Structurally speaking

Building in South Africa

Building in South Africa has a few unique experiences to offer. Not only do we do a lot of work by hand – and I really mean A LOT. The certificate “Hand made” does not exclusively apply to premium cigars, but as well the many buildings in SA. 11 months of hard work is crowned by one month of rest for the building community during the December holiday period. This means that any building site comes to a total standstill by mid-December. Therefore as much distance as possible needs to be put between the start and the finish of a project before this break appears on the horizon.

We begann building process early November – already very close to the December break. And remember the Standing on shaky ground post? These delays and the relentlessly down pouring record November and December rains were no good news while the Builders Holidays where approaching fast.

January 2022 – let’s roll

But – we are back in action and January 2022 is here with a bang.

As we are working on a modular construction, the fastest way forward is to start with the steel structure and then continue from there adding roof-, wall- and floor panels before proceeding to the outer glass shell.

As you can see the steel parts have been brought on-site from Pretoria on a large truck. A 400km journey. And remember hand-work? The whole truck was unloaded by hand by the crew of 6 – about 15+ metric tons of steel, screws, nuts and bolts and a generator to be used on-site for the built. A few hours later the building site was littered with steel skeletons galore. Who has a proper assembly manual? This ain’t no IKEA Billy assembly. Nope.

Without further delay the crew started to put the puzzle together and three days later the steel structure was in place – no cranes, no power tools, no hydraulic helpers – a scaffold and a few ratchets. Voilà! Viva Africa, viva!

As you can see even the building site inspectors came to check (picture courtesy of Charles Clyde Ebbets).

Now we are rocking! As I give you this blog post we are awaiting the arrival of the next truckload of this and that and we hope that we can give this thingy some walls, floors and a proper roof. And some more stories for you of course. Love and peace!

Never too old, never too crazy. Stay tuned!

PS: This guy rocks and is a master of blending the old and the new. A long time staple sound of mine I love to blast anytime of the day (or the night for that matter). JD McPherson is the name and here is one of my favorites.