Greetings Friends!

I hope life has been going very well for you. In the Riveria Maya, April brings less tourists, dryer warmer weather, and a few more bugs. I've been very busy with an assortment of projects and the usual diversions of life, but all is well. In this update, the main news is about construction.

I am taking a bottom to top approach to my development here in Mexico. So the first step was wastewater treatment. We start with an upper section of plastic bio-digester tanks for solid waste, and below that, an artificial wetland using a labyrinth of sealed chambers containing layers of charcoal, gravel, and broadleaf plant roots to consume the impurities before returning the water to the garden. This one is a bit larger than usual, since it will filter the wastewater from a small restaurant in addition to a house.
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The next step was a nice strong building for tool storage and workshop with attached bathroom for guests and workers, topped off with a 660 gallon water tank for the bathroom and garden irrigation.
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So now we're on to the house. We started by laying out the positions for the twenty colums.
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Then we dug down to bedrock and poured cement footings.
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Over the footings we placed the rebar for the columns.
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Next we added level rock walls for support between columns.
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And now we are connecting the columns with reinforcements to keep them securely in place.
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In the next update I hope to be able to show you more of what the actual house looks like. And now that there is irrigation for the garden it won't take long for the tropical plants to take off. This week we start a full moon phase, so there will be some new fruit trees going in. Stay tuned for the next episode!

Hasta la proxima,
Bill Barton