A friend has asked me about construction in Samoa. Here’s Victoria’s house, a Tsunami replacement job with comments.
VVictoria is a humble, quietly spoken lady introduced to me in March of 2010 by George Meredith, MP for Alaipata. He’s a close relative of Victoria.
She relocated away from the coast after the 2009 Tsunami and is rebuilding her life after losing everything she owned, as well as three of her grandchildren and other close relatives.
This is Victoria walking infront of her temporary house built for her by her family and the Church after the Tsunami.
Cost: A few weekends of labour, a few old sheets of iron, leftover timber from everywhere and anywhere (everything is recycled here), and she had a home, built just metres away from where the Tsunami stopped but high enough to escape any future waves. I’ve popped in many times to say Hi and have watched the progress of her new home (to the left of this picture).
This is her new house with a nice new concrete floor.
Samoan construction works on the basis that building materials and unskilled labour are provided by the owner; skilled labour is purchased on a contract or hourly rate. After the Tsunami, the government announced a payout of $18,000.00 per family that had lost a house. This money was available for building materials from several authorised suppliers. Building materials were delivered on site and construction took anything from one to six months or more depending on how and when the owners wished to do things.
It was common to see building materials delivered on site and not used for many months in some locations. This money was plenty enough to purchase the basic components of a new house – roofing iron at $5.50 per foot, concrete blocks at $3.00 each, timber, water tanks, toilets, plumbing, electrics and so on.
Standard features are the size 12m x 7m (this one shown), corrugated roofing, the no wall design and the external toilet/shower block. Construction standards differ. Habitat for Humanity and the LDS (Mormon) church were known for higher quality construction. Local construction firms however often skimped on quality – thinner concrete and/or lesser standard of finish.
The fence around keeps the animals out while in construction. The green water tank was delivered by the Red Cross and the toilet block has a flushing toilet, cold shower and inground septic tank.
Construction style is to build the foundations up from the surface (not down like in Western countries – Samoa is rocky so it is hard to go down and a slab construction on the surface is very solid). Poles are set in from a concrete perimeter base. The roof is built in situ, then the final layer of concrete is poured inside the floor.
It is a different process from the Western building methods that dig down to a solid base then use the slab as a core component of the building. Samoan cement is made from sruched coral so the concrete is quite weak.
Victoria will soon be having Village Stays in her new home. It will be a happy day for her when it all happens.
UPDATE
Here’s a snap of a Palagi Fale. Concrete construction, louvre windows and steel roof. Normally the roof would be corrugated iron.
This one has an overhanging porch, a canti-levered overhang. Normally 60mm galvanised steel poles would support the edge. Note, there is no gutter (with good volcanic drainage these are not needed, and are an unnecessary expense). Sometimes an area that is walked through quite a bit, like in front of a door will have a short length of gutter just to push water away from the path, maybe 2-3 metres in length.
The central pole here is a retro-fit to prop up the roof at the point that the timber joins. Construction third-world style! The outside door has a steel screen – to ward off mosquitos, flies and thieves. Windows have a mosquito net guaze with a wire mesh on the outside.
Construction goes like this . . . No footings. You can’t dig down easily because it is all rocks, usually broken rocks with a thin volcanic loam. Build a concrete base (100 to 1m, yes 1 metre thick) in this case the building has two concrete block courses, 400mm. This base is built around the edges only first.
Build the walls. Concrete blocks $3.00 each. Cement bags $20.00. Sand free from the beach. Place and build the trusses. Fill in the floor with hard fill and then a thin coat of cement over the hardfill anywhere from 10mm, yes 10mm to 100mm.
Ceiling is a 5mm hardboard. Painting is a bonus.
Aircon can be installed for around $3,000.00.
Cost – $12,000.00 to $15,000.00 WST. That’s a VERY nice house here!
PDF 
About victusinambitus