rebar

Tuesday afternoons are "rebar" days for the construction staff. Though I'm no engineer or home builder, here's my best shot at explaining....Rebar, short for reinforcing bar, is placed inside concrete U-blocks on the top of house (among other places), then covered with poured cement, which is then topped with the roof. Just as the name suggests, the rebar reinforces all of the cement blocks below- or in simpler terms, the rebar/concrete combination does to the top of the house what the foundation does to the bottom. So back to Tuesday...I rode out with some of the guys to the bodega (warehouse) to help bend & sort rebar for the groups to use Wednesday morning.

First Greg & Efrain count out the rebar


Then Mike gets ready to bend a piece (so it fits in the corner of the house)

Alex gets in on the action too

Julie is spray painting a corner so they'll know which side goes where

Greg is looking on from the truck


In the meantime, Jose begins making me a scorpion. He makes these from 16 (I think) small pieces of copper wire...it's amazing how fast he works!


The end result (after he sprayed it pink for me)


Rebar is bent, sorted & loaded in the trucks, so back to the hotel for showers and dinner we go.