the bottle bricks, getting them ready to groom.
The Nicas are working on the long tire footing for the full length front face wall. Luckily, it’s only 2 tires high, since we’re short on tires now. Old Faustino has been working quietly in the yard, under the “ramada” making lots of nice bottle bricks. Tomorrow, Amy and I will start laying them in the spaces between the arches on the new front face wall. Amy, at 6′2″, will have a definite height advantage on this project, with me at only 5′4″.
After work, there is a lot of talk about “glomming,” which is a Mike-coined term that probably deserves it’s own blog. It basically refers to Mike’s tendency to be a somewhat casual builder (to put it nicely). Though in his own words, his description of the technique is “Let go and let glom.”
At the end of the day, we were visited by a bus load of Dutch students on tour hoping to catch a little extra cultural flavor. Word is spreading in San Juan and the construction site now appears to be gaining the recognition of a tourist attraction.
Technorati Tags: Earthship, green, green building, green movement, green real estate, Nicaragua, nicaragua property, nicaragua real estate, sustainable construction, sustainable housingEarthship construction: Day 8
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
Our inter-cultural crew continued its total dominance of all things Earthship. The twins have excelled in winning the love of the local builders as they have developed a strange pigeon language mixed with Taos slang and Nicaraguan highlander Spanish.
Monkeys barked at me today as I drank a coke. The kids in the valley have been studying us and I’m interested in their judgment. The crew surfed on Sunday and we picked up a truckload of bottles. Many were from Asia.
The weather was perfect early in the morning for Earthship building. The second dome was completed and is waiting for the concrete bond beam to be poured before lifting it into place. All morning long, the two ox-carts hauled materials for each aspect of the build: cement, earth, aggregate, whatever was heavy and needed hauling.
The house looks like a huge sculpture.
Three workers pounded tires on the south green house wall and a small team of Americans and Nicaraguans plugged away on the west retaining tire wall. Phil and Seth erected the bedroom dome hub and inner roof structure out of wood and built the formwork for the bond beam on the bedroom.
Half of the south wall tires were completed yesterday in preparation for the concrete beam which will hold up the arched openings. After lunch there was a frenzy of activity to mix and pour the beam. It’s completed and will be initially cured by tomorrow and ready for steel work.
Mike Reynolds continued to lay cans and bottles to hold up the north end of the wood roof structure.
The site is constantly being visited by people who have heard about the project in the town (San Juan del Sur) and the crew holds massive resentment against those who are spotless in their flip flops. Each day a local Nica woman brings frescas for sale and enchiladas. For a brief moment she is the most popular person around
Once again, the day ended with cervezas and friendly Spanglish.
(Tom Duke reporting)
Technorati Tags: Earthship, green, green building, green movement, green real estate, Nicaragua, nicaragua property, nicaragua real estate, sustainable construction, sustainable housingEarthship construction: Day 7
Tuesday, December 11th, 2007Today 25 crew members joined forces to lift and set the 22ft wide rebar birdcage roof on top of the living room. The birdcage roof was wrapped in chicken wire and wired together with hardware cloth. Rumor has it that the roof weighed over 1,000 pounds!
Once the roof was raised, it was fastened to the bond-beam (a concrete beam which supports the roof) with rebar ties. The entire dome was hand plastered with its first coat of cement.
Our living room finally has a roof. Raising the roof on the living-room was a significant team victory and major milestone indicating progress.
Workers, tires and oxen were sliding all over the place as a result of last night’s heavy rains and scattered daily showers. Work progressed at a steady pace despite the fact that the site has turned into a mud pit.
Mike started construction on the bond beam for the green house. Twenty-two more tires 
were pounded out today to form the front tire wall that supports the bottom of the structure. The team also finished the first seven of approximately twenty trusses which will provide the support for the green house roof.
Ted and Demian commenced building the second rebar birdcage roof and the skylight which will be used as the ceiling for the bedroom. The tire pounding continued on the middle utility room. Saturday’s extra effort was noticeable and the interior walls are finally taking shape.
The Earthship hype is spreading rapidly, and as a result most bars and restaurants around San Juan are currently saving their bottles for the project. Daily construction has become a community event.
Today we were visited by numerous photographers, journalists, real estate agents and locals. Even Eduardo Holmann, the mayor himself, made a guest appearance to check out the project and give his support for the outside-of-the-box approach to building.
Our faithful oxen duo continued to haul the dirt needed for the tire pounding and structure burial. The oxen have become trusted members of the crew.
Authored by Justin (Dirt herder, Earthship Biotec)
Technorati Tags: Earthship, green, green building, green movement, green real estate, Nicaragua, nicaragua property, nicaragua real estate, sustainable construction, sustainable housingEarthship construction: Day 1
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007The crew arrived with sledgehammers, picks, shovels and tires in hand to help build Casa Llanta. This is day one of a project to build a house out of tires which cools itself passively, creates its own power and harvests its own water. Joining the American team of Earthship builders is a group of Nicaraguans who are being trained on how to build with this method.
Today the group started pounding tires. To do that the building had to be laid out according to the blueprints. With that done, the first tire was placed on the ground and filled with earth that was excavated from the site when it was leveled. A back-hoe was working all day to provide tire pounders and shovelers with earth, “dirt”, to fill and pound the tires.
By midday the crew of Nicaraguans and Americans learned to communicate with simple yet ludicrous hand signals and monosyllabic spanish grunts. Luckily for most of the Americans the local Earthship team speak Spanish fluently and do the real conversing.
Almost three courses of tires, approximately 175, were pounded and leveled by lunch. The local land caretakers cooked some great local Nicaraguan food that kept us going for a few more hours.
After lunch some much anticipated materials arrived. Sand for concrete, the cooling tubes for ventilation, rebar and one of the water tanks for water catchment. About 20 people worked together to move one of the cooling tubes. Not exactly what we wanted but as with any project in a new place adaptations must be made to suit local availability.
The heat rose throughout the day and took its toll on the crew about 3:30 pm. We all took a shade break for fifteen minutes. The last hour was spent pounding tires and filling in “half blocks” with concrete.
We cleaned up the site and celebrated Day 1 of the Earthship Construction with cold cervezas (beers).
(Authored by Ted Elsasser, Earthship Foreman)
Technorati Tags: community development, Earthship, green building, green real estate, nicaragua property, nicaragua real estate, sustainable construction, sustainable housingNicaragua one of “Five Top South American Investment Opportunities”
Saturday, November 24th, 2007Overseas property mall have highlighted Nicaragua as one of the five top South American Investment Opportunities. Joining Chile, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay here is the excerpt on Nicaragua.
“Tourism in Nicaragua is booming, and along with it, many buy-to-let opportunities. Tourism is currently the second largest industry in the nation and over the last 7 years tourism has grown about 70%. Nicaragua has seen positive growth in the tourism sector over the last decade and is expected to become the first largest industry in 2007. The increase and growth led to the income from tourism to rise more than 300% over a period of 10 years. The growth in tourism has also positively affected the agricultural, commercial, and finance industries, as well as the construction industry
Every year about 60,000 U.S. citizens visit Nicaragua, primarily business people, tourists, and those visiting relatives. The majority of tourists that visit Nicaragua are from the U.S., Central or South America, and Europe. According to the Ministry of Tourism of Nicaragua (INTUR), the colonial city of Granada is the preferred spot for tourists and this is where many overseas property investing opportunities are to be found.”
For the full article click here.
Technorati Tags: granada, Nicaragua, property, real estate, touristsNews on Guacalito, Nicaragua, Real Estate
Monday, August 27th, 2007Just when everyone seemed to think that the Pellas Group was going to land-bank the property at Guacalito until sometime around 2011, it was announced in La Prensa, one of Nicaragua’s major Spanish languange newspapers, that they are going forward with a $350m development.
I suspected something might be afoot as I was recently there and saw a jet-ranger helicopter departing. I chatted a bit with security personell who were on-site at the time in an effort to learn who the visitors were. The guard had never seen any of them before with the exception of the person who was appointed to manage the land for the time being.
Needless to say, there was a reason a very expensive helicopter arrived with 6 passengers. I think we now know the reason. There are a few lots for sale there at the time which I think are a bargain at the moment.
Technorati Tags: beachfront, coldwell banker, good news, nicaragua beachfront property, real estate, real investmentThat Nicaraguan Tourist Buzz is Growing
Friday, June 8th, 2007
Yet more good publicity for Nicaragua, this time in British national newspaper The Telegraph.
Author Michael Kerr writes:
“Tourism has already overtaken coffee as the country’s main source of earnings. Visitor numbers reached 770,000 last year, representing an increase of 11 per cent in the past six years, and revenue totalled US$230 million.
Among those 770,000 were 15,000 from Britain, a market Nicaragua hopes to nurture. For the moment, though, most visitors are from the US, whose citizens - those who have noticed the Contra war is over - see Nicaragua as “a new Costa Rica”
For the entire article go here.
Technorati Tags: investment, Nicaragua, property, publicity, real estate, tourismLive Here Cheaper - Get Here Cheaper
Friday, June 8th, 2007
The news that Spirit Airlines is providing three flights a week direct from Florida to Managua, Nicaragua, is great to hear.
The fact that this budget airline is offering some incredibley priced seats is even better. Their initial announcement trumpets 8 cent and 8 dollar flights.
Now you might have to be very lucky to score one of these (sadly we missed out) but there is a promise of cheap flights to come and increased competition means good news for flyers.
So, if you do settle here, it’s easy to nip home and see the family.
Better still, fly the family down to see you.
Technorati Tags: expats, flying, Nicaragua, spirit air, travel-
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