Signed, sealed and delivered

In my "A penny for your thoughts" entry, I mentioned that it's cheaper for us to make our own hollow blocks instead of buying from the store. Well a short time later, we found out that this is not exactly true. Add the cost of raw materials and the cost of labor and the savings is not worth the effort.


Mounds of sand (in front of an abandoned house) for the fence.

Also there were other aggravating factors that made us re-evaluate this [project within a] project.

• The churn out was not fast enough to meet the demand. Because they could only make so much in a day, it was dragging down the pace of construction.
  
  
• The weather was also slowing down production. After forming a block, it needs a few good days to cure. But because of the unpredictable weather (on a rainy season), there were days when they needed to halt production.
  
  
• The fact that there were only two or three workers in a day was also a problem. Unless they can master the art of multitasking (or grow extra pair of arms), it's impossible to make a block and build a wall at the same time. So switching to one task means they had to stop the other. Now that was really slowing them down.

After these realizations, there was no doubt. A few days later, deliveries of ready-made hollow blocks began to arrive.