Better late than never!
- PUCGuatemala2018
- Jul 15, 2018
- 4 min read
Hi friends! So as you have probably noticed, we are a little behind on our blog. We are gonna pick up where we left off and let y'all see how the project finished up! Here is a post from our AMAZING budget manager, Parth. He wrote this back while we were in country and I never posted it. Thanks so much for your patience!
-Megan Alexander, Project Manager
When you turned on your kitchen sink this morning, did you wonder how it worked? Why does water flow through your sink faucet, and where does it go beyond the drain?
Greetings from Guatemala! As we learned while designing this kitchen, even seemingly simple buildings are filled with numerous complexities, minute details, and several interconnected parts. These are the things we take for granted – water, electricity, cabinetry… - in our everyday lives. However, each one requires thorough planning and careful execution to be successful. In this blog post, we will discuss some of these “hidden” aspects of a kitchen, and how our we’ve incorporated them into our project.
So, let’s talk water. For a kitchen sink to give water, it must be connected to a source of water (seems intuitive enough). That water must also be elevated high enough to provide good water pressure (ever wonder why water towers are up so high?). Fortunately for us, the Garden of Hope has a massive water tank, filled by a nearby well and located ten feet from our kitchen. However, it was too low to the ground, and would have provided poor water flow to our kitchen. So, what did we do? We elevated it.
Aparna, steel master extraordinaire, designed a steel structure that would raise the tank about five feet. To support that steel structure, we hand-mixed and poured the ~2000 pounds of concrete you saw in the last blog post. The concrete replaces the cinderblock and dirt base on which the tank previously sat, and provides a secure base for the steel structure.
Construction on the steel structure just finished yesterday, with our in-country blacksmith, Guillermo, demonstrating his expertise in doing just about anything with steel.
Of course, water doesn’t just go one way through a kitchen. When the water flows down the drain of a sink or pila, it goes somewhere. For our project, we are routing the used water (also referred to as greywater) to a banana circle on the garden, 80 feet away. A banana circle is essentially a composting pit surrounded by banana trees.
Garden of Hope identified this as an ideal place for greywater, as it would help the compositing process and nourish the surrounding trees. Now, water doesn’t just magically move from one place to another; it has to flow through pipes, which are buried underground for safety. Cue our multi-day trenching project for drainage and supply water pipes.
Additionally, we want to ensure no harmful byproducts of the kitchen contaminate the banana circle. Therefore, our drainage also flows through a grease trap.
Oh, and notice the concrete surrounding the grease trap? In order to support the weight of the pila, we made a small slab, filled with a few hundred pounds of concrete hand-mixed by yours truly. I think we’re getting pretty good at it!
And there you have it! Once we install our sink, our kitchen will supply and drain water like any other!
A few more updates from our project:
· We have light! Thanks to Oriana, our electrical expert, and Thomas, our in-country electrician, we are able to power an interior and exterior lightbulb, as well as multiple electrical outlets. We tested the electricity by connecting our music speakers to the building – it worked!
· Painting is underway! With our wood frame finished, our roof up, and our exterior wall (made of cement boards called Durock) attached, we could now paint the walls of our kitchen. After plastering the cinderblocks along the bottom part of the wall, we began with a primer coat of white paint. We are finishing with a nice coat of green, allowing our kitchen to blend in to our environment!
· Interior construction is starting! After picking out appliances last week, we’ve begun cutting out the wood for our cabinets. With the delivery of our countertops Tuesday and appliances coming in soon, we’ll transform our little building into something that looks like a kitchen!
Before we go, it would be remiss for us not to acknowledge the tragedy facing many residents here in Guatemala. The volcanic eruption this past Sunday left several families searching for loved ones, and the pyroclastic flows rendered villages and homes uninhabitable. Walking around the garden the day following the eruption, we saw ash coating plants and covering roofs. A slight wind causes ash to fall from trees and create a haze, with ash particles creating the sound of a light rain as they hit the ground. With intense rain and re-eruptions, this disaster is far from over for those in the most affected areas.
Of all the things we cannot take for granted, it is the well-being of those closest to us which is most important. Our team is fortunate to be safe from the danger of the eruption, and we find great comfort in each other’s presence and friendship. Our thoughts are with those who endured the worst of this calamity, and we remain hopeful that the resilience and kindness of the Guatemalan people will allow them to shine through the darkness of the past few days.
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