Signed, sealed and delivered

In my "A penny for your thoughts" entry, I mentioned that it's cheaper for us to make our own hollow blocks instead of buying from the store. Well a short time later, we found out that this is not exactly true. Add the cost of raw materials and the cost of labor and the savings is not worth the effort.


Mounds of sand (in front of an abandoned house) for the fence.

Also there were other aggravating factors that made us re-evaluate this [project within a] project.

• The churn out was not fast enough to meet the demand. Because they could only make so much in a day, it was dragging down the pace of construction.
  
  
• The weather was also slowing down production. After forming a block, it needs a few good days to cure. But because of the unpredictable weather (on a rainy season), there were days when they needed to halt production.
  
  
• The fact that there were only two or three workers in a day was also a problem. Unless they can master the art of multitasking (or grow extra pair of arms), it's impossible to make a block and build a wall at the same time. So switching to one task means they had to stop the other. Now that was really slowing them down.

After these realizations, there was no doubt. A few days later, deliveries of ready-made hollow blocks began to arrive.

Construction update #3 --- the fence

Invigorated by fresh infusion of funds, more needed materials were purchased to continue with the fencing project. They were ordered in Manila and had them delivered to the farm. They found out that these materials are cheaper in Manila and even if you add the delivery cost it would still come out cheaper than just buying them locally.

But for some "acts of men" reasons, it took over half a day longer for the construction materials to get delivered.

The delivery van left Manila early in the evening thinking that the night drive will be smooth. Indeed, everything went smooth until later on when they encountered some unexpected hurdles on their long journey to the farm.

First, they got stuck on a highway traffic. There was an accident involving a semi which caused traffic on both directions to back up for several kilometers.

After idling for several hours, they finally got moving until daytime arrived. And with the rising sun came a few more hurdles. This time they were stopped on three different occasions by some 'good' men of L.T.O. (Land Transportation Office) who were stationed on strategic sections of the highway. In all instances they concocted some bogus violations in an apparent attempt to extract some grease money. The threat equates to "either pay or have your van and deliveries impounded". Christmas must be drawing near. Oh well, may they burn in .... (you know where). Now!

After all these wild encounters with local vultures, snakes and crocodiles, at last all the materials for the fence have been delivered to the site. This should be enough to finally finish both the left and right sides.

After that, they will begin making hollow/concrete blocks (see "A penny for your thoughts"). This will take some time since by their estimate, it would need at least 20,000 blocks to construct the front fence. Yes, the front fence will not be made of cyclone wires this time. It will be a solid, 2.5 meter (8.2 feet) tall concrete block wall.

A penny for your thoughts

Remember the old saying "kapag maiksi ang kumot... (if the blanket is small...)"? It's all about making do with what little you have. And if you have a limited budget (stress on 'limited budget') be creative and see how far you can stretch it.

In one of my conversations with my father, he said that if the requirement is huge, it is cheaper in the long run to make your own hollow blocks (or concrete blocks) than to buy them. After all, all you need is the know-how, a mold, some sand and bags of cement... plus of course a lot of sweat. And that is the birth of another do-it-yourself project.

Hopefully this won't be a penny-wise and pound-foolish venture. We'll see, we'll see...