Don’t be like them
As we were waiting to close on the land we started looking at other blog sites about building in the USVI. I’ve included a link to most of them on the homepage, if you are considering building it’s an excellent resource. Some were tragic, others funny, but all show that things definitely don’t run according to schedule in the USVI. This is where I learned about “blue bitch” which we will meet later. The most successful owner builders were those who were constantly involved with the process and on site. The least successful were those who were trying to do it from a distance. The funniest blog in a cautionary sort of way is “Bongo Bongo”. The fastest house to completion was a little over a year, most took two to three years. We were also very fortunate in that a house was being built on the Island very close to us so we were able to watch the process. This house when ultimately completed almost four years later (promised time was 6 months) and way over budget gave us a good clue on which contractors not to hire. During construction at least two different contractors were involved and the comedy of errors was painful to watch. Cast concrete walls being poured with window openings on one day, then the next the openings cinder blocked closed and new openings created with jackhammers. Shutters put up in blatant disregard to plumb. Unsupervised workers playing on their phones all day until the boss shows up. High end cabinets mutilated by “carpenters” trying to make them fit. Just awful!
Practical Island Houses
Another great thing about reading the blogs and other forums was that we got an idea of what is practical or not. For example in an area where it only rains 30 inches/year and all the water comes off the roof forget about that big jacuzzi tub you were dreaming of. When running a small window AC unit costs $300/month on power at 45 cents/kilowatt hour maybe spend more time on ensuring a nice cross breeze and big ceiling fans instead of putting in central air. When the hurricane comes and water blasts into the house from under the doors maybe that laminate flooring which is moisture sensitive was not a good idea. The McMansion that’s appropriate in California might be out of reach with concrete approaching $250/yd by the time it gets to the site, so maybe smaller is better. High end appliances might be beautiful, but when your house has wind driven salt spray running through it then nothing lasts longer than a couple of years. Aluminum windows turn to powder so might need to go with fiberglass instead.
So we came up with a plan. Whatever we did was going to be small enough for mid fifties year old me to do most of the work. Flooring was going to be stained concrete. Since we weren’t going to be there half the time and weren’t going to rent it out we would go with a smaller cistern than most people would. No air conditioning meant October (the hottest month) would be spent in Central Texas (the best month of the year there). A big deck for the views, with a pipe awning for shade and water collection. Off the grid power with the then new Tesla Powerwall for a battery. Since I build a lot of furniture on the farm, I would make all the cabinets and doors and ship them out. Now what to build?
Options
While the average Virgin Islander swears by concrete box type structures with a hip roof, that’s not what we wanted. I’d seen some shipping container houses as I traveled around the country so for a month or two I designed a couple of different variations. They have a lot of advantages foremost being mostly hurricane and earthquake (the USVI has a lot of these!) proof. They can be made to look very nice with a little extra work. Since we weren’t looking for a big house anyway the smaller footprint didn’t bother us that much. One thing that most people miss is that they really aren’t that much cheaper to build than standard construction. In the end it came down to that we really couldn’t find a configuration that worked for us. At the same time we started looking at kit type houses. Although more expensive than building from scratch they had a couple of advantages. One was that everything you needed for the most part came in one package, which on Water Island where getting stuff that last couple of miles from St Thomas is a $200 minimum event was a big plus. The other was that since the most time I could take off work at a time was 30 days then that gave us the opportunity for to have the house dried in without having to hire a bunch of workers. We started looking at round kit houses for their hurricane resistance. Two companies in North Carolina make them. A house that was the product of one company was actively being built at the time on Water Island. We decided to visit it on our next trip out.