TalkBaja.com » Baja Mexico Forums » Building your Baja dream home

deportes, there is no such thing as a fixed or set price per sq foot or sq meter of construction for Baja. It varies greatly by area & builder depending on local labor & materials prices, distance materials have to be transported, quality of work desired, quality of finish details, type/quality of materials, how hungry the builder is, etc.

Typically blocks are NOT filled with cement for casa construction, but they are for pool construction to offset the weight of all the water pressure against the pool walls.

Square foot price is a loaded question. It all depends on how much work you want to do, the quality of the work, where you're located, etc. etc. Ensenada's going to be a lot less expensive than a place like Abreojos.

We're so isolated, we're paying about 7% on transportation. That's a big improvement as the road's much better these days. On our first house we paid about 20% for transportation. Example: our sand has to come from La Paz - 7 hours away by truck. The local sand is too fine. We mix local and La Paz sand for a stronger mix.

As far as filling the blocks, we're using foam. The bags below contain foam insulation beads that will be poured down each cell just before the roof is poured. Gotta do the foam pour on a windless day...which will be a very tall order here

Our builder has put the foam in a couple of houses now. It makes a big difference.



Sand Delivery all the way from La Paz:

Originally Posted by BigWooo

...Sand Delivery all the way from La Paz...

Yikes!

I cannot believe that with all those big arroyos near you...

'Nuff said.

Congratulations you guys - this really is an exciting time for you and I know very well all you are going through right now. So how big a place our you building? Are you going to do it all at once or in phases?

Marty....There's a ton of sand here, but it's too fine to use it 100% in the mix. We mix half white/half black sand. Much stronger mix

BajaG....This is the final stage of our project. We have a small guest house which, prior to retirement, was our vacation home. It's been our full time home since we retired. We've also built the garage. Also, all the utilities/septic/solar were completed about a year ago. The house will be a bit over 2000 square feet.

I found out today (we had planned to leave town for the day) that it was Dia de Santa Cruz, which also celebrates construction workers. I'm really glad we didn't leave before we discovered this. So... we changed plans and we're having a big asada for the workers this afternoon.

Below is a photo of the workers putting up a cross to commemorate the day:

Gorgeous pics! And what a cool idea to share carne asada with your work crew to celebrate the day. Who needs to go out of town (which for you means driving 500 meters anyhow, right?)

Yes, today is a very important day and if you want to score points with your crew you will provide a nice spread and even help in the cooking chores. For our group we had carne asada, pollo, chorizo español along with ostiones and a cooler full of iced down beer.

It's always a fun day, they've earned it and it pays off in dividends many, many times over IMHO...

I think you can tell a lot about people by how they treat others.

It is an honor and a privilege to be acquainted with you gentlemen.

Ditto's...

I really appreciate that Marty but I would be kidding you if I made you think I didn't enjoy the day as much as they did.

Thought is was about BG's good treatment of folks... there are "gentlemen" just as there are ladies... (who also treat folks good too)..

My, my .... GENDER ... don't think either one has a monopoly on treating folks good.. IMHO

Originally Posted by Marty Cortez

Cat herder, eh ?
Don't worry, Woo. When we're all tuckered out from making a big mess out of your construction thread, we'll peel all this caterwauling out into it's own thread...

like in the video: "...the reporter says in the happiest of tones: "All male cats have been castrated!"

I've been told by many that if you leave the construction site for one day, everything will be in disarray when you get back. Well.....I go to the big city for one day and look what happened!!

Originally Posted by longlegsinlapaz

A
BigWooo, you are hereby officially excluded from the above generalizations since we've met & you are truly a rare credit to the male species & I extend sincere apologies for having trashed your thread....but Marty started it!

Is there a blushing Icon somewhere?

You forgot to note that it was a female reporter saying'in the happiest of tones: ''All males cats have been castrated!"

Wait a minute....WHICH "BIG" city?? Cd Constitucion or La Paz? Please don't force me make a public retraction of you being excluded from the generalizations of most men! Marty, the garbologist, will clean up the debris....the same Marty who apparently doesn't remember about your kitty kids!

Of course I remember; who could forget a cat on a leash?

Originally Posted by longlegsinlapaz

You forgot to note that it was a female reporter saying'in the happiest of tones: ''All males cats have been castrated!"

Wait a minute....WHICH "BIG" city?? Cd Constitucion or La Paz? Please don't force me make a public retraction of you being excluded from the generalizations of most men! Marty, the garbologist, will clean up the debris....the same Marty who apparently doesn't remember about your kitty kids!

Only went to Constitución, and by the way...the road from Barrancas to Insurgentes is hideous, completely cancels out the new paved part. It takes more time to get to Constitucion now then ever before.

That section of road is so bad that when I pulled my travel trailer up to the states a few weeks ago, the long washboard sections and potholes in the road caused the bolts that hold the trailer to the frame to pull right through the wood (and I drive very conservatively). Now I've got to open it up and figure out a way to strengthen the mounts. This isn't an old trailer either, it's pretty new and is (was) in good shape.

I had hoped the new road would decrease transportation costs, but the trucks are still taking 5-7 hours to get here from Insurgentes, depending on what they're hauling. In a higher clearance truck, if you care about your vehicle, it still takes about 2 1/2 hours to get to Insurgentes. I have no clue how long it would take in a car, I'm certain some of the pot holes are axle draggers.

Good Grief!! Maybe it's time to pass a law in your little village...all residents will drag a section of chain link fencing behind their vehicles each time they head to the big city & then haul it back home....cut the high spots & fill in the low! OMG!! You have any friends who live in Insurgentes or Constitucion? It sounds like the damage is already done to your trailer, but I'd be thinking strongly of ways to not have to put your trailer through that kind of abuse any more than you absolutely have to!! Installing steel plate flooring inside & bolting that through to the frame is the only way I can think of to relieve the stress on the wood sub-flooring! But that might increase the heat inside to about oven temps! And it definitely wouldn't be a noise reduction factor.....but then you never ride in it when it's being towed! Where are the frame mount points? Maybe you could add a few 10-12" square steel plates inside floor cupboards? Now that the existing wood is degraded in spots, you've got to come up with something hell-for-stout! Like ya hadn't already figured that out on your own!

Hey - if it were easy you'd already have a couple of hundred neighbors...

Originally Posted by BajaGringo

Hey - if it were easy you'd already have a couple of hundred neighbors...

That's the truth! I dread the day the road connects from the north. Hopefully that'll be long, long time.


Legz: I've got to take the aluminum off. I found that the trailer is sheeted with 1/4" plywood on both sides of the main wood frame that connects to the steel trailer frame. Going to have to cut a hole in the wood in order to get to the mounting bolts. They obviously put the sides on the trailer AFTER it was bolted to the metal towing frame. I'm going to weld up some metal brackets to replace the current mounts. Of course that'll have to happen somewhere in-between construction duties There's no hurry as I don't plan to head up to the U.S. for quite a while.

We're super impressed with our builders, but good as they are, there still needs to be owner supervision. Both of us speak acceptable spanish, but even though we think we're getting our point across, we don't always hit the mark.

Examples:

1. When we were first preparing to dig the footings, we marked where we wanted the front of the house to start. Me thinking "house" as an entire entity, including the patio. But the builder took it literally to mean the front wall of the actual house structure. I noticed part way into digging the footings, that they were digging footings for what was to be the front of the patio, before digging footings for the front house wall. I asked why. The builders response was that that wasn't the patio footing, it was the footing for the front of the house.

It was my mistake for not being more specific, but if we weren't here to catch the error, the front of the house would have been 8' further forward than we had planned. Doesn't sound like much, but in the overall plan it was a very big deal. A simple oversight could have been a disaster, as 8' further forward would have destroyed my neighbors view!

2. When we wen't to Constitucion for the day, we returned to noticed they were just about done building the forms for the trabe (bond beam) for the patio footing, I noticed it was quite a bit lower than the floor of the house. I knew it had to be lower for drainage, but not THAT low. I asked him why. He told me that it was lower because of the a 7" step up into the house. Hmmm...we don't have a step up in the plans, but I had told him I wanted the back of the house and patio 7" above grade. Somehow that got translated to 7" above grade AND a 7" step up into the house... from the patio. All is well now and we worked out a way to raise the patio without re-doing the forms. The fix did require adding some rebar to the trabe (before it was poured), which will allow us to raise the floor 7 " and tie it to the bond beam when it comes time to pour it. The fix would have been very expensive had we not caught it before the beam was poured!

I'm sure there will be more, but these would have been two HUGE mistakes had we not been here to keep track.