Re-roofing in Haiti - House #2

Continuing the series on my recent trip to Haiti...

At the same time the construction team was re-roofing house #1, another part of the team was prepping house #2. You can see a map of the location of both houses here. All photos are by Kyle Lamy except as noted. You can see Kyle's complete set of construction photos here. Don't miss Kyle's other Haitian photos here that are available for purchase. (All proceeds benefit the Haitian people.)

Photo credit: Moore

House #2 was typical of the many structures that remain incomplete for various reasons. 

In this case, the property owner is a woman with several children and extended family members living in a makeshift shelter constructed of tarps and sheets of corrugated metal.

However, her property also contained the beginnings of a house, with concrete block walls open to the sky...

...and a dirt floor covered in rubble.

The first step was to create a suitable floor, casting site-mixed concrete over the rubble. Parker demonstrates how to mix concrete in triathlon wear while Jacob, one of our amazing Haitian co-workers supervises. (The family's make-shift shelter is visible in the background.)

The floor begins its transformation under the direction of Fenel (in red shirt), our other Haitian coworker. (The man in the blue shirt was a local volunteer.)

And, the floor complete.

Photo credit: Moore

On the next day and after some minor block work by our friends Jacob and Fenel, we constructed a roof over the concrete block walls.

Like House #1, the roof was built from new corrugated metal over rafters and purlins of wood.

And the final result - a much improved (albeit still primitive) shelter for the family.

Here is the construction team at House #2 with the family.

Re-roofing in Haiti - House #1

After seeing Kyle Lamy's excellent pictures from our trip to Haiti, I thought some of you might appreciate some more detail on the construction projects our team undertook. (Photo credits: Kyle Lamy Photography, unless noted otherwise.) You can read an introduction to the Haitian trip here.

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The projects both involved roofs in the village of Galette, shown here as "House #1" and "House #2." (Regrettably, I don't have the names of the residents.) The subject of this post is House #1; I will follow with another post on House #2.

Typical house construction in this area of Haiti is concrete block walls built on rubble foundations, punctuated by cast-in-place concrete columns, usually at the corners. The roofs are typically corrugated metal on wood. Sometimes the walls are skim-coated with concrete to achieve a finished appearance. Often not.

House #1 is the home of a couple with several children, with the mother being the owner of the property. Although the house had a nominal roof, you can see that the condition was poor, at best - note the light coming through the holes. All of the metal panels appeared to have been reused from somewhere else, as evidenced by the multitude of nail holes.



The first order of business was to remove the existing roof, including the corrugated metal and the spliced poles supporting it. 



It was interesting to note that although we took no special care in removing the old roof, all of the materials were reclaimed by the residents and neatly stacked for future use.



After the existing roof was gone (and the odd rat inhabiting the walls killed), the tops of the walls were prepped to receive the new rafters.



Since the tops of the walls were particularly rough, the team installed new wood plates to provide a flattish surface. (Our in-country leader Jeff noted that the goal for Haitian construction is reasonably "straight and flat", not necessarily "plumb and square.") At the corners, the ubiquitous rebar extensions were re-bent over the plates to tie the roof to the walls.




There was no shortage of spectators from the school next door. We were a constant distraction, much to the chagrin to the teachers, I suspect.



Having set the plates in place, the rafters were toe-nailed to the plates, followed by purlins that were nailed and screwed to the rafters.

Credit: Moore

Finally, everything was covered by new corrugated metal.



One side effect of the new materials is the higher reflectivity properties, significantly improving the interior light of the spaces.

Haiti - Poetry of the Incomplete

Upon arriving in Haiti, one of the first visual impressions you receive is the national symbol of progress: rebar (concrete reinforcing steel) extending from the top of every structure.

Usually taking the form of  four rods girdled by rings of wire (aka stirrups), these antennae indicate points (or future points) of strength in masonry walls. Sometimes the bars are clearly intended for the future construction, extending from the foundation of a planned wall or from the roof for a second story. Sometimes the extensions have intrinsic practical purpose, such as tying wooden rafters to the walls (as primitive hurricane straps) or serving as anchor points for razor wire. Sometimes, the bars seem to serve no practical purpose at all, seemingly an accepted form of decoration for all construction projects, finished or not.

Unlike the US, there seems to be a universal acceptance in Haiti of the in-process construction site as normal. In the US, when construction pauses more than a few days, the project is assumed to be in an unnatural state of delay or under duress of some kind. One explanation for the contrast is that when someone accumulates some cash in Haiti, however meager the amount, there is tremendous cultural pressure to share that wealth with friends and family until it is gone. Under this pressure, one of the few acceptable ways to actually accumulate wealth is to invest in your building project. Thus, every in-progress construction site is a kind of investment bank and every pile of gravel a deposit.

There is another motivation for the construction to remain in a state of suspended animation. Property taxes are assessed on completed structures, exterior painting being the final sign of completion. Outside of commercial areas, almost nothing is painted.

As an urban environment, this perennially mid-construction state tends toward slow evolution. Familiar viewscapes are modified incrementally in small bursts over long periods of time, giving the viewer time to assimilate the process as memory, not just the usual "before" and "after." This experience feels a little like being inside a giant stop-action animation production of city building.

Ambiguity and mystery and abundant in this landscape of process - are these walls a post-earthquake ruin or mid-construction wealth accumulation or both?

Despite the obvious poverty and struggle for survival, strangely, this peculiar landscape also speaks of hope for the future and the resilience of Haiti's people. These enduring walls are always under construction, albeit at a leisurely pace.

Haiti - An Introduction

View from guesthouse terrace, CSI, Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti

In the second week of October, a medical/construction team of 22 people (mostly from Richmond) traveled to an area west of Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Hosted by CSI, an organization that provides in-country infrastructure for visiting teams, the medical portion of the team ran a mobile clinic for 4 1/2 days, treating over 500 patients and dispensing over 2,000 prescriptions. Meanwhile, the construction team constructed three roofs and painted a portion of an orphanage. A mere drop in the proverbial bucket. 

The trip was far too short to claim any kind of comprehensive understanding of Haiti as a place or the Haitians as a people. However, I cannot help but look at the experience through the lens of an architect, making observations on the spaces, textures and relationships I saw during by brief journey. More to follow...