Greetings from Canada

Hi Jaay! Alls great! Thanks for taking the time to reach out!

The idea of building in the DR for us is very exciting and we want to network within the community as much possible!

We will be making a return to Dominican in April to confirm some more details in the design/planning stage, as much possible at least-soak up as much knowledge we can!

Ill hit you up on Whatsapp, thanks again!

Rob

Take your time and do your research. I would be patient and rent for a while. I have a villa near Sosua and have done a number of projects. The quality of workmanship here overall leaves a lot to be desired. There are also a lot of just plain crooks. There are some good people to work with but it takes a while to sort them out. I would not overlook solar power. It has been a good investment for us.

Thank you for that, we arent certain the exact start date yet, likely late 2023. For the build size we are considering its going to take a small crew full-time so good honest guys are always good to meet.

Solar will definately be considered also, lots of homework to do but sure seems sensible to me.

That was good advice from mkunz6580.

Building in a resort area comes at a premium and more so for expats.

Any skilled tradesmen and good maestros will be tied up long term with general contractors. Those left will be chancers.

As such without time spent on the ground assessing the resource bases and good Spanish, you will be gambling with your hard earned cash imo.

Building in resort areas is higher risk and higher cost and lucrative for the local parties involved and that will reflect in the higher sf costs and poorer delivery that you can incur compared with elsewhere in the country.

That is good reason for some expats settling for buying into third party developed villa and apartment projects in resort areas to bypass the potential headaches albeit with a premium cost. But that way you generally get what is offered with limmited options and that may not fit with what you want.

Back to my opening line.

This may be obvious but building here is very very different than N. America. I am speaking to the actual hands on process, not to mention contracting, legal aspects, etc. You can oversee the construction but it may drive you crazy. I understand home construction in N. America to a good extent, but in the process of physically watching our house being built here I just stood there with my mouth open. So, our strategy was to hire a large well respected building company, totally vet them, and trust they know what they are doing. We keep careful tabs on the project, and so far so good, but I simply can't watch a lot of the construction process. 

To add to what Rocky said, part of the vetting process was speaking to previous clients to understand their experience working with the builder, and walking through homes they have built that ranged from in progress, just completed, 5 years old, and 10 years old. Seeing the homes that were built years ago allowed us to see how the construction held up and to talk about any issues that came up during that time.

Thanks all for your experience and advice! I expect building down there is going to have huge challenges for sure. Ive done several years of concrete and formwork experience so I will  be leading a team thru the structural process-build timelines/curing/stripping and re-errecting 3 times just for the above grade structure will take alot of time, layout and planning for sure.

We still have so many details to work through, all of this work alone still only gives us a shell.


Id expect concrete availability/volumes and pumping where required will have lag times and difficulties also?

Ideally id love to find another contractor in the area that I could perhaps utilize some of their manpower when required, but I dont know if that can be assumed.

Lol some days we cringe at the thought of this whole process but we want to give it our best!

One thing ive yet to source on our previous trips are some good building suppliers.

Im expecting to return early this year (maybe April) to determine whats available for purchase, source out materials-what can be shipped and at what cost.  This may give us a better idea of overall costs, which may determine the final overall footprint.

Its so much to wrap your head around hey?

On a more positive note -

My friend is the chief engineer at Playa Grande - He built the Aman hotel which won a worldwide award for cement construction.

My friend has worked all over the world for 30-40 years.
He claims the Dominican cement is the best he has ever seen.

But the cement used by most contractors and available at building merchants is the general use cement with a lower compressive strength. If the concrete design strength is so required, one would have to use the structural grade and I am sure any ready mix concrete plant would do so as would contractors on large projects. But for the typical home dwellings the general use cement will be used for the concrete work and mindful of the concrete forming and placing techniques common in DR that works.

https://www.cemexdominicana.com/product … ntos/titan

DR cement is good and the Caribbean region is home to some good and fine blend cements.

But the techniques used in concrete construction can be very iffy to add to low skills levels on places.

Most concrete construction is a world away from what you would have seen in the USA and Europe. Outside of the main cities, there are few concrete batch plants and most domestic concrete placement is by manual labour mixing in 1/4 or 1/3 cyd cement mixers and cement mixers with hoisting devices. A pump would be a luxury for much of the country and the concrete batching would need to be as good to avoid plugging and for sure concrete truck drivers will add water to their units if there are delays or long hauls. The manual work is honed by the domestic dwelling construction gangs with so many shovels of aggregate and 2 or 3 bags per batch with water added as required - and because it is manual work they tend to add far too much water. The aggregate will come from graded river gravels in most but not all instances and will be variable. Also, few maestros outside major companies and cities have concrete compaction pokers and if they do it will be a 1 or 1 1/2 inch electric poker. The preferred option is to over cement the concrete mix and add water and use hammers and prodding sticks to compact. Yes very poor practice but it is so common and you will see many instances of honeycoming on many doestic dwellings if you are here to check the work. If not it will be plastered over. So back to design and make sure you have a seismic design over reinforced based upon low concrete strengths which is what will result with imperfect compaction and high water cement ratios. The steel reinforcing bar strength is another area to consider. Most reinforcing bar is manually bent here and can be over bent. If the rebar is produced here the strength may not be up to the standards one has been used to. Most steelfixers don't understand seismic detailing especially in relation to link spacings at key junctions and reinforcement of hollow blockwork.

As for formwork and scaffold, if any, well that is another world. It is rare to see metal props to support slabs even on multi storey apartment blocks in the Santo Domingo. Some of the bigger contractors have invested in proprietry formwork support systems and scaffold but most use wood poles. So you will need to adapt formwork support calculations and adapt how you check the formwork. And the ply deck, column and edge formwork could have had a hundred uses in many instances and never seen a form release agent and have damaged edges and holes. Concrete curing is something most maestros don't understand and with both wet concrete and no curing under a hot sun shrinkage cracking is a common sight. some flood the concrete slabs after placement but often they are too tired and leave it until the following day. So don't strike soffit formwork too early and give it as long as possible to gain strength even up to 28 days! But many don't and strike after a week!  They tend to add a screed over flat roof construction normally to seal those shrinkage cracks and create falls. The roof drainage philosiphy preferred here is to drain the roof from within a blockwork parapet so ponding is possible if the drains get blocked.

Water for concrete - if you understand DR you will understand there are shortages of good quality water throughout the land so the source of your water for concrete is worth investigating especially if in coastal regions in case there are salinity issues.

It is a learning curve here from working in oher Caribbean islands and a huge learning curve form Europe and USA.

One real positive is that there are very good young Dominican engineers and architects coming through the system and gaining excellent experience on the big development projects that have taken place over recent years and so standards should be on the up going forward. Equally construction skills are being developed as a result but often it is Haitians that are benefitting.

Interesting Lennox. We saw a lot of what you describe above. I had to chuckle when we visited the site one day and witnessed how they put up the forms for our concrete spa. Words don't due it justice. We took pictures and will have to post one here. Concrete forms here consist of plywood, 2x4's, and anything laying around they can use to brace the forms - scrap wood, tree branches, etc.

Thanks guys for all your help!

Its my plan to bring a scaffold system (36'x50' , 2 storey) to access and support the main structure, then break down and re-use for the 2 wings either side following the main build.

Im of the hope I can buy a couple lifts of ply (form ply ideally) from some source on the island, as well as new 2×4's. I would assume these will be at a premium cost!?

Rebar detailing down there would be ideal for alot of the column and beam re-inforcing-but I do anticipate doing alot of the bending onsite if required.

Ive been looking at a few options for a line pump to purchase, of course no real planning yet for importing fees or how that process will go.

I was hoping to keep pour volumes to one truck or less per; however for some of the slabs continous pours would be far preferred. Control joints can be implemented also, but that will require more forming and stripping.  I would expect alot of these smaller volume pours will be mixed onsite, then placed-timing out concrete is never a good thing!

Ive seen some of the construction methods on previous trips, wow some stuff looks SO sketchy...credit due though, they seem to make it work lol!

All of your help and advice, suggestions and comments are very appreciated!! Thanks again