Given a combination of brick walls, poor construction (this is underneath a terrace that ‘sort of’ drains), and warm snaps during cold weather, Uruguay offers the perfect combination for growing mold on walls, shoes, and just about everything else.
Looking at building a house in the country (hey, what’s the problem?), we’re interested in alternative construction techniques. One is steel framing. They call it ‘dry construction.’ A new and exciting construction technique for Uruguay!
Not everyone, it appears, is convinced. A friend tried to explain the virtues of building with insulation to an architect in Montevideo. He put his hand on the wall, and said that in the winter up north, instead of being cold, the inside of the wall would be room temperature. To which the architect replied, well, you can turn on a heater.
As another friend points out, turning on a heater in a damp brick room is the best possible way to accelerate mold growth.
Hi, we are thinking of moving to Uruguay and would like to know if you have had success arranging “dry construction” for your planned home. Have you found mold is a problem in new apartment towers, too?
We don't plan new construction at this point, but the most interesting, cheapest and most effective insulation, is the traditional (now mostly shunned) combo of post and bean and adobe. I don't know its local name. I'm not fond of the plastic solutions presented by prefab options, nor do I relish the idea of building two houses (double-brick construction, also very effective). Fact is, little is cheap here right now.