Archive for the 'Building in Panama' Category

Construction update

They have made some progress on the pool and the steel c-beams for the roof structures have arrived. We should have a roof on the guest-house anytime now.
Here’s is a picture of the pool, you can see the wall winding it’s way between the bohio and the kitchen. It then widens again on the other [...]

Construction slowed down by heavy rains

There has been some heavy afternoon downpours lately in Panama, which has somewhat impeded progress. I was expecting the guest house to have a roof on it by now, but I think they are waiting to do all the roofs at the same time. The roofs need a welded steel-beam structure, covered by corrugated steel, [...]

More construction photos

I received a few more pictures of the construction this week.
Here’s a view of the bedroom module taking shape. You can see the two more or less octagonal bedrooms one on top of the other. The lower floor has a large ensuite bathroom extension on the back. The bedroom themselves are octagones within a square [...]

Construction Update

Here’s a few more pictures of my construction site.
In this picture you can see the high-tech concrete pumping system used to bring concrete up to the second floor of the bedroom module. It consists of a makeshift bridge so they can wheelbarrow the concrete from the livingroom where they mix it, up the hill to the [...]

Construction Update

I just got more news from our construction site. They have begun getting some heavy afternoon storms which has caused problems with dirt flowing down unto the foundation work. Because of this they decided to work on the main pool wall so they now have a place to push the dirt into and keep it [...]

Construction Update

Construction is still going well. There were a lot of heated discussions last week on some Yahoo groups regarding the difficulty of building in Panama. If you’ve built a house anywhere, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with all the errors and problems, so just imagine building in a third world country!
There [...]

Exciting week…

I got a few more pictures and a bit of excitement this week. I have someone watching over my project and last week he noticed that the kitchen window opening was completely wrong. It was both too small and in the wrong place!
But I’m more and more impressed with my builder, Eleuterio Gutiérrez. Jim noticed [...]

We’ll be Using Some Synthetic Thatch Roofing

I talked about the Palmex synthetic thatch roofing before in these pages, and I’ve now decided to put some of it on parts of my house, specifically on the bohio and guest house. A good friend of mine found this product and decided to start a distribution business for it in Panama. This is a [...]

20 year property tax exemption extended

Good news! The 20 year property tax exemption in Panama just got extended so I will be able to take advantage of it!

By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - Today Law 21 of 15 April 2008 was published in the “Official Gazette”, and specifies a change to Article 81 of Law 6 of 2005, saying “Those [...]

New construction pictures

I just received some more pictures of our construction project in Altos del Maria, Panama.
This one was taken from where the master bedroom will be. You can see the livingroom/kitchen module on the left, and the bohio to the right of it. You can also see the backwall of the guesthouse on the far right. [...]