Building a seed house

Our Canadian Habitat for Humanity team of twelve met in Managua, where a team from the Netherlands, a closed team from Philadelphia (i.e. the team knew each other) and another team from all over the US also gathered.

Our team represented Canada from coast to coast, with volunteers from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia, and we ranged in age from early twenties to sixties, from a variety of backgrounds, with one person from the construction industry (our masonry expert) to a stock trader.  For some it was our first build, and for others they had travelled the world doing builds in many different places, each of which, apparently, had their own particular methods of construction. In addition to our team leaders Bob and Joan from BC, we had an energetic Nicaraguan coordinator Tagni to keep us in line.

On our first day together in Managua, Habitat Nicaragua provided us with an orientation, before we headed to our respective buses and made the 1 - 1/2 hour drive to Pochomil on the Pacific coast, where we stayed for the week of the build.  Our motto, emphasized our Nicaraguan counterparts, was to be flexible.

The seed house is 162 square feet, made of concrete blocks, with a front and back door, two windows, tin roof, concrete floor, and concrete sidewalk on the front and back.  It costs $5000 to build, with a combination of volunteers, a skilled local mason, and an electrician.  As volunteers we cover the costs of our trip, plus a contribution to cover the cost of materials for the house.

The reason it is called a seed house is that it is built with half of one wall covered in a piece of tin, which can be lifted to form the roof of another room, when the homeowners have the funds to expand their house.

To be eligible for one of these houses, a person needs to own their land.  A number of other selection criteria come into play, such as monthly household income of under US $200 per month, households led by a woman, health issues, and the presence of a home-based business.  For example, one home we visited had a large clay oven in a separate structure where they baked bread.

We spent five days building the home.  When we arrived at our site, the foundation and first two layers of blocks were already in place.  Each day we had construction goals to meet (day one was to add four more layers of blocks) and there was friendly competition amongst the teams to see who progressed the fastest.

For our build, it was for a couple; she was already a grandmother in her forties, who had diabetes, and her husband worked cutting sugar cane, both of whom helped build their new house.  In addition there was a construction supervisor for the five sites, to make sure we built to code, a skilled mason for each build site, and a few local volunteers.

They already had an Eco bathroom unit, but no running water, and were living in a small wooden home with dirt floor at the back of their property.

We quickly learnt the various tasks needed to build the house, although at times we had to wait for the mason to make progress, and were not always shown what to do.

In addition to moving the bricks to the house, we needed to haul gravel, sand and water to mix mortar and cement on the ground, by hand.  This we did in teams of 3 or 4, finding a dance-like rhythm as we moved around in a circle.  Because of the heat, the mortar and concrete would dry out quite quickly, so we needed to keep it damp using wet empty bags of concrete, or adding more water to prevent it from drying out.

The house also needed two strips of looped rebar which was placed horizontally, the first about halfway up, and second closer to the roof, to strengthen the structure so that it could withstand earthquakes and tremors, Which happen fairly frequently in Nicaragua. These were built by hand, first by bending small bits of rebar into a C shape, then fastening these connectors to two long strips of rebar by twisting wire around them on both sides.  These lengths of rebar were then placed inside a  layer of bricks that had a channel inside of them.

Recently I was told that here in Canada often plastic are ties are used.  That would have been much easier - one person spent almost two complete days bending rebar into C shapes, another 2-3 women spent a similar amount of time attaching them to the rebar strips. While a couple of the people on the team brought tools with them, we didn't know ahead of time what exactly we would be doing.  For those with experience on other builds, they discovered that each country, even within Central America, has their own method of building.