Chile Forum

yea, and a lot of the construction in Chile reflects it.

In the States and other countries people have some experience (at least a dog house or two under their belt) when they set off to build their own home. In Chile, they try to be their own contractor / architect / engineer when they have never even picked up a hammer before.

DYI in Chile means hiring the local lawnmower man to build it as cheap as you can. Problem is the local lawnmower guy likly knows just about as much as the homeowner that knows nothing.

Vicious circle.

I came down for a quick trip to get the maestro moving on the bathrooms, tile etc. After visiting Sodimac and Easy in Santiago, I was concerned. The prior weekend I was Ïnstructed¨by my wife on the theme she has in mind for this house. We visited an area in So Ca known as ¨the mile of tile¨and looked at tile options. More for my education in what was acceptable than ¨picking tile¨.
Well in Easy in Vina, if I liked a tile it was out of stock. I went back time after time ( a 90 min drive from El Tabo) but couldn´t get any closer to a selection.
I met a kitchen cabinet designer and asked how I order the stock cabinets on display in the store. The upshot was that she came out to the jobsite to measure and design what I had already measured and designed, for 30 lukas, no biggie but after 2 days, still nothing. I hope she can get it together before Christmas......
In Santiago there´s a street called Matucano that has several tile shops, stocking....you guessed it, the same stuff as Easy.
Now I´m wondering if I can just grab the accent tile in Ca (for two bathrooms), bring it down next month in my bags and just use white field tile.
Sodimac has a much better selection of piso flotante than Easy BTW.

Boy, you get the resurrect the dead thread of the day award. I always expect to find a spammer on threads that have been dormant for this long.

Yea, that is one of my biggest fears of jumping in to a construction project in Chile and running out of something. I think tile would likely be the poster child anywhere for something that can not be substituted in a building for something that looks or functions similarly. My advice is go generic, and buy some extra. Go to all the stores, and evaluate what the absolute most common tiles are. Either that, or go in with a substitution plan before you build. For example, if they run out of white tiles, can you mix another type of tile in and still have it look cool.

Look at the final pages in the weekend edition of El Mercurio (there's a supplement dedicated to housing and decoration). Look for Duomo, Budnik, Roca and others for tiles - most are in Santiago but some of these stores are in Viña too. Easy and Sodimac have a very limited selection. There's much better stuff out there in specialized stores, the big generalists have only basics and little taste.

big generalists have only basics and little taste

Ain't that the truth! As a GC I am always looking at long term liability in every project, even my own. The unavailability of tubs with a "tile in" lip in Chile is finally starting to bug me. Not that there's an answer but WTF? I note they have figured it out on kitchen sinks, why not tubs? So everyone is condemned to a silicone/mildew line around their tub. The tile thing I think I've got figured out, sand blasted glass tile is easily available in Ca so I'll just bring down enough for the perimeters of our 2 bathrooms and call it good with white field tile after that

I have often thought of starting a store here in Thailand called "if you can't find it elsewhere it's here!" And only stocking things that no other store in the country has. Sounds like Chile needs one as well.

Re CAT-5 cable, the better stuff is made by Legrand. The last 1000 ft reel I bought cost me around $80.000. Proper electrical retailers stock it, or can order it.

Romex cable is called Caleco in Chile, available in up to 3 x 2.5mm conductors, and it's expensive, which is why it's not used too much.

Also, some parts of Chile, for example the IV Region, have just about given up on timber-framed construction because of termites. They love to eat soft untreated pine and once they are inside, that's it. We just demolished a 2-storey construction where the floor beams were more air than wood and it was only around 20 years old.

fraggle092 wrote:Also, some parts of Chile, for example the IV Region, have just about given up on timber-framed construction because of termites.

Whereabouts in the IV region? I haven't noticed any. Hope they stay away from my shed.

Cheers,

James.

In my place, we sprayed borate on all of the interior wood surfaces. That should be that as far as termites are concerned.

Termites are a very minor problem and easily controllable from a building design point of view. If you provide a break (raise the foundations 1’ out of the ground and build on that) and use the proper products you won’t have any problems.

The problem is when the home owners don't maintain the products and don’t spray the perimeter of the house every year or as necessary. But this problem runs a lot deeper than Termites… I am starting realize that it is as much the maintenance of the properties as much as it is the initial construction that makes the houses here look like crap after 3 years. Many people in Chile think that if the have a new house they don’t have to do anything, but the fact is that a house it a lot like a car and needs regular maintenance and repairs to keep it looking good and more importantly to provide it’s intended function.

I'm told there's no word for "maintenance" in Spanish

James,

La Serena centre is ridden with termites. They swarm in the late summer, especially on humid nights. They are easily spotted because they have four wings.
Most new construction around here now uses Metalcon, for example for roofing, where Pine was used traditionally.

Termites are a problem in Chile from Puerto Montt northwards. One moment on El Mercurio's buscador will show plenty of articles.

http://buscador.emol.com/dispatcher.php?query=termitas&portal=emol&por=El%20Mercurio

And as j. Ro says, there isn't much home maintenance here, people wait until things break, then they get a maestro in to fix the problem as cheaply as possible. And for every decent maestro there are ten crap ones.