Friday, July 10, 2009

Shade UpGrade


Today I met with Joel Covarrubias, an iron and woodworker, at the GREEN FLASH construction site to measure the project for a free-standing "sombra."

Here in San Carlos, the desert sun at this latitude can melt human flesh in minutes (slight exaggeration). After some discussion with the 1st Mate, the owner of the property and my friend Earl, who gave me the idea from his airy, cool carport, I'm going to have Joel build a sunshade over the boat. Joel did the work for Earl, and Earl doesn't abide shoddy craftsmanship or overpriced projects.

The 1st Mate, on her own, ran across this photo right after I had mentioned the idea to her... and saw the shade as a first installment on a "modern desert home" or a "modern jungle home."


And it would be that, wouldn't you say? The trick is to make it portable, or able to be disassembled and moved to a building site... Joel and I came up with the dimensions of 20x40 feet by 18 feet high to accommodate the FLASH up on boat stands. At 18 feet high we almost have enough for a 2 story house... but the support posts can be lengthened to get us up there for 2 stories and provide a ton of space for solar panels. I like this idea, because the sunshade takes the beating from the weather and not the house, or the boat or the Capt.

In the next few days we'll get our bid and a materials list from Joel, and if we're ready to jump in, we'll go buy the stuff and get it delivered to the site, after moving away the workbenches and scaffolding.

Earl says he thinks Joel can do it in a weekend. Cool!

3 comments:

Chrissy y Keith said...

excellent idea. what are the precautions taken to make sure it doesnt blow away in a storm?

1st Mate said...

Well, it's not as pretty as a palapa, but it looks like it'll do the job. I don't want you melting.

MxSailor said...

Thanks 1st Mate. I don't want to do any melting either. We could always scrounge up some palm leaves and superglue them to the roof... but one thing about palapas is that it's a nesting place for crawling insectos.
BTW, happy birthday!

C&K: The main structure will be anchored in concrete footers, and my experience building the fence around the FLASH is that the dirt on that lot is incredibly dense and filled with a natural aggregate. Millions of years of monsoon rains and baking sun have compacted the soil pretty well (I was a soil tech in a previous life). As long as the panels are bolted in properly we should see no flying "lamina."