Setting the Foundation

One the first challenges that I had to evaluate regarding building the foundation was how I was going to work with the grade of the land where I selected to put the choza. Because of the slope I opted to elevate the house, which meant that I had to have a strong foundation to set the four main chonta posts into. Although I would have preferred not to have needed concrete, I choose to dig 80 cm deep holes for the posts, and to fill them with a mixture of concrete and stones to ensure the long term durability of the main support beams. By using concrete I also prevented the posts from rotting and decay had they been set directly into the earth.

The foundation work was truly strenuous and enduring, especially the principal activity of lugging the supplies to the work site and getting the primary support holes ready. Between three of us we dug the nearly meter deep holes, carried the 5m long chonta beams, the rocks, concrete, sand, and cross beams on our backs to the work site. Then we began to set to measure the dimensions of the house to ensure that it was squared and level. While one person mixed concrete with a shovel and tumbled rocks into the hole, two of us slotted and held in place the chonta posts to ensure that they were level and straight. With a chainsaw we notched the top portion of the chonta so that the support beam for the roof could naturally slot into the groove. At the base of the chonta we also set a secondary chonta with a groved notch to set the support beams for the floor.  So, in each hole that we dug there was a long chonta beam to support he roof and a shorter on to support the floor structure.

 It took us from 7 am in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon to get the four foundational posts set. In the remainder of the afternoon we cut down 6-7 piwis, long thin trees that grow like weeds in the Ecuadorian jungle, in order to begin putting up the structure for the roof. Every piwi that we harvested had to be skinned by hand by rasping the bark off with a machete. Nearly 2-3 hrs were spend just in peeling the bark. By 6pm that evening we had gotten the base rectangular structure set for the roof.

The next morning at 7am we began another 11 hr day of work. Similar to the day before we cut down piwi to continue raising the roof. In total we felled 32 piwi, 14 per each side of the triangular roof and 4 more for the central roof beam and other support beams. It was equally as strenuous to de-bark every single tree by machete, but by late morning we had them all prepared. Alongside the main building engineer, Moises, he and I fixed all of the roof beams during the rest of the day.  In two hard days of work we had set the entire bone structure of the choza!