| You may have noticed the construction process here in the Caribbean is a little different than houses built in colder climates. Most homes are constructed with concrete slab and cinder block to withstand hurricanes. Wooden homes are possible too, but have a greater risk factor should your house have to withstand gale force winds. To protect your investment as much as possible, we strongly suggest concrete homes to all of our clients. |
No insulation is needed in warm climate homes but considerations should be made in the design phase to take advantage of the trade winds and keep your home as naturally cool as possible. Letting the heat rise up and out through peak vents will help too and can be easily implemented into your design. |
If you're thinking about buying land or building a home here in Carriacou, let us give you a rough guideline as to how the process works here. Firstly, if you're a foreigner, you can have full title ownership to land here, although you will need to get an approved Alien Land Registration and pay the government of Grenada 10% of the land or home cost after you have purchased the property and all the paperwork is in order.
You'll also need a legal firm to file the paperwork for you. Wilkinson, Wilkinson & Wilkinson in Grenada lists full information about this process and the associated costs on their website. Once you've applied, it should take about 3 months for approval. |
Next up is the design process. Now remember, home building is different in the Caribbean and your architect back home may not have much experience in designing concrete and cinder block homes, let alone even know what a cistern is or how to design one into a house. So you can have conceptual plans drawn up in another country, but you'll need a Grenadian architect to draw up and submit your plans in Grenada or Carriacou to the planning department. Approval must be obtained prior to the start of your building project and may take up to 3 months depending how busy the planning department is.
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Once your paperwork is in order and you have a building permit in hand, you're ready to start construction of your new home here in Carriacou. Now comes the time to select a builder for your project. While it's always better to be able to drop by the site to monitor the progress in person, that's not always possible for many foreign land owners.
T Bedeau Construction can help make the process as hassle free as possible and allow you to monitor the construction project through pictures that are emailed on a weekly basis. You'll be able to see how the progress is coming along and remain in contact even though you can't be there in person. If you have any questions, at any time, simply drop us an email and we'll happily send a reply and answer all of your questions within 24 hours or so. |
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