Enter the Architect

Previously I had spoken with the DPNR (Department of Natural Resources) about the process of building on Water Island.  We quickly figured out that they wanted way more than we could do on our on.  On the recommendation of one of the kit house companies we were given Chris Tavernier’s name.  The next time we were on the Island we arranged to meet him and show him the site.  Chris is a native of Dominica and a graduate of City College in London.  We brought him to the land and showed him what we wanted to do.  He was also up to date on all the code requirements we were vaguely aware of.  He also had with him a permit application package that he had recently submitted to the DPNR as part of another project.  That really woke me up to how impossible doing this yourself would be, the thing was over 40 pages long and had things like an environmental impact assessment.  We hired him to be our architect.  He was also involved with the round house that was being built on the island and showed us where it was.

Rolando!

We headed up to the round house on the next workday.  This was an 8 sided house of about 1500 sq ft.  Rolando Asencios was in charge and happy to show us around.  Rolando is a St Thomas contractor and native of Peru.  He told of us of the problems he was having with the manufacturer of this particular house.  He was about two months behind because the factory was late in sending the last container of materials.  They also did things like send half the roof in one container and half the windows in another, instead of all at the same time.  It also turned out that when I researched this company later it had more than a few Better Business Bureau complaints.  Rolando had built several other round homes but this was the first time with this company.  He was not impressed.  We hung around and watched the boys work for a while.  One thing that impressed me right off the bat was Rolando’s demeanor with his crew.  He was very calm and directive.  Quite a contrast from the crew at the house close to our land.  He invited us to his house in St Thomas, which was a compound of two Deltec homes.  We accepted and a few days later he picked us up.

My Brother from Another Mother

To say that we were blown away by Rolando’s house is an understatement.  It started at the front door, a work of art made in Miami.  His house is on top of a hill/cliff about 500 feet above the ocean.  A deck with an infinity edged pool divides two Deltec homes.  The larger one is about 2000 sq ft and one story, the smaller one a two story version of the 500 sq ft house we were considering.  The truly neat innovations that Rolando came up with while building these houses were very well thought out.  The first he told us about was the exterior cladding of the houses.  Up to this time I had been going with a Hardi Plank and metal roof exterior for our house.  What Rolando did was to take 1/2 inch thick Durock concrete shower lining panels and attach them to the plywood cladding of the Deltec homes.  He then caulked the gaps between the panels then taped the seams with fiberglass drywall tape and a coat of Total Wall polymerized stucco.  Then he stapled metal lathe to the outside and stuccoed it using the Total Wall Product.  This stuff is quite a bit different than normal stucco, much more flexible and crack resistant.  A lot of commercial buildings like shopping malls use it. http://www.totalwall.com/ He had the beautiful bronze front door made by a metal working artist in Miami.  Going inside the big house he showed us his take on stained concrete floors.

The dark bordering is all one piece with the concrete slabs, these are not separate tiles.  He did this by taking a diamond saw on a straight edge guide, cutting a shallow groove, then masking and staining these areas separately from the rest of the floor.  He also cut shallow grooves in the middle of the floor to give the appearance of large tiles.

The main room ceiling was smooth plastered sheet rock.  One of the bedrooms has a Deltec supplied wooden ceiling, which would be my choice since I hate mudding and taping ceilings! One peculiarity with Deltec houses is that in the center of the roof there is a large circular hole that remains after the roof is constructed.  This is because all the roof trusses come together at this point and are joined together by a large steel compression ring.  Instead of covering this hole with a circular plate, Rolando made a many sided light fixture.  Also unseen is Rolando’s method of joining the 20 eight foot long wall panels together.  Instead of just nailing them together with steel reinforcing plates, he in addition runs 5/8 inch threaded rod between the panels at 4 places on each panel and thru bolts them together.  This turned out to be a very useful addition about 3 years after this picture was taken.

Another innovation necessary due to the house’s location is the slats going from the edge of the roof to the peak.  St Thomas tradewinds blow the same direction about 99% of the time.  Even when a rainstorm comes this is mostly true.  After Rolando built the house he was puzzled why of his two cisterns one was constantly full while the other half empty.  The cisterns were fed by separate downspouts, one on either side of the roof.  After watching the roof during a rainstorm he observed that due to the aerodynamic nature of the round roof the water was swirling around the roof and ending up all on one side, thus feeding the full cistern and starving the other.  So he ripped some pressure treated lumber into 1 inch strips to force the water to stop swirling around the roof.  Another thing you may notice is that there are no gutters around the roof.  Instead Rolando edged the entire roof with 1 x 6 boards, and the downspout entrances are actually within the roof’s perimeter.  This is because gutters are the first thing to go when the hurricane comes.  In the Islands about half the roofs are like this one, which is coated with a rubberized paint called Top Coat instead of shingles or metal.  This is painted directly onto the roof decking after taping the seams with a proprietary tape.  It has to be repainted every few years, but is more storm worthy than metal or shingle roofs. This is also a good view of the cable railing around the deck, the only way to go when you have a view like this one.

The pool is just crazy beautiful, especially when you look over the edge and see the huge cliff like drop down the hill.  It’s always amazes me how the Island houses get built on these lots in such steep terrain.  Rolando mainly works with concrete in his day job.  We could tell his expertise as we wandered around the property and looked at the beautiful landscaping.

We were very interested in the little house as it is the same size as we were considering building, although two story.  One modification that Rolando did was to eliminate the interior staircase of the original design and add a wrap around staircase to the outside of the house to save interior room.  The wraparound staircase is still part of the interior, but just attached to the outside of the house.  In the mainly open upstairs living room Princess decided that it was enough room for her.  Thank God! I don’t think we could build anything bigger mostly by ourselves.

We left Rolando’s house with a lot of new ideas.  One thing that was strange to us was how much his style was similar to ours.  The bathroom in the big house was virtually identical to our master bathroom in Texas that I’d just built, down to the pebble floor shower.  The stained concrete floors were exactly what we were looking for.  The list went on and on.  On the spot I decided he was my Brother from Another Mother!

Rolando was just starting a large commercial project building a grocery store, but we decided he was worth waiting for.  And we had just started the permitting process, so hopefully our schedules would match up.  Here a link to Rolando’s website:

http://www.asenciosconstruction.com/construction-projects.asp

At the time of this writing (February 2018) he has a lot of projects going building new Deltecs in St Thomas.  After Hurricanes Irma and Maria business went from normal to a raging boil as people learned of the Deltec’s hurricane resistance. The only damage these two houses suffered from two Category 5 hurricanes was a small hole in the roof of the big house, made by flying debris from an adjacent house.  Virtually all the other houses in Rolando’s neighborhood were destroyed.