Update from Krishna Regmi

Yesterday, I and our appointed contractor/builder drove from Kathmandu to Dhading. In the village, we marked out the allocated plot for the basement of the School.

We marked all the lot corners and instructed the local villagers (acting as labourers) to dig the up 12 column holes of size 2 feet by 2 feet at 4 feet deep at all the appropriate marked location (as per size above ) .

We brought along 1 truck full of sand, 1 truck full of small pieces of rocks and 15 sacks of cement, weighing 5kg each for the basement foundation.

As there is not electricity in this village, for the welding (joinery of each piece of iron pole to each other) we ordered all the folding trestle with pre- bolt according to the NUTBOLT system. This is pre- done in Kathmandu.

We will have it delivered to Dhading in a few days’ time. As we cannot drive straight to the village , we must offload all our materials by the main road side and then get all possible manpower to carry piece by piece to the village. This will take 3 hours of walking with their load. At Dhading we will unload all the materials at the suspension bridge, road junction then we will have to carry all the heavy iron and cement materials to cross the bridge, then upload again another time to another lot of lorries and drive into the village using another route to Dhading.

For the second stage of our work (wall, window, door, partition, floor plaster with cement etc , I will work out another costing as part of our 2nd stage of progress work.

In Stage #1 – we will build the basic structure of the building with iron trestle roof structure and iron clad pole/pillar structure and zinc roof. We dug the hole in to the ground around 4 feet (depends on ground label) and fixed with cement, sand and rock. We use 12 iron poles as a pillar. In total, we use 1650kg of iron and 400kg of zinc sheet (and some nut + bolt) to complete it. All these materials we had outsource from our local market but it is little expensive because it is just after our blockade and problem with India. There are 5 workers from contractors and it took 5 full days to fix it for them. We will all stay in Dhading for 5 nights to complete 1st stage.

The month of March is a good season to start our project, just before the monsoon season beginning in June and hence will get the whole project ready. Also right now, the workers are available the ground is solid hard and no water overflow problem.
We are planning to finish it before new session (3rd week of April). It is hard to get workers because; most of them are building their own house which was damaged by earth quake

There is no electricity at Dhading. We carry our own generators from Kathmandu for the entire duration of the project.

For the second stage to build the walls, we need cement, sands, stones, bricks (we are using cement bricks). And for the doors and window we are using iron and steel. Wood doors and Windows, will take long time to make and costly. And also there is shortage of labourers to make it. For all this I will talk with Indira from PA Nepal and finalise the total costing.

Yes, compare to before blockade, the market price is 20 to 40% more now. Most of the construction materials comes from India and it is more costly now a days compare before. But materials can get in market.
for example :-
bricks has gone up in price from Rs 7,500 to Rs 8,500 for 1000 units,
cement from Rs610 to Rs650 for a sack ( 50kg)
wood from Rs5,000 to Rs5,800 for 1 cubic feet length
raw materials is more easily available for purchase and there is no need to depend on India for it ?

I will update Stage #2 soon.