High Hopes!
Construction Resourcefulness
We were now a little more than ½ way into this rebuild/remodel construction project. While we plugged along little by little, I was getting increasingly discouraged that this would ever get finished! It really seemed we had bitten off more than we could chew.
Then I remembered a song that my dad taught my sister and me when we were little. The song describes an ant who does a seemingly impossible thing-he moves a rubber tree plant. With high hopes, the ant moves that plant all by himself. Frank Sinatra recorded the song in 1959 and growing up, I remember the catchy, cheer-you-up chorus: He’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes, he’s got high apple pie in the sky hopes, so anytime you’re getting low, ‘stead of lettin’ go, just remember that ant…
Trying not to let myself ‘get low’, I, like the ant, certainly had high hopes that we could finish this job, but it would take both high apple pie in the sky hopes-and a little resourcefulness!
And boy, did we have to be resourceful!
I didn’t know that rebuilding a hotel on a steep slope, in a remote rainforest, up a steep, gravel road on the top of a mountain, would require a lot more of the work to be done by hand.
Many of us in developed countries are used to seeing construction work using large machinery. Things like forklifts, backhoes, cement trucks and cranes.
We didn’t use any forklifts, and you may remember we had to build our own crane. And those big, rotating-drum trucks filled with wet concrete could not make it up our mountain road to the hotel. We had to make concrete onsite, by hand, the pre-historic, pre-machinery, old-fashioned way!
How do you do that? I really didn’t have any idea.
I guess I’m not old enough to remember those pre-historic times (just kidding!).
To make concrete onsite you need lots and lots and lots of sand, gravel, bags of cement mix, water, a concrete mixer, people and wheelbarrows.
For our remodel/rebuild, we had 2 small concrete mixers. A few of the construction crew had the job of shoveling all of the sand, gravel, cement mix and water into the mixer while it rotated. And boy did it rotate! All.Day.Long. Just listen here!
I can still hear the drone of the rotating mixer drums. All.Day.Long. Month after month.
After the ingredients were mixed, the concrete was poured out of the mixer into the wheelbarrows, and another few guys would wheel the wheelbarrows full of wet concrete to the location where it was needed.
Do you know how much concrete spilled out of those wheelbarrows as the guys were wheeling it over a big, muddy mess, around a demolished hotel? A LOT!
As I watched, I couldn’t help but think how inefficient this was. Pre-historic for sure, but certainly resourceful!
Because the hotel was on a steep slope, and our worksite was very congested, we needed to move most things around by hand. All the demolition debris had to be carried down the driveway to be loaded into empty dump trucks that would haul it away. We filled dozens of large dump trucks.
Sometimes construction material was loaded into wheelbarrows to be moved around the site. Sometimes for bigger materials that didn’t fit in a wheelbarrow, the construction crew carried materials as a team, like little ants trying to move a rubber tree plant! Very resourceful indeed!
Almost four months into the project, we were starting to fall way behind schedule. There were three large areas that still needed concrete – the restaurant floor, the roof-top green terrace, and the main pool foundation.
We realized that these concrete pours would require thousands of wheelbarrow loads, and the process would take weeks, if not longer. We didn’t have longer. We had a little more than 1 month to go before we were scheduled to reopen the hotel!
Well desperate times call for desperate measures. And when troubles call, and your back’s to the wall, there’s a lot to be learned-that wall could fall!
Remember when I said a filled concrete truck couldn’t make it up the road?
Well, Cordero and the construction team hatched a new plan. They decided to bring an empty concrete truck to the site and use it as a giant mixer. The empty concrete truck could make it up the mountain with a little help from a backhoe. High hopes! (Why didn’t we think of this sooner??)
The empty concrete truck would park on the road in front of the hotel. A backhoe would then dump all the concrete making ingredients – the sand, gravel, cement mix and water - into a giant funnel mounted on top of the concrete truck. We’ve got high hopes, high hopes!
Cordero also brought a concrete pumper up the mountain. When the concrete truck finished mixing the ingredients, the fresh concrete would be transferred to the pumper and then pumped through several hundred feet of pipes and hose to each of the three main places where we still needed to pour concrete. High hopes, high hopes!
On the first attempt of this new strategy, we all quickly realized that the backhoe could not reach high enough to dump the ingredients into the giant funnel. The funnel was too tall!
All problems just a toy balloon, they’ll be busted soon.
We somehow needed to lower the funnel or raise the backhoe. Next plan – do both! High apple pie in the sky hopes!
We dug a giant hole in the road and drove the concrete truck down into the hole. Yep, we sunk the concrete truck down in a hole to lower the height of the funnel. Resourceful!!
Then, all the material that they dug out of the hole was piled up to form a ramp for the backhoe. By lowering the concrete truck into the hole and driving the backhoe up the ramp, the backhoe was able to reach high enough to dump the concrete ingredients into the funnel.
Success! We were able to mix the ingredients, fill the pumper with freshly made concrete and pump the three large concrete pours in one day! We saved weeks of wheelbarrowing.
Who said an ant can’t? You’ve just gotta have high hopes!
Oops there goes another problem, kerplop!
Do you remember this song? Anytime you’re feeling low, just remember that ant!
Man, I'm tired just reading your post, Marlo! Good grief. The cement mixer-truck remedy took the cake. Very inventive. Instead of high hopes, I'd say High Five!!!!
LOL okay, I don't know what to say first here! I guess I need to express my utmost respect for residents of developing countries who are WILLING to do this type of manual labor! Can you imagine a crew of Americans or Canadians? They'd be like, "F**K this...I'm done!"
Second, can I just say how impressed I am that you've saved all of this footage? Did you know you'd be writing about this one day? I guess I shouldn't be so surprised, I have 15 years worth of travel footage still saved.