Construction vocabulary

If you hire a Mexican builder with limited English skills you may need some vocabulary you don’t use at the market on Thursday.

Basic Materials

Ladrillo – brick  Red brick is hand made locally in a variety of sizes.  Don’t miss the opportunity to go with your builder to buy your bricks.  Bricks for your Boveda ceiling have to be of better quality than those that get used in the wall.  If you are building walls and a boveda ceiling then ladrillos discarded in the process of choosing the good ones for the boveda will be used in the walls.  I usually buy 1000 ladrillos to get 700 top quality ones.  What makes ladrillos right for you.  You can talk to them and find out if you have anything in common but the truth is that they are all pretty dense.  Density is actually the issue.  A good brick will have been baked at a higher temperature so it must come from deeper inside the oven.  It will be a bit lighter and have a definite pink rather than a dull thud when struck with the end of your finger or against each other.  Your builder should know the difference.  They also have to be of uniform size or they look weird on your ceiling.  The hotter bake makes the brick stronger and better able to resist weathering.  This is especially important for your outside overhands.  They cost from 2 to 3 pesos each (Nov 2008)

Bloques — cinder blocks are lighter and more economical than brick but not as strong.  because of the higher tensile strength of a brick wall a good builders will insist on 4 courses of brick in the middle of a wall to prevent vertical cracking.  Some builders will insist on this in two levels of the wall (hip and shoulder height).  If you ask him not to do it for economy then expect to be fixing a few cracks depending on how much your house settles.  They are also made locally at the bloqueria from jal (cinder), water and cemeno.  Also worth a visit.

Grava – gravel without sand in it crushed in the case of house construction

Arena — sand.  No you cannot use beach sand and event the river sand is not preferred.  I will have to ask why but I know sand for my building was trucked in from Puerto Vallarta.  Sand for the Boveda also needs to be finer than for regular construction.

Maya — pea gravel.  Local river bed stuff if ok so it winds up being half the cost of arena.  It is also what is left after screening sand.  The dictionary says Gravilla but locally it is commonly maya.

Mezcla – literally mix.   it can also refer to mortar

Mortero — the cement used to make mortar

Cemento –  the cement used to make concrete.  It is actually cemeto gris in a situation where it might be confused with cemento blanco.

Fina — the final plaster coat.  A mixture of cemento blanco and sand and acrylic sealers.  It usually bought pre mixed but sometimes a builder prefers a bit different texture or  workability and he may enhance it with extra cemento blanco, pega piso and marmol (marble based sand).  It comes in different colours.

Enjara — the initial finish layer of mortar

Estuco — stucco

Azulejos — wall tile are applied with pegazulejo.

Vitro Pisos — floor tiles are stronger than azulejos.  They are applied with pegapiso.

Basic Structural Elements

Muro — wall while it is being constructed

Pared — wall Not sure but it seems to be used when referring to only one side of it so we will build a muro but we will hang something on the pared.  My dictionary makes a distinction between inside and outside walls but I haven’t found that to coincide with local usage.

Techo – roof  not to confused with tejas which are the red brick roofing tiles.

Piso – floor

Boveda – literally vault. so vaulted ceiling.  It refers to the ceilings you see all over our area with the exposed brick in those graceful shallow arcs.  I was interested to find out that they are actually quite a local phenomenon.  If you travel to San Blas they are few and far between.  It is an ingenious construction technique making an attractive finish out of a structural element.  Great integrity of materials!!  I love them.

Dala – horizontal reinforced concrete beams.  There are three in a wall .  one above the foundation, second above the windows and doors, third on top of all the walls (called the coronación or crowning) to support the roof beams and the walls for the next floor.

Castillo – reinforced concrete column.  There will be one in each corner and one every 4 meters (minimum).  The castillos in the wall are usually located where an interior wall intersects the exterior wall so they wind up being 3 to 4 meters apart depending on the size of the rooms.  The basic strength i.e. rigidity of the building is given by the dalas and castilllos not the bricks and blocks that make up the wall.

Tools

Martillo — hammer

Roto martillo — hammer drill

Maro — sledge hammer right from a 1 pounder up to the big one we also call el bebe.  Actually anything bigger than a normal hammer for driving nails.

Desarmador – screw driver