...is to be willing to take a risk on something new. For me, I take risks for the sake of perfection. As a recovering perfectionist, I get on people's nerves sometimes. But I'm old enough to have learned (more than once) that perfect is the enemy of the good. And the done. I can't maintain my incessant optimism if it requires perfection that never comes, but it's my optimism that propels me toward the best. We spend so much time inside a building, I really think we should ask if we're in the best possible building.
Risky travels
This is me when I was much younger and starting a family. Before home computers and before a public internet, I had a feeling life in 2010 might be crazy. I wouldn't have been able to tell you what that would look like, but if you'd have shown me 2020 through now, I would've said, "yeah, like that." Only missed it by 10 years. Or maybe it was just the nesting instinct, but I had an intense desire for a good house for my young family. I began taking construction classes and studying building science. I became a fervent proponent of pier-and-beam in an ocean of slab. I bought the piece of land in that photo with plans to build my own house. And I heard about this thing called AAC.
I became a convert. An ideologue. I visited a site that needed no air conditioning to be comfortable, in Houston. In August. I had to make my house out of AAC. But the only source was in Monterrey, Mexico. To see if I could import it, I called. They invited me to visit. So I bought a $15 bus ticket (i.e., the kind of bus where only I spoke English) and off to Monterrey I went. Without a clue where I would spend the night or proper papers, only a limited grasp of the language, and arriving in the full-throttle party that is downtown Monterrey at 2 a.m. God looks after fools like me. It was a great trip.
Flash forward 30 years
Life takes us places we don't expect. I never built that house. My children became beautiful adults that I couldn't be more proud of. 2010 came and went. I was able to travel the world - several times. I got old and started thinking of what I could do next. Dreams that never had been realized. Dreams for houses that are easier to build, live in, and care for. And so here we are. Risking a life's worth of savings. And learning so much - good and bad - about AAC. Why should all these hard-knock lessons not be shared? So the first step to building with AAC is to... create a website??
I have been searching for this kind of talk for a while now. I'm trying to build a healthy home in southern, wet, humid Costa Rica and I'm trying to build it with AAC. I just got some pricing from Monterrey and the block is now $60.00 US m2. It seems to have gone up 20.00 m2 since last Dec. What is going on. I am still questioning about AAC. I want to know everything before making a purchase....