Making a Home
The plan is simple.., you already have a piece of land.., you just buy and transport some sort of living quarters.., add a few utilities and presto.., you have second, and temporary home.
But.., of course;
“The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often askew,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!”
Now.., the second part is maybe a bit heavy and it sure isn’t that dramatic; we have our joy.
But the first part nicely illustrates that all we plan not always actually goes as planned.
We told you about moving our new home, now let me tell you about the rest.
Nonolet
After fixing the roof.., our first and foremost priority was being able to do some serious business. And we needed to be able to do that every morning.
A flush toilet was out of the question; for two reasons: We didn’t want black water, as in, we didn’t want to deal with excrement in our dirty water. There is no sewage in Chenogne and we were/are not in a position to have a big septic tank. The other reason is we did not wanted to waste water; although it turns out, we’ve got plenty of water.
At some point in the search for a solution we came across the Nonolet. We got the semi stand alone version. The urine still runs out with the rest of the water. But the main thing goes onto the compost heap.
The toilet is completely odourless (indoors anyway), and, well.., it just works.
Catching the Water
To use water; you have to catch it first.
There is a water supply in Chenogne (although I’m not sure about this).., but anyhoo.., we are not connected to it. We will not connect the house either, so the temporary home is a try-out for the real thing.
We have a huge 5000 L tank and although it was delivered at the wrong address we eventually got it to the right place, with the help of a friendly neighbour.
We did not bury the tank completely, something that is recommended.., but we will cover it with soil, eventually.
We did, of course, connect all the rain pipes to it and as of this writing, the thing is filled to capacity. That means we have just about 5000 L of water available to use.
Heating the Water
Normally, filtering water would be a next step, but I’m writing this in chronological order and we hadn’t figured out to a tee what we would use for filtering and since we could shower with the water from the tank; we wanted to that with just a little bit of heat in it.
So, although figuring out exactly how to connect the gas and finding exactly what we needed took some time, the solution at the end was simple and elegant (not sure if it’s really elegant, but it did make for a very nice sentence).
We bought a 18.5 KG tank, filled with propane, in Belgium, which is quite a bit cheaper than Holland, and connected it to the existing pipes; figured out how the water heater worked and ping.., we have hot water.
Filtering the Water
Actually, it’s purified water, well, you purify it by pushing it through filters. We’ve got six.., I think.
We got two systems.., one cleans the water straight from the tank, this water is used for the dishes, for showering and eventually for laundry too. This is just one big carbon filter.
The second system is more complex, more elaborate and it provides us with clean drinking water.., and when I say clean.., I mean the cleanest.
It does this via reverse osmosis. The membrane used for this is at the end of the filtration system.., there are 3 more filters. I do not know exactly what they al do, but the water looks beautiful and tastes great.
And again.., hooking all these systems up was quite the challenge.., just making sure there is no leakage was tricky enough. Plus the system is pressurized and when something pops.., well.., you get wet.
Draining the Water
Here is another challenge.
We had a big hole where all the waste water and urine would run into. It would drain over a period of time, but with more people and a bit more intense use this would no longer do. The pit would fill up and started to stink and attract all sort of nasty things.., so we had to something about it.
Several solutions were discussed and some were pretty need and viable solutions, but sometimes hard to implement and somewhat expensive. In the end we choose to just have a drain under ground, cover it with grid and dirt and plant some grasses on it.
This sounds easy enough, but it took quite a lot of digging (in tough soil) and quite a few wheelbarrows full of grid and dirt to get the job done, all in all it was about a days work.., but it was hard work.
To Do
We still have to hook up the heating. The exhaust (chimney) is already in place, we just need to get another propane tank and hook it up, that ought to do it.
Next to that, we plan on closing the porch. It now is half open and it renders the porch unusable with bad weather.., which is annoying. So we close it up, with windows and a door. This will take some planning, a bit of money and a lot of work.., but we’re getting used to that.
Last thing would be to prepare for winter. Make sure everything is insulated and such. This will be, however, a totally new experience. Up until now, we would just turn up the heat and everything would be sort of all right. Even going out would not be such a very big deal.
But now we’ll be out in the country.., out in the Ardenne.
Coming winter will surely be a challenge…
