Where Do You Buy Building Materials?
A Question From A Reader
A few days ago, a reader asked: “Where do you buy building materials for construction in Mompiche?” Obviously, we all have houses and the wood, cement, bricks, and bamboo must have come from somewhere. Out on the edge of the jungle, in a remote corner of Ecuador, there are no Home Depot, Bunnings or other hardware warehouses to browse for building supplies. So, where do we get them?
Up in the hills, there are a number of tree farms with various fast-growing species they cut up for lumber and sell by the plank. We call them and order the number of planks, beams, supports or posts we need, state the length of pieces we need, and tell them the type of wood we would prefer for the job. All of my floors are a hard redwood locally known as tangare. It’s a beautiful wood with a gorgeous smooth texture and it came from a farm in El Leon which is about ten kilometers from Mompiche heading south. The upstairs posts are whole trunks of a tree known as jigua; debarked laurel trees (Nectandra reticulata—Lauraceae).
The original galvanized aluminium roof came from Pedernales, bought from a massive hardware store chain a two-hour drive south of Mompiche. You actually have to cross the equatorial line to get there. While I was building my house in 2011, the only hardware store was a small shed in Tres Vias, also ten kilometers from Mompiche, heading north, and you could buy some tools, a few tins of paint in a limited range of colors, one type of red brick, different types of rope and new machetes. These days, that same hardware store is enormous, but back then the owner, Gonzalo, was just starting out with his small business and we outsourced the building supplies he could not provide.
My current roof was installed about five years ago after the galvanized aluminium began to rust and buckle and develop holes around each roof screw. I replaced it with recycled tetrapak roofing which came from the Ecuaplastic recycling company in Quito. It came with a thirty-year guarantee. I also wanted to replace the timber for the roofing so I ordered a bunch of new roof beams and instead of asking for the cash payment like usual, the supply guy I’ve been using for years asked if he could have the old aluminium roofing sheets instead. Deal!
When I wanted broken tile to create all the mosaics around the house, firstly, I collected all the cracked tile from the busted up kitchens and bathrooms that fell apart in the 2016 earthquake. After that, people all over the village knew I was collecting broken tiles and either told me where to find more, or dropped a bunch off at my house. The guy who delivers fruit and vegetables on Saturdays often helps me bring my heavy baskets of groceries upstairs and he noticed several of the mosaics while he was upstairs. A few weeks later, he delivered a massive load of broken tile he’d picked up in Santo Domingo for ten bucks. Eight years later, I still have some of that tile tucked away under the stairs.
Obviously, all the nails and screws come directly from the hardware store. Nowadays, there’s a small hardware store in Mompiche that stocks all the essentials until you actually need something really important right at that moment and then, of course, they don’t have it. (Welcome to the facepalm moment.) Most of the time, you can get at least some kind of nail if you’re desperate. It might not be exactly what you wanted, but it will usually be better than nothing at all.
Bamboo, or what we call guadua, which is a smaller species of bamboo comes from outside of Mompiche. There’s this guy, you see… You order your bamboo. How many pieces? How long do you want them? They come in eight meter or ten meter lengths. When do you want them? You also have to make sure the bamboo has been cut when the moon is in the new moon and waning quarter phase because, at this time, the sap is concentrated in the roots, causing the trunks to have less moisture and also to make sure there are no bugs inside. Bamboo with bugs is a nightmare.
As you have seen in previous posts, I also build with bottles. The bottles are free. I just have to collect them. Sometimes, I go with a couple of sacks and my wheelbarrow and bring around fifty bottles home. Other times, I hire a pickup truck and we go and collect ten or twelve sacks of bottles that have been stashed underneath a bar for years because nobody knew what to do with them. Since no one slapped me the last time I said it, I now have about 450 bottles piled up to build the second bottle wall. Only 350 more to collect, and we can get started, funds permitting.
Cement comes from the hardware store. I used to have fifty kilo sacks of it shipped in from Tres Vias, but now it comes from the local hardware store, and you can also buy smaller five kilo bags for little projects like the cement and fabric plant pots I make every now and then. These days I can also get the sand and gravel locally too, as well as rebar for small jobs and rebar grids for the bigger jobs. I’ll need to buy a rebar grid when I’m ready to cement over the old pool that was filled in about a year ago. The grid will be too big for the space, but I can cut it and use the rest of it when I’m ready to rebuild the badly built red brick barbecue I (perhaps over-optimistically) pulled apart a few months back.
So, while there is no “One Stop Shopping” for building supplies, we are able to get our hands on pretty much anything we need to build our homes. Of course, if I wanted polished marble counter tops, I’d have to go much further afield to find them, but why would I want that when I have perfectly polished and resin-covered tangare counters in my kitchen, bathroom, and workshop? The general idea is to use what we have. And we have quite a lot…