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Since one of the respondents mentioned something about modular houses not being as sturdy as normal construction, I thought an update following the earthquake would be in order:
Our house is on the Nicoya peninsula, about 50 km away from the epicenter, I believe. Our groundskeeper, who was on the property at the time, said the quake was so strong he had trouble standing. He could see the house from where he was and said it ‘looked like jelly’, to use his words. But the house had no damage at all. We have been there since the quake, and I looked over the entire house very carefully. I found nothing, not even a tiny crack.
We will be connecting to the power company’s poles when they install them on our road. This has not happened yet because we are the only house that has been built there.
In the meantime, we followed their instructions on connecting to the nearest existing pole, and hired an electrician to do it. He purchased the correct gauge cable and attachment hardware based on their guidance.
When we were ready, the power company arrived in a big shiny truck, installed a new transformer and new box on the pole, and connected our cable to it. I don’t think they would have done all that if our cable was not permitted. Perhaps exceptions are made when there is no other way of connecting a newly built house to the grid?
Yes. I didn’t mean to cause confusion. I kept editing my original post for awhile.
What I was trying to say was that even though $70K sounds like very little to spend on a 200+ sq meter house, it could have easily cost even less. For example:
Originally we hadn’t planned to finish the interior walls with plaster. We hadn’t planned to line the outer roof areas with teak. We originally were going to put inexpensive tile on the floors.
The 3 bedrooms actually have teak floors (see photo “Bedroom floor of our house” which I have uploaded). This is a really nice upgrade but was definitely more expensive than tile.
The window openings of the Capresa house had bottom sills that were closer to the ground; this bothered us aesthetically, so we had the builder raise them about 8 inches by pouring concrete into wooden forms.
The window in the kitchen seemed a little small, so we asked the builder to widen it by about a foot by cutting away part of a panel. He also modified the width of several doorways and made other similar changes for us.
The fancy bases at the bottoms of the columns were another change which added to the cost.
If our lot had been located in a more established area, we would not have had to pay for installing a septic system, deepening the well, and connecting to a distant electric pole. These easily added several thousand dollars to the final cost.
Hi everyone. I’m the owner of the house being discussed. Thanks for your interest in our project!
One of the writers asked to see the floor plan. This prompted me to review the dimensions of the house again, and I find I made an error.
The 100 sq meters that I quoted was the area of the floor plan inside the walls, not the total area.
Due to the large porches and sidewalks, the area of construction (and the area covered by the roof) was actually 218 sq meters. Costaricabill was right. There would not have been enough space for all those rooms.
Sorry. This means the cost of construction was about $321 per sq meter, or about $30 per sq foot. Keep in mind that our architect charged us less than he would normally, since he is a relative, and my son-in-law charged us nothing for his many many hours of labor.
This all kept the cost down.
I’ve just uploaded a scan of the floor plan to the “Your Costa Rica Photographs” section at
[ https://www.welovecostarica.com/members/viewimage.cfm?ImgID=902 ]
It’s entitled “Capresa Plan”. It totaled 90.65 sq meters. After we added the extra meter to the long dimension, it came to about 99 sq meters. We use the “Sala T.V.” area as an office.
The “Area De Milas” is outside but covered by the roof, and is where we have a washer, dryer, and an outdoor sink. The only room which seems a bit small to me is the second bathroom.
Crhomebuilder mentioned concerns about the finishing of the walls. We purposely picked Capresa because the walls do not have thick posts connected by thin panels.
We saw homes like that near us and didn’t like the way they looked. The Capresa walls are just interlocking panels, and are pretty smooth when assembled.
Our builder smeared the outside with a coating of concrete, and a finer coating of plaster inside. Then we painted them. I can tell you that outside they look like stucco, and inside like painted wallboard. I uploaded an additional photo (“Side view of house”) at
[ https://www.welovecostarica.com/members/viewimage.cfm?ImgID=903 ]
… so you can see that all the walls are smooth.
We had complete freedom about where to put electric plugs and switches. Our architect showed Capresa where we wanted them, and they supplied panels with conduits in place for each of those locations. All the wiring is hidden above the ceiling.
Plumbing is another matter. The panels are too narrow for pipes, so they are attached to the surface of the panels. In the showers, the builder created a thicker section using tile to hide the pipes.
We were very fortunate in getting our property at the price we paid. The owner was a friend of my daughter and son-in-law, and was anxious to raise some money. He sold us the first parcel (about 6 acres) for about $10,000 per acre (about $2.50 per sq meter).
When we expressed interest in the other two parcels, the price per square meter for them was considerably higher, but we went for them anyway because it still averaged out OK.
This area is very hilly and the private road leading to our property is pretty bad, as Skilligan predicted. The only major problem this caused was when Capresa tried to deliver the panels.
We told them to bring them in several small trucks, but they did not. Their truck almost got stuck, and damaged part of the road. We’re still trying to fix it. The rest of the concrete was brought in by the builder a little at a time, which was no trouble.
The property had an existing artesian well which we deepened to about 7 meters by hand; it’s been serving us well so far. We pump the water up to a water tank which our builder put up.
There was no electricity on the property and no nearby electric poles. We thought about going solar (we have a hillside that would be ideal for solar panels), but in the interest of keeping things simple we asked the power company install a box for us on the nearest public road and ran a line to it thru our neighbor’s property, attaching it to the trees. (We got his permission first!) We had to pay about $1500 for the wire alone.
I’ll try to answer more of your questions when I have a little more time.
Mitch
