Honduras Recap - The Floor Edition

The men in the village of El Zapote (where we were built the church) had already cleared the site and made a border for the floor to go in. The first task after we arrived was to pour the concrete floor.

Here's an aeriel view of the site before we started on the floor

These next few pictures aren't necessarily in chronological order, but they give a good sequence of how we had to mix the sand and concrete mix for the floor.

First we had to travel back and forth several times a day to get loads of sand. It took about an hour and fifteen minutes total to go to the sand place and come back. Each time we would shovel it out of the pick-up and then take off for another load.

A bag of concrete mix is added to about 50 shovels-full of dirt and that is then mixed thoroughly by shoveling the whole pile from one spot on the ground to another and back.

Then, water is added and we mix it thoroughly again (all by hand don't forget!)

Once the concrete is the right consistency, we shovel it into the wheel barrow and take it to where the floor is being poured

We poured the floor in the raised platform area first

I found a heart-shaped piece of rock and had to take a picture!

Next we poured the floor in three different sections

We had two different ways to sift the sand to get rocks out:

One was by tossing the sand through this screen. The finer particles would go through while the larger ones fell back down the screen

Then to get even finer sand, we ran the already sifted sand through a screen with smaller holes (on top of the bucket) and ran water over top of it so the sand would go through the screen A little concrete mix was added to the really fine sand to create a very smooth top finish for the concrete

Then we used tree branches/leaves to sweep off any left-over rocks, etc... Once or twice a dog got loose on the wet cement...can you see the paw print?

Some of the village girls were playing with a ball (that we gave them ironically) and it ended up in the middle of a wet spot of concrete. Here's the finished floor. All in all it took about 5 days to complete. But if you factor in the (almost) daily rain showers, traveling back and forth for sand and doing things the "Honduran" way - 5 days isn't so bad.