This is probably the stage that caused me the most headaches before I even started with it!

How do you make a waving roof? It’s prutty easy to make a roof that’s cruved in one direction, but what if it’s cruved in 3 dimensions???

As with every new challenge, the best way to find out is just to start with it and try to learn as fast as possibles from your first attempts! So let’s make it a mission!

MISSION: THE  ROOF

GOAL: Protect from direct sunlight, rain, snow, falling trees and angry squirrels.

ESTIMATED TIME TO ACCOMPLISH MISSION: 1 month for first layer, 2 months for whole roof.

GEAR: Cordless drill, radial saw, sunmilk and life insurance

AMMO: 1,6 km’s of wooden planks  and 3000 screws

CHALLENGES: Make roof look nice and clean, curved in three directions

FRIENDLY TROOPS: Nele and foreign helpers (to be defined further)

DANGER ZONES: Roof edge - 4,5 m cliff, splinters everywhere, no protection against direct sunlight during whole operation.

The idea is to have a layered roof. If all goes well the layers will be the following:

Layer 1: Wooden skeleton (accomplished)

Layer 2: One layer of planks (fully covered)

Layer 3: Vapor screen

Layer 4: Two layers of planks in the opposing direction (every 60cm) - Infill with insulation

Layer 5: Two layers of planks in the direction opposing to that of layer 3 (also every 60cm) - Infill with insulation

Layer 6: Covering up with planks (fully)

Layer 7:  Protection layer (felt)

Layer 8: Durable Waterproof layer (EPDM)

Layer 9: Root tarp (protection against roots)

Layer 10: Water draining system (if needed)

Layer 11: Water keeping layer (felt)

Layer 12: Ground with ceramics

Layer 13: Plants of different kind

Offcourse the insulation will only be necessary at the inside surface of the house. At the opverhang, the layers will be slightly different:

Layer 1: Wooden planks (fully covered)

Layer 2: Wooden planks in the other direction

Layer 3: Covering up with plates

Layer 4:  Waterproof tarp (EPDM)

Enough of the talking!

Some pictures of what we allready did:

As you can see, there are still some holes in between the planks, but I found a way of eliminating them as much as possible! I’ll explain all this later with a step-by-step overview.

That’s it for now, guyzzzz

First two don’t ’s:

1. Don’t put your hair down when you are routering

2. Don’t think you are doing well, if you get something like this:

Some pictures of the surroundings at sun rise…

Well.. before it seems that looking at sunsets is the only thing we did the past two months.. go and take a look some posts below “The wooden skeleton”, it’s updated…

Some more pictures..

The forest shower, which nele and Robin finished up nicely:

The luxury chicken house, with green roof (offcourse)

The little chicken house, for bad chickens!

Also with greenroof offcourse

And the inhabitants (mother chicken and chicks):

The rooster “Brad Pick”

And the other new ones:

Freddy and Midas

The goal was to get as much work done as possible.. and also the first bent went up !!!

Friends came from all over the country to join me on the working spot and allot of work was done that day!

In the evening there was a campfire-party … The day was just perfect !!!

National television came to record everything for the “Samen Groener” show, a contest for green projects I was participating at. I’ll put the video of the show online as soon as I figure out how to do that, hehe.. For now.. here are some screenshots of that televion show and that beautifull day at Hamadryad!

At the studio….

My friends who came around that day… 25 to 30 !

THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH !!!

Troy and me preparing the first beam!

And even the little ones were helping!

Gosse (http://www.bereklauw.be)  and his helpers from Helpx came around: THANX!

Ingrid from “Het Droomatelier”  (http://www.droomatelier.com/) 

came to make us some delcious meal and soup !!! Thank you !!

We got the potatoes and carrots from the super friendly local bio-farmer, thank you !!!

(yes even my pregnant sister in law and my bro came out to help me!)

Special thanks to Wouter Crucke from Vartago (www.Vartago.com)  to do a great job on the tree-working !!!

In the evening there was a very cosy party with a fire

Thank you soooo much for the artists of Los Callejeros (http://www.loscallejeros.be) to spice up the evening with some great music! You guys are the best! And thanks to Lore to arrange all this!

And allot of gratitude for powerful Steven and beautifull Saar of ‘Oersprong’ (http://www.oersprong.be) to put up an amazing fireshow!!! Thank you so much for coming, guys!  

As you can see.. I can’t say “THANK YOU” enough…. so… once more: THANK YOU !!!!!

It was a great day!

Also take into account that allot of preparation work needs to be done in the beginning and the building process goes faster and faster as it gets along..

End of March:

April 25th:

May First:

May 10th:

1Th Of June

So… as I was saying before I would start with the “REAL WORK” and so I did.. well.. after winter I got help from all kinds of directions.. especially from Helpx-people Troy, Connor, Tine and my friend Bert… GREAT!

There was also a big working day with a party. Lot’s of people came that day… really gratefull! Later more on this topic.

Together we are working on the wooden skeleton right now….And I want to share some more low-impact building -stuff with you guys…

At first it was really taking us forever to prepare a bent and get it up there, but now we have found a system that’s easy, quick and good!

I’ll describe it step by step….

Step 1: We take a look at the details on the bent we are going to make. For the record: a bent is a wooden unit, in this case it’s a roofbeam resting on a log (roundwood). Both, the roofbeam and the log, make up for 1 bent. The chimney will be the central support.

Step 2: We take the right length of rlog (it’s just a standard length and still needs to be cut to the functional length)

Step 3: We cut the log to the right length. We cut it from the thick side, because this is the side that will be above. This way we make sure that the side below (the thinner side) has a straight cut (machine-made) and it can rest prutty straight on the metal foot (see later).

Step 4:  We use a jig to draw centrelines through the middle of the log, at both sides of the log

The centerlines cross in the center (duuh!):

Step 5:

We mount a jig on the thinner side of the log, this jig will center the drill bit so we can make a straight hole.. The jig is no more than two parallel plates (about 4cm appart)  with one hole on each plate centered on one another. The drill bit goes through the hole in the first plate, through the hole in the second plate and hits the log.

After drilling a prutty long hole, it’s necessary to make sure the hole is deep enough and so we take of the jig and drill once more through the existing hole.

Step6: We mount another jig to drill a countersink hole. (This hole is necessary to prevent the wood resting on the weldingline of the metal foot…) Using a jig for this makes it easier to hold the drillbit centered on the existing hole.. otherwise the drill starts swinging out of the center.

The result, the side of the log that’s going to be on the metal foot. 

Step 7: We mount the log on top of the metal foot

Step 8: We center the log in one direction and brace it up

Step 9: We connect a dummy beam (the “green beam”) to the side of the log to simulate the beam that’s going to be there after the sleeve is cut (see later). We draw a line on both sides of the log to indicate the angle of the roofbeam.

Step 10: Because lines are difficult to see when chainsawing the sleeve, we nail a short stick just underneath the two lines.

Step 11: We draw the outlines of the cutout on the top of the log. I just use a plumbomb and a measuring tape to do this…

Step 12: Chainsaw the sleeve… just take down the chainsaw untill it hits the sticks .. et voila…

Step 13: Shissel out between the two (or three) chainsaw cuts

Step 14: Check angle with dummy beam

Step 15: We put a piece of wood inside the beam to check the clearance and we chainsaw the edges on the top of the sleeve to create clearance for the widther beam on top of the supporting beam (see later).

That’s it for now… next I’ll put in a step by step guide to make the roofbeams ready…

The roofbeams consist of two separte beams screwed and glued together. The main beam is reaching all the way  from the chimney to the roof overhang, while the supporting beam is just supporting the overhang, reaching in a certain distance as a counter balance.

Step 1: We indicate the length of the supporting beam

Step 2:  We use a jig to draw angles on the ends of the supporting beam, on both sides

Step 3:  We cut the angles at the ends of the supporting beam (the angles are just to make it look nicer, not for any structural reason)

Step 4:  We cut the main beam to length, also using the “angle-jig” on one end to make it look slimmer. The other end won’t be visible, as it will be on top of the chimney.

Step 5: We router the edges of the main beam (also to make it look nicer) (pictures yet to come)

Step 6: We put the supporting beam on top of the main beam (the bent being upside down now) and mount a “drill jig” on top of the assembly. The jig is also used to align both beams to eachother… using this jig has proven to be a real time savor!

Next we drill 4 holes with a 10mm drill bit all the way through the supporting beam (=pivor hole) and entering the main beam for at least 2 cm. This mark will indicate the point where to drill the holes in the main beam. We use a 6mm drill bit to make the holes in the main beam.

Step 7: We countersink the holes in the supporting beam, using yet another jig. (pictures yet to come)

Step 8: We take the two beams appart again and put glue on the supporting beam.

Next we mount it on the main beam again (at a fixed distance from the outside end, 62cm, allready indicated with a charcoal line)

Step 9: We jam in some long woodscrews (10 x 300 mm ) and check if they enter the holes in the main beam

Step 10: We screw them tight 

Step 11: We glue in wooden plugs (made with a hole saw)

As you can see on the pictures we allready routed the edges of the supporting beam aswell, but we found it allot better to router them when the plugs are allready in… this way it gets a nice finish and the edges don’t break off around the countersink hole.

Step 12: We sand the plugs untill they plane the surface of the supporting beam. (pictures yet to come)

Step 13: We measure the angle at which the beam will hit the chimney and saw the end of the main beam to that angle. (pictures yet to come)

 Et voila! We’ve got a beautifull beam, ready to mount! 

After mounting all the beams, the skeleton looked like this:

As you can see the front side has straight columns in stead of round poles… This is the window-area. (It’s prutty hard to get windows in between round poles…)

Talkin’ ’bout windows… in the beginning I wanted to make all the windowframings myself… Then I started talking with some experts… and those people all gave me prutty much the same answer “Hell, I wouldn’t even do it myself… you shouldn’t mess with your windows… just let some window-maker do the job for you and don’t regret it later”… As I’m prutty stubborn, I still looked for information on window making and that’s when I had to agree with those older, wiser men

So I won’t be making my own windowframes, but at least I’ll get everything ready so these people can do their job easily…

Well.. about the straight “window column” … to connect them to the beams, we cut some metal plates to size, put some holes in them and put them at both sides of the column…

To make it look nice and to make those metal plates flush with the top beam, we routered out an aera for the plates to lay in…

After routering a grid, we shissled out the rest…

And this is the final result:

 The metal plate is 6mm thick.. for those who want to do some metalworks on metal that thick, you need to have good grinding plates and drillbits.. also buy yourself a cooling spray.. you’ll need it when you are drilling… don’t forget to pre-drill! A good way to know the size of the pre-drill bit you need is to take a look at the tip of the drill bit that you are going to use for the final hole… You’ll see there is a “flat” surface at the tip.. For pre-drilling you’ll need a drillbit at least the size of that little flat surface…

The other side of the column looks like this:

(Most of the metal foot will be covered by the concrete toe-up).

A final step in building the wooden skeleton was to add “floating beams” in between the existing bents…

These beams help supporting the heavy green rood and the large overhang….

It’s not an easy job to find the right angles to cut the braces that support those beams, but I got a hang of it with the table saw. After putting up the braces, I had to cutout the right angle for the beam to rest on… I used a chainsaw, but maybe there are better alternatives to do this.. It’s fitting and retro-fitting all the way!

As you can see the finish of this part isn’t perfect… As Troy would say “Carl, we”re not building a piano”… but this part will be invisible to the eye as it will be inside the strawbale wall. It just needed to be strong , and it is! Mooha!

As you can see there’s allready a part of the roof on top of the beams… but that’s for the next post…

 Here’s how the skeleton looks now:

** To view an overview of all building steps up-till now you can go here: House

On the 10th of april I’m organising a work and party-day! So be very welcome !!!

This is the poster, it’s in dutch, but I guess most people coming around will be dutch-speaking…

Thanx for your massive response !!!!

Look how everything turned greener in Lampiris world, just overnight !!!!

(Imagine what you could do working one day at Hamadryad, hehe)

Hi guys!

I entered the Hamadryad project to a contest a few weeks ago…

I had to go to a selection day and last week I got the anouncement that Hamadryad has been chosen to be one of the four projects in the final !!!

That’s good news because this way we are able to reach and inspire more people to act green!

All of you guys could also help me a hand and support Hamadryad in this contest by becoming a member or a fan…

Just visit this page: http://www.samengroener.nu/nl/groups/1596

and push on the “Aansluiten” button to become a member and get Hamadryad green! (see picture above)

All people who are actually supporting Hamadryad AND who are a member on the site… gain one year of free green electricity if Hamadryad is winning the contest !

Greetings,

Carl aka Wolf

We have come to a point where  environmental facts are no longer questioned. Even all big Oil producers have began to admit our world is running dry on oil!

Although I wish we would have ran out a long time ago, I’m worried about the furure of us, Homo Petroliensis…

10 liters of oil is about the same energy as 1 year of physical labour by 1 man. What do you put in your car every month? about 10 years of physical labour? (I know.. I’m guilty too)

But what is going to compensate for all this when we run out of oil?

Number one oil consumption goes to food! Imagine what happens!

And we no longer doubt it is going to happen … not in two or three hundred years, but the most realistic estimations give us TEN YEARS before our oil supplies have diminished to half of what it is now (let’s not talk about how many more humans there will be on earth at that time).

So, people, be prepared… in ten to twenty years the world for you and me will look a little bit different… you’ll have to be able to survive by being more self-sufficient… growing your own vegetables.. offcourse you’ll have to take the next 10 years of pollution into account when you’re talking about the quality of your vegetables, the air you’ll be breathing, the water you’ll be drinking,… By then there will be war for energy everywhere, their will be nature disasters we can only have nightmares of right now… The netherlands will allready be flood for a part and there will be more and more methane coming out of the frosted soil in Siberia…

In fact we would be extremely lucky if our human race would survive in the next 100 years…

For most of you people all this seems so hard to believe.. it seems all exagerated… well… Here’s your WAKE-UP call… it’s not!  And if you open your eyes, read the reports, think logically and stop putting your heads in the ground you would also understand that we have taken our consumption and way of living just one step too far… And I’m part of all this as much as you are.

So, people, let’s start doing something about all this !!!!

For those who really need to have information from official resources, you can always check out this report:

http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_get.php/1084/1268396336/heads_in_the_sand_print.pdf

I’m inviting all of you to be a part of the solution… So please join any Transition Network in your neighbourhood or start your own !

Make the big turn-over happen and start opening your eyes.

http://www.transitie.be

* cheer, cheer and the crowd goes wild *

As I was allready stating in my last message: it was a loooong winter… so don’t expect any miracles…

Before I can start carpenting the wooden skeleton, I had to make a central support for the roof. At first my architect wasn’t really fond of the central support as he wanted to keep the main area open… But I convinced him it would have some advantages:

- A central support makes building the skeleton allot easier. It also allows reparations to go easier and faster (for instance when a tree falls on the roof and breaks some beams).

- I integrated the chimney inside the central support, so my fireplace will be in the center of the house, which is not only pleasant when you are sitting around it with friends, but is also better for the heat-distribution (certainly because I will use a stove working on radiation heat)

- A massive concrete beam is not only a durable solution, it also contributes to the thermal mass of the building. Especially because it will receive heat from the massive stamped earthen floor in front of it.

- And finally the central support can be considered as an “archetypic” (does this word exist in english?) element in the house: When you take a look at big Mongolian yurts, old indian settlements or some african huts who were supported by a main vertical beam. And in most of those traditional ‘houses’ the fireplace is at the center of the place. I’m also planing to make this chimney-support a real piece of art! Sculptures all around… I’m really looking forward to that!

Some pictures and explanations:

As you can see there are some rebars sticking out of the concrete box. These rebars are necessary because the chimney will have to carry a huge load of the green roof. And it will ave to resist windloads on the roof. The rebars were connected every 30 -to 40 cm with a horizontal “ring” to avoid them bending outward.

To keep the rebars at the right distance and position I made a wooden mould and pulled the rebars into place using a rope. Oohyeah! Everytime I needed to add a new rebar to lengthen an existing one, I  overlapped them by 40cm’s.

As you can see on this picture I created an opening on this side of the chimney. This opening will be running up to about 1m80.. this is the exact height of the stove I’ll be using. Inside the opening I’ll put water hoses that will be jamed between the chimney and the stove and will (hopefully) heat up water in winter. If it isn’t clear now, it will get clear later on…

You can also see how I used double insulated INOX tubes for the smoke-canal … The piece which is included here, is a T-piece. Normally it’s not used this way… but you guys know I don’t like “normal”, hehe,  so I turned it 90 degrees. Why? Well normally the T-piece is used laying down… one tube going up to the chimney, one tube connected to the stove and one tube going down for the removal of ashes. In my case it didn’t seem wise to remove the ashes from underneath the chimney, this is why I have a tube going up to the chimney, another one going to the stove and the one that’s normally facing down, I directed it horizontally… This way I can clean the chimney on the other side of the chimney in stead of underneath it. It also allows me to place a stove on the other side of the chimney if I would like to… more possibilities!

I used PVC-tubes to make a circular mould around the INOX pipes… I was planing to pull them out afterwards, but they seemed to be totally stucked in the concrete…

To make the chimney I couldn’t make a mould all the way up and poor it right away… when concrete falls from a height of more than 70cm’s it starts to de-mingle (again: is this a word in english?? well. you get the point )

So everytime I got 60cm high, I let it dry for some days and put up the new mould on top of it, overlapping about 10cm to the existing concrete block.

When an INOX smoke-canal gets warm it expands … this is why you need to use a double insulated pipe. Their are two main drawbacks when using double insulated tubes:

1. They are sooooo expensive!

2. When you pour concrete around the pipe and something goes wrong in due time, you won’t be able to replace it and you are stuck with a broken chimney.

So what did I do about it? I put up a single insulated pipe all the way up to the roof. And I insulated it myself. To do this I had to put a PVC tube around the INOX pipe and pour around it. When the concrete was half-dry, I pulled out the PVC tube, creating a  concrete canal which I filled up with insulation material. I could leave the PVC-tube inside the chimney and use a new one for every pour, but that would just be a waste of materials.. Pulling out the tube wasn’t easy… It was impossible by man-power… even not with two men… so I had to be creative. I drilled two holes through the top of the PVC-pipe and put a rope through it, making a loop. I put a horizontal beam throught the loop and let it rest on my ladder (as you can see on the picture above). Putting all of my weight on the other side of the beam, the tube slowly started to rise out of the concrete block.

At this stage it was prutty easy, but it became REALLY difficult going up… I found myself hanging a few meters above ground on the horizontal beam to get the tube out. Most of the time this happened when it was allready dark and sometimes even when it was storming… but it sure was fun!

This is Troy and me getting ready to put up the next mould!

 The most difficult mould to make and get up there!

I want to thank Troy and Bert for doing a great job on the mould and helping me to put it up there!

TROY, WOLF, FREEBIRD !!!

 And the result:

** To view an overview of all building steps up-till now you can go here: House

As the sun is comming back into our daily existance, I also woke up from a loooooong hibernation!

Our winter has been very long and cold. I haven’t been able to do allot on the Hamadryad project. Since a few weeks however Belgium started to melt and I got back on track!

I also re-found the spirit of blogging, so get ready for the first real updates on the evolution of the Hamadryad project! I have kept a video-archive of the past few months and I’ll put them online soon!

A Canadian man, named Troy, came all the way from germany to help me out with the construction. He was the launch of the new building season at Hamadryad! With his enthousiasm he reached another friend of mine, Bert, who is also regulary helping me out in the forest now. Troy sadly had to return after a week because of personal reasons. He allready send me a mail he’ll return to soon to come and be a part of the Hamadryad project !!

Thank you, guys! This is what’s it all about!

I want to start this first blog of the (construction-) year with a message from Jeremy Rifkin, who not only indicates the urgen to a new way of living, but also reaches us a possible solution to prevent the destruction of the world as we know it (beginning in about 20 to 40 years)!

Jeremy Rifkin

Keep your eyes on this blog, because the next couple of weeks I’ll try to put on some updates!

Greetings!

Op vrijdag 27 November maakte Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen bekend dat er een nieuwe visie op de Stekense weekendgronden komt.

Op radio, televisie en in kranten luidt het als een rechtvaardig verhaal. Verblijven zonder vergunning moeten worden afgebroken. Mensen met een vergund weekendverblijf mogen er blijven wonen en in 2029 wordt voor deze mensen een regeling getroffen. In de oren van de eigenaars van deze gronden (waaronder mezelf) werd ingefluisterd dat op de gronden residentieel wonen mogelijk ging worden na 2029. In de media werd echter vaag beschreven wat er zou gebeuren met deze weekendverblijven.

De werkelijkheid blijkt geheel anders dan ons ingefluisterd! Op enkele clusters na belanden de meeste weekendgronden (waaronder de mijne) in een soort “uitdoofbeleid”. Ik kan het niet beter omschrijven als een sus-middel om de mensen tot 2029 stil te houden.  Wanneer deze visie akkoord zou gevonden worden zullen alle gronden onder het uitdoofbeleid éénsklaps bosgrond worden !!! (dit is een waardevermindering van meer dan 75% !!!) Onze grond wordt dus niets meer waard!

In mijn geval is er nog iets: Ik heb een grond gekocht met drie percelen. Op één ervan heb ik een bouwvergunning aangevraagd voor mijn low-impact verblijf. De andere twee zijn vergunde recreatiegronden en mogen normaal gezien ook bebouwd worden. Onder de nieuwe visie zal ook dat recht vervallen.

Het komt er dus op neer dat de grond onder onze voeten niets meer waard wordt en dat we bovendien geïnvesteerd hebben in grond waar niet meer op gebouwd mag worden. Over compensatiemaatregels wordt er heel vaag gesproken… er wordt wel gezegd dat er gecompenseerd zal worden, maar waar dat geld vandaan moet komen, weten ze nog niet… zit een luchtje aan lijkt me…

En dit alles terwijl ik nog maar 4 maanden mijn bouwvergunning heb !!!!

De visie is al in de maak sinds 2007 (of vroeger) bij de provincie en toen ik een vergadering met gemeente en provincie samenriep werd er met grote glimlach en open armen naar het Hamadryad-project gekeken. Alle aanwezigen op de vergadering moesten dus al op de hoogte geweest zijn van deze visie en toch werd mij toegestaan te bouwen op deze grond.. een investering die nu plots (economisch) niets meer waard is! Toen ik op 27 novembver naar de gemeente belde om te vragen wat de gevolgen waren voor mij antwoordden ze me op de vraag waarom ze me niet verwittigd hadden, letterlijk “Wij mochten hier niets over zeggen.”

Uitdoofbeleid of doofpotbeleid???

We moeten dit schandaal zo snel mogelijk aan het licht brengen zodat de media kan schrijven over wat hier echt gaande is! Wie een journalist of iemand bij radio/tv kent mag dit altijd bekend maken! Voor meer info mogen ze me steeds contacteren.

 Meer info:

 http://www.oost-vlaanderen.be/pers/weekendverblijven/Stekene_visievorming_0911_ontwerpversie_finaal.pdf

English…

 Here’s a typical Belgian story:

4 Months ago I received a paper telling me that I’m allowed to build on the ground I bought a few months before.  Today the state anounces a new vision on our grounds…

In short it means my ground will become forest!

I bought a ground which is 75% more worth than forest-ground!

And another thing: I bought a ground with 3 sections, on each section I could build something… When the new vision comes around I can’t build on the other two sections… which means some of the ideas I had with the Hamadryad project need to be revisioned or cancelled…

The state tells us they will compensate.. but they are not clear about how much and when.. as a matter affect they even don’t know where they will get the money from!

So when they agree with this vision… I not only loose the value of my ground  from one day on the other, but it will be very difficult or even impossible to fulfill the Hamadryad project as I intended to!… Hamadryad, my dream,  is walking the line!

I’m asking you people to tell my (our) story around and spread the word!

I’m  putting this blog on a pause for a while so I can concentrate on building the house and doing it the right way.

I’ll keep everything archived (pictures and drawings of the construction) and I’ll put it online as soon as I have more time. If you want to know more you can always give me a hand during the construction or just pay me a visit

Greetz!

With some help of my father we digged out some holes next to foundationwall to install pipes. These pipes will be used to insert waterhoses and electricitylines afterwards… I had to think of every possible future connection … So I have water inlets going from the purifying pond, the waterpit and the rocketstove… all not yet existing!

I had to think about how I was going to warm up my water in summer, winter and in between…

Offcourse I allready had an idea of this, but now I had to really decide about all the details… so here’s what going to happen:

In summer I will have mainly cold water. There will be a composting boiler and a sunboiler to heat water outside. There will be an isolated barrel outside, next to the house which will be heated by these devices.

In between summer and winter I might not have enough heat from these devices and so I’ll use some kind of rocketstove to heat up the outside-barrel (if necessary).

In winter I’ll heat a barrel inside the house. This barrel will be 2m above floorlevel and about 3m above groundlevel (also the level of the pond). Because of the altitude of the barrel it would be impossible to fill it with water from a pit (to deep).. or at least it would be impossible with a manual pump. This is why I will mainly use water from the purifying pond to heat up the inside barrel…

So you see I had to think of all these different future watersupplies before covering everything up with concrete….

After installing the pipes I covered it up with sand leaving about 1m of pipe sticking out…

I also installed a pipe to provide my stove with fresh outside air. This way there is no warm air from the inside used to heat the stove and there won’t be any trouble of CO-intoxication… This is also the best way to make the “green lung” (see later) work optimal…

First I used some bricks to level the pipe because it must be levelled so that condensationwater can flow out.

Next I needed to cut a hole true my foundationwall (I wish I had thought about this before I poored it).

I installed the pipe and afterwards I covered it with concrete making sure there was also concrete underneath the pipe… (no picture available of this)

Now I was ready to install some seals and technical plastics…

I used a seal all around the inside of the wall, then I put a expansion foil against it (this is necessary to provide some elastic area for the concrete to expand) and next I used the leftovers of the seal to make an extra seal around the rebars. This last action also came in very handy because it kept the the first seal and the expansion foil pressed against the brick wall.

I also placed a transparant plastic foil all over the floor to make it fully waterproof.

Now I was ready to install the reinforcement… boy what a job!

Ok, this is an example of HOW NOT TO DO IT:

 Why not? Well.. the hot metal pieces fall down on the foil and burn holes inside! (Yeah… stupid me).. luckily it only took a short time untill I realised what I was doing and I continued with a safer tool

Notice how the rebbars are bowed upward… we did this not to injure the plastic goundfoil.

The last thing to do was to make all the connections… uff.. that took a long time !

You can use following tools to do it:

  (a bindingtool and bindingstrips)

The result is this:

I used a gaz pipe to bow down the standing rebbars and connect them to the reinforcement net…

A few days later we poored concrete !!! Oohyeah !!! And it looks NIZZZZEEEEEE

That’s it guys.. next is: the wood skeleton !!!! This will be a very nice job since I will really see the building rise from the ground.. can’t wait!

Oohyeah.. here are some pictures I took in between…

The first steps have been taken…. the point of no return has been reached!

Ok, so after bringing in all the ground (”Zavel”), I leveled the surface by putting 3 sticks in the ground and indicating the same level with a line. I used a laser to do this, but you can use a watertube instead.

Next I connected the lines with fine ropes. I put some wooden guides in the ground at level with the ropes and I used another stick to level the ground in between.

Next Mister Beck, the same man who brought the ground to the spot, compacted the ground…

I can only say that working with mister Beck was a real pleasure and I can recommendate him to everyone !!!

The next step was to dig the holes for the foundation.. they need to be 70 cm’s deep to prevent frost from pushing it upward. But to protect the holes against rain I had to cover the place with a plastic… The hole is about 30cms width

Note to myself and everyone who wants to try to put up a plastic of 10 to 15 meters: never try to do it without a center pole… it’s just impossible.. I tried it on every way….it just doesn’t work.

After digging the hole I put the grounding inside… if you want to do this, make sure you put it underground for a minimal resistance…

I also put in two tubes for my water drain. I will put in the water supply tubes afterwards as I will put them underneath the foundation… so no need to worry about that now…

Finally everything is ready to put in the concrete…

Uhhh… but there is one problem: no concrete mixer can enter the driveway! So I needed to make it a little wider!  But as I was clearing the pipe underneath the existing driveway I discovered it had collapsed … this is a huge problem, because in winter the water of the canal (going around the ground for drainage) will be blocked by the driveway now… The former owners of the ground had put a 50cms width concrete slab above the pipe… so impossible to remove that! I needed to make a new hole underneath in someway…

So here is what we did: Mister Beck asked a friend of his to come over with a truck which is used to clean out septic tanks (”een ruimerke”)… he filled it with water, we connected the hose with a pvc pipe and blew a hole through the ground pushing in the pipe deeper and deeper… it was dirty work, but it sure as hell was fun!

Uptill now there isn’t much really ecological about this construction is there? Well.. there are three reasons why I had to take concrete as a foundation:

1. Because of the local building regulations

2. Because it’s durable and so doesn’t need any maintenance or renewal

3. Because i’m building on sand which is not stable and needs some kind of slab foundation

4. Because it needs to carry a very have stove (see later) and a building with heavy green roof

At first I wanted to use concrete with bamboo reinforcement, but some tests conducted by the Nayer Institute (Sint-Kathelijne-Waver) indicated that bamboo reinforced is only half as strong as iron reinforced concrete… so on advise of my architect I had to use the traditional way of making a foundation.

After poring in the concrete I jammed in some rebars of 1m to make the connection with the concrete slab afterwards…

Next Wim (thanks for your help, man!) and I masoned a small wall of two bricks high to make a formwork for the concrete slab … the result is something like this…

The grounding comes out like this:

I left some space between the bricks and the rebars so that the rebars won’t be to close to the side of the slab…

So that’s where I am now… next steps are to dig in the tubes for water supply, prepare reinforcement for the slab, create a coolingplace underground and poor the slab!

There are two more things to say…

1. Since my place is not very close to the center of Stekene, I put a bicycle in the center, right next to the church… anyone who come with public transportation can get out in the center and take the bicycle! Just call me and I’ll give you the code of the lock!

2.  I have a mailbox! No, not the virtual on, but a real one! So from now on you can rie me a letter! ooh Yeah !!!

For you guys who didn’t figure it out.. it’s Speelhof w319, 9190 Stekene Belgium

Cya!

ps. I don’t have internet in the forest so if you want to reach me, better do it by phone !

I promised you some pictures… so here they are… I think they’ll tell the story themselfs, so I won’t bother you with a whole story behind all the decisions and the little adventures… so here goes…

Here we are taking my new house to the right spot… ok, I admit… it’s not the most fancy trailer you can imagine, but it was cheap and decent

On the picture are Jan and Steven and Wouter in the back, BIG THANKS, guys !!! You really showed up!

As  you can see the tools of Vartago also work well for doing more than only transporting trees !!!

Here’s me acting stupid in front of the trailer… hey! at least I’m happy in my own crazy world, ok!!! hehe

After putting the trailer at the right spot I had to heighten the area, because in winter it gets too wet… so here is what I was thinking: “Hey with some strong hands and some wheelbarrows we can get the job done!”

For those who would like to do the same thing: Don’t! It would have takin’ me a month to get it all there… so quickly realising this I let the “groundman” do it with a machine… it only took him a few hours !!!

During the groundworks I crafted some basic furniture out of wood I found in the forest… it’s not fancy either, but it comes in handy and it looks quit natural I think…

To spend my time somewhat usefull I also improvised a cd-rack and a bookshelf…

And finally here are some pictures of the forest and the trailer, just so you get an idea of how everything looks right now….

Natasja, Peter and Jan, three good friends who really helped me out! Thnx again guys

Oooh yeah! Meanwhile the greenroof of the composting toilet is fully formed !!! It only took a month or two and I didn’t have to do anything… I just put some top solid ground of the forest on the roof and the plants started to grow by themselfs!!! Isn’t nature wonderfull ??

That’s it for now… hopefully the next weeks I’ll be able to come onlie and give some more updates, because it’ll go very fast now (hopefully)

Greeetzzzzz

And to finish some pictures

At the moment the gound is ready to build on !!!

Whole August I will be working there non-stop!

Everyone is very much welcome to help me a hand !!!

Just give me a sign at (+32) 486 57 09 91

I’ll update my page once in a while with pictures of the progress !!!

Greetings and see you soon!

Wolf

I’ll need your special attention here…

There were some huge trees around the construction area that needed to be chopped down.. they were a potential danger to the house as they were bending over very steep and some of them were ill…

As they are of the “Pinus” family and so they aren’t autochthonal, they need to make space for the authentic Belgian trees anyway. Nevertheless we chopped down only a minimum of trees.

What’s so special about this?

Well.. when I was living in Zottegem, I had a housemate, Wouter, previously referred to as ‘The treeman”, who is actually an expert in everything that has to do with trees.

He is one of the few certificated treeworkers in Belgium! And, boy, is he good !!!

Not only he has the gift of being very precisely and accurate with his estimations and way of work, he also has the unique position of using tools that are very rare in Europe, but also VERRRRY handy !!!

As I’m fond of nature I don’t like my other trees to get wasted during the process… I also don’t like big machines running down my ground, ruining all plants and compacting the earth, leaving no air for new life. That’s why I knew I had to ask Wouter for the job!

First I asked Wouter, who is the founder of Vartago (http://www.vartago.com), for some advice. He took a look around and could tell exactly which trees were Ill or weren’t that stable anymore. He investigated the way he could chopp the “bad” trees without leaving any trace on the rest of the forest and before I knew he was climbing like a monkey in the trees to chopp of the major branches before taking down the top of the tree.

He was able to target the huge pieces of wood so correctly that after a while we were making  bets about it. He told me to put a stick in the ground where he thought the wood would fall and everytime it fell right on top! I was even more impressed when he was able to take down a full tree and make it land exactly where he wanted it to land.. If you would have been there, it’s sure you wouldn’t have believed your own eyes !!!

The whole process of chopping down the trees, cleaning the ground and putting the huge pieces of tree, one on top of the other, only took a few hours! All thanks to his great efficiency and his unique tools…

I’ll leave the rest of the talk to the pictures I took…

 Here you see Wouter using one of his incredible tools. Vartago is the only importer of these tools… In dutch they are called “Boomezels” which would translate to “Treedonkeys”. They are abling you to lift a huge tree without any effort and you can transport them wherever you want… it’s so easy that you might ask yourself “What have we been doing all this time without those donkeys???”

Here is another one… as you can see there are different models for different purposes… you can hang them behind your jeep,  quad or just pull them by hand…

By lifting the trees and using big soft wheels there is no damage done to the ground what-so-ever!

When it’s too difficult to use wheels, Wouter uses a special power winch to pull the trees to an open spot. Again to diminish the damage on the ground he uses a special tool: some kind of head he pulls over the tree!

Here’s the winch pulling the tree:

 The special thing about this winch is that it uses no fixed rope.. You can just put in a general static climbing rope of any lenght and pull it all the way through. Another handy thing about it is the way you operate it: You just pull the rope and it enlarges the power you put into it… if you pull strong it will pull strong on the tree.. if you pull slow it will make the tree go slower.. this gives you an excellent control over the machine. And above all it is lightweight, so you can take it anywhere!

Well… as you can see I’m very surprised and full of admiration for Wouter and he’s company.. and I can only advise you to give him a ring when you need to chop a tree, take care of ill trees, get some professional advise on trees or if you want to buy he’s awsome tools!

Just check out he’s web at www.Vartago.com  !!!

Greetings !!!!

As you allready might know… I’VE GOT MY BUILDING PERMISSION !!!!!  *** HUGE APPLAUSE ***

So, this means I can finally get started! Last week I also received my loan, so I can start buying all my materials!

But first things first… where are we now?

Uptill now I have been preparing the scene as good as possible:

1. I have a workingspace

2. I have electricity of the neighbours, just to get some woodworking machines going

3. I have water from a pit, it’s not clean enough to use for cooking or drinking, but it will do for all other stuff

4. I cleaned out the area: broke down the chalet, cleared some bushes and with my friend Wouter we chopped some trees who were ill and a potential  danger to the building later on (more about this in my next message).

5. I bought myself a trailer which we will transport on saturday… this will be my temporary shelter during the works and probably during winter

6.  We builed a composting toilet

7. We had a great party to celebrate the beginning of the construction !!!!

There are allready allot of people to thank and I’m thinking of putting up an extra page just to do this  because this project is really not a project of only myself… it’s that of all people helping me out and making this possible to me! So for those who put their hands in the dirt or helped me in some kind of way.. advising me, giving me moral support and especially my parents who also helped me out financially: A BIG THANK YOU !!!

 By now you must be thinking what all this has to do with the subject of this post “Sand”… Well.. the first thing I have to do is to elevate the ground with about half a meter…During winter I noticed how the ground got really moisted and this would be a huge potential danger when building with strawbales… So I’m going up 50cms! And to do this I need sand… it took me a while to find the right sand in the neightbourhood, but finally I found it !!!

This saturday a man will bring it with a tractor and leave it on the path in front of the ground. “Why not take it directly to the place of contruction?” I hear you ask.. well.. I would have to chop of some major branches of two of my hazletrees and that would really be awefull!

So in stead I’m gathering allot of people who want to help me out by transporting the sand (by hand) from the path to the construction area! So I need allot of hands and feet for that !!!!

Well… next topic is very interesting, so I won’t bother you more with all this less important stuff

Cherios!