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…

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

We all know that building a house takes time. At least, building a proper house takes time.
When you realize that most homes build nowadays have a life expectancy of 20 years (which is shorter that most mortgages) it makes sense to put a bit more effort into building your home than the average contractor.
Hence.., it will take some time to build a proper house.

That is how one gets to decide to put up a temporary home, preferably right next, or behind the house to be build. And that’s what we’ve been busy with the past weeks.

Buying a Home

What we decided upon is a couple of units and I’ve just been told that is a very generic phrase, so allow me to elaborate on it.

With (much) bigger projects, contractors tend to build temporary offices near the project, which is obviously convenient. These offices can be made out of one or two ‘units’, up-scaled to anything the contractor needs. Even two stories with 10 or more units per floor.

These units are also used for temporary living and that is what we choose to use. All other options seemed to expensive, to small or to impractical.
Eventually, we bought the units from a couple in Limburg (Holland). They’ve been living in them for 2 years while building their home. Our challenge was to find a way to transport our new home for 220 km to Chenogne.

Moving a Home

At first you might think this is easy, which it wasn’t, but in the end.., it wasn’t so bad. It just took a lot of hard work, and a very, very long day. But, you cannot just put these units anywhere.., a bit of groundwork has to be done beforehand. And Niels (you remember Niels right?) and a friend of his offered to do the work for us.

Moving Earth

Now, this was to be done the week before the units were to be moved. We wanted to place them as quickly as possible and the couple whom we bought the units from had a permit deadline.

Anyhoo.., the boys worked for three days in bad weather and had to level the piece of land where the units would be placed and make a 70 meter long path for the trucks to drive on.
Laila had a freaky week in which she had to rent groundwork equipment, book a hotel and buy gravel for the path.., all in French (sort of) and pretend she was working at her regular full time day job.

The Longest Day

As far as I can remember we never had a day quite like this.
We got up at 4 AM, because we had to be in Limburg at 7 AM. Then 6 hours of loading and off loading the units,  a 2.5 hour drive, waterproofing the roof and forgetting to eat and drink our lights turned somewhere at 8 PM.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Building a house is an enormous undertaking but building a house in a country with a different language and culture almost sounds ludicrous.

At this point it is safe to say that is brings its challenges. Of course we knew that it would be hard, we have prepared ourselves for extra battles to fight. We were also informed about the bureaucracy of Belgium with its many laws and quirks.

Bureaucracy

For now we don’t seem to be bothered too much about the bureaucracy. Of course it is a bit weird that when you filed for a building permit that they keep coming back for more information. You almost think “Couldn’t you have come up with that in first place”, but we try not to think that and just go with the flow.

The most frustrating part on my account right now is that people are not really Internet savvy in the South of Belgium and they hardly of reply on an email.

It is still very difficult for me to speak French on the phone. A few weeks ago during a very busy time at work someone from the electrical company called on my cell and started talking rapid French, the only thing I could do is say a lot of aaaahhhhhmmm’s.

What we can do right now is drive over there, speak with the person in question, me searching for words and Rogier pointing out stuff like a steward on an airplane.

Ludicrous

Driving 3 hours to talk to a contractor for half an hour and then drive 3 hours back will probably fall in that ludicrous category.

We can’t wait for the temporary house to get to Chenogne so we can do more research there and not have to drive back home again.

I am pretty sure my French will get better when we can spend more time there.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

April 2011 we are starting with our project of building an ecological sustainable house in the south of Belgium.

Rammed Earth

We will build the house with rammed earth, straw bale and local wood.

We started thinking of building a sustainable house a few years ago and came across the earthships. It blew our minds and we started doing more research into it and we began thinking of where in Europe we would want to build one.

Earthship

We volunteered on the build of Earthship Normandy, we visited an earthship in Spain and I became part of the Earthship crew to build the tea house in Zwolle, Netherlands.

BUT……. we are not going to build an earthship. During our volunteering work in Normandy we met a Dutch student who was studying sustainable architecture at the time and was doing research by volunteering on the build.

We started talking and she told us she needed a project to graduate. We offered her to design our house and she agreed.

Right Choice

After a while it became clear we made the right choice.
Not only are we building the house just the way we want it. It would have been almost impossible to get a mortgage on the lot of land we were buying or get a building permit for an earthship and we really needed both. It was a battle we were not prepared to fight.

So here we are, we have bought the land, a good 4000m2 on the edge of a very small town near Bastogne, Belgium, we got the mortgage for the land and are hoping to build the house with our savings and have just applied for the building permit this week.

We decided to start the build of the house next year so we can save up more money and find the right materials during this year.

Applying

If you are interested in helping out with our project and learn more about rammed earth construction and/or straw bale construction then you can sign up for our newsletter on fourelementshouse.com or send an email to fourelementshouse [at] gmail.com.
You can also read a bit more about volunteering on our site, or, if you know anybody who might be interested, please send them a link to this page.

We will inform you on the exact time-line since it is still a year away.

Because we will be building during the spring and summer months we can offer basic accommodation in the form of a place to pitch a tent on our land and basic sanitation.

Lunch will be provided and we’ll have a BBQ every Friday evening.

We are planning on having a good time building the house, with lots of fun, good company and beautiful results.

I can say from experience it is a great way to meet like minded people, having a satisfying feeling of fulfilment at the end of the day and take away new experiences when you leave.

We can use a lot of help so please let us know if you want to spend some time in the summer of 2011 building our house

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Last Thursday we visited the established ruling order of Vaux-sur-Sûre. Or rather.., we visited the local “urbanism” office to see if our design would pass the scrutiny of said government.
We also visited our small piece of the Earth, chatted with our neighbours and visited a gathering of Dutch Wallons.
Oh.., and we put our house in Rotterdam on the market. So if you want it.., or know anybody…

Local Scrutiny

This is the second time I visit the local government to ask for advice on the design of the house. Last time I was joined by Lotte.., this time I was accompanied by our Belgium architect Marc Steffens (Architects Team in Hergenrath).
For the most part we ignored all the regulations the locals had put on designing a house. Lotte came up with a great design (and we’ll share that in detail when we have a permit), but she did so while taking a few liberties.., which were all very well justified and explainable.
After 10 months we went back with pretty much the finished design and a Belgium, French speaking architect.

Details

The proverbial Devil did raise it’s ugly head.., we do need to change a few things on the house. But, the main design of it stays intact and that’s a big win.
It appears that it does not need to adhere to all the rules.., just enough to be able to get permit. And it turns out that our contact in Vaux-sur-Sûre is kinda the authority when it comes to urbanism in that region. When she gives a Go, it is pretty much a done deal.

Finishing Touches

Lotte is putting the final hand to the drawings.., Marc is getting the information requested and as it seems now.., we are pretty darn close to actually applying for a permit. When this happens we will reach another milestone in our adventure. When the permit is actually granted we celebrate, but only then.

Neighbours

We visited our lot to take a few photo’s (look above) for the permit.., our architect needs them.., the Belgium one that is.
Laila boldly went to our neighbours and started chatting with the misses right away. Later joined by the mister and she did quite well. Her French is already so good that she can have a conversation.., granted.., her grammar and pronunciation needs work.., but when you can understand and make yourself understood.., that is just awesome.

We are visiting our neighbours more extensively during Easter. They didn’t much time.., and we want to ask some questions (more on that later).

Dutch Wallons

There are a lot of Dutch people moving to Wallon.., to Belgium in general.., living is just better there. For some it’s the money, or the people, or the status, or the piece and quite, or the food, or the beer.., or any of the above.
This meeting (gathering)  seemed to have a high average age.., well.., higher than ours anyway. We were the youngest (believe it). We didn’t get the idea a lot lived in the area of Bastogne.., too far away I guess. All in all, we didn’t really felt we’d belong there.., although the host is one to know.

Ah well, it’s been quite a week for us.., busy to no end and exciting. We are getting close.., reality is sneaking up on us.

I love it…

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

After posting the previous post I received an email from Dean Gregory over at The Power Collective.

My worry about RidgeBlade is that it might be expensive. I let Dean explain otherwise in his own words:

whilst we cannot know the exact cost of the RidgeBlade units until we have finalised our production plans, the whole point of RidgeBlades was that they should be affordable – from the beginning we have designed them to be affordable. Our target is to produce a system that is cheaper and more efficient than the alternatives – and we are working very hard to make sure that we achieve this!

So now I’m even more interested in the RidgeBlade. Can’t wait till this goes to marked

It must be said that a lot of inventions are being done in the sustainable energy sector and that I feel we are on the brink of a true revolution. The one thing holding it back is the cost. The ideas are plenty and the company that can make any product affordable has the holy grail. Because we all want it, but we don’t want to scrape the bottom of our financial barrel in order to get.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

The question still stands.., can we get off the grid.
In our previous post we concluded that Solar Power is a real possibility. All it really takes is money.., a whole bunch of it.., but as far as the authorities are concerned.., it should not be a problem.
Granted, in wintertime we will have a challenge.., a lot of cloudy days can cause a depletion of the batteries, if we’re not careful.

Windpower

So, another power source.., an additional power source would be quite helpful and since we are not blessed with a stream running through our property.., wind power is the only other viable source of energy.., note that I put “viable” in there. Off course there are several other ways to generate power, but these are not viable for us.., either they create a dependency (gas, uranium, diesel), or are too expensive.
No, wind is the only other “free” source.

Any problems then? Put up a wind turbine.., the biggest you can find and presto.., free energy forever. Well.., not quite.

Unfortunately there are regulations. And one of those regulations is that if we want to put up a wind turbine it has to be in the building zone of our land, not in the agricultural zone.., well that’s OK. We just put it all the way on the edge.., as far from the house as possible.

Again.., not so fast. For every meter we go up.., we have to keep the ground clear. So a 6 meter pole means a radius of 6 meter around to be clear, of anything. If the thing would fall over it would not hit anything.., makes sense, but it is annoying.
And I’d rather go up 12 meters than 6. If we could put it further down the land, things would work out just fine, but we can’t and it doesn’t.

Besides, studies show (PDF) that these things are expensive and not as efficient as one would like them to be.

RidgeBlade

Now, the people over at The Power Collective have developed a brilliant device called the RidgeBlade.

What they have come up with is brilliant. They fitted a turbine on the top of a house, but like no other.
I quote:

“The RidgeBlade is fitted on the ridge line at the top of a building and uses the existing roof area to collect and focus the prevailing wind. This is where the wind is forced to travel over the roof surface, accelerating the airflow though the turbine.”

Since we are in the process of filing for a permit this would neatly fit into our designs. But.., alas.., the people at The Power Collective are not market ready yet. They would love to sell me one, obviously, but they’re still testing and getting the whole production going.
They do plan on having something next year (2011). The idea is to start with a retrofit product.., adding the RidgeBlade to existing houses. That would fit us quite nicely. And the RidgeBlade would be aligned nicely with our prevailing winds. Don’t know what it’ll cost, but I’ll bet it will be an arm and a leg. But we have to wait and see, I’m on their mailing list.

Update: The latest word from The Power Collective is that “the whole point of RidgeBlades is that they should be affordable“.

VAWT

So, we have nothing then, no wind energy for the Four Elements House project. Well, maybe one more option.

A VAWT (Wikipedia: Vertical Axis Wind Turbine). Since we can’t go up, we have to stay on the ground. And yes.., the higher you can go, the better wind you can get. But if you have to stay low to the ground, a VAWT has the potential to deliver, something a HAWT cannot, or will hardly do.
We did find a supplier, in fact we found a guy pretty close to Chenogne. Appropriately they call themselves Greenenergy. But, as with most things related to green energy, this too is a very expensive hobby. Sure, we can earn the thing back in 20 years and you do get to be green. But we still have to invest a gargantuan amount of money (14k plus) in order to get there.

An advantage to these developments is that people/companies are developing machines that do seem to work. They may be (very) expensive, but the technology is out there. And people are building their own machines too.

SelfBuild

Our last resort as far as wind power goes.., seems to be.., building one of our own. Only a VAWT will do, we can place one of those without a permit or attention. All we need to do is make sure it can catch the wind.

A quick search on YouTube give multiple videos of VAWT systems build at home. And step-by-step manuals exist also.., like on the Instructables or on eHow.

Now, there are no plans yet, but chances are we will build one of our own, or die trying… All we need is a few pieces of the right equipment, some know how and a lot of determination. I think this should not be problem.
So, stay tuned, the plans and how we will prevail shall be posted.., of course.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

No, well at least not for us, not at first.

The problem is that we will be needing a reasonable amount of electricity.
Because we will work from home using computers, which means a constant usage of power.

So what is the problem you might say, through a couple of solar panels on the roof and you are done.
I wish it were that simple.

It depends on a lot of things:

Location

If you live in for example Spain, the sun will shine a lot more then in Belgium. During the summer we can make do with a couple of solar panels but during the winter it is a whole different story  (in Januari only 1.6 hours and up to 6.8 in June, on average per day).

Solar Panel

It is the same with anything else in life, expensive solar panels have more revenue and there is a lot of choice. Finding the right solar panel is a challenge and the technology advances rapidly. The market for solar panels is one of the fast growing ones in the world so you can bet that they will improve immensely in the future.

Batteries

You need to store the electricity generated from the solar panels but wouldn’t it be great if you can store it for more then a few days, that way if there are a couple of overcast days you can still turn on the light. There is a lot of development in battery land. I just read that Panasonic is developing a battery that can store power for a week!

This al sounds fantastic but you still need enough solar panels to create enough kWh during winter time.

Then there are inverters, cables and more of those things to consider which will all determine how much power we will really have available.

So no, we wont go off the grid right away, we can’t afford it really, we more or less calculated we need about 16 solar panels installed to have enough energy during wintertime, that is at least 16.000 Euro and we won’t be able to afford it.

These 16 solar panels are calculated on the amount of electricity we use in our current (non energy efficient) house.

Of course we will use less energy in the new house, we will use energy saving appliances, LED lights, the whole deal. But let’s be honest here, I want to live comfortable, I don’t mind, that on cloudy winter days I will have to avoid using the washing machine as much as I can but I don’t want to spend my evenings reading a book by candle light because we are out of juice.

So what we are going to do is start On the Grid and buy a few solar panels and expand in time in the hope that Solar panels and battery’s will improve so we won’t have to cover the whole house in solar panels to be able to go Off the Grid.

Besides Solar panels there is Wind power.
But is it an alternative?
Next time I will tell you if it is for us.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

2010 is going to be an interesting year.

This is the year we will need to prepare for 2011. The year in which we start building.
Now, when people ask when we start building, we can say.., “next year, we start building next year”.

So, what are the plans for 2010. I’ll sum them up to give an overview:

• Find an (Belgium) architect
• Submit for a building permit
• Sell the house in Rotterdam
• Move to Belgium
• Set up a temporary dwelling on our land
• Build a shed

Besides these actions we’ll need to learn (better) French, find suppliers, keep and find volunteers and keep working throughout everything to make money.

Wauw.., if you put it like that than 2010 is going to be a very interesting year indeed.

Architect

We need a native Belgium architect. One who speaks French as well as Dutch. This makes communication so much easier. It would help if he/she is from the south and had some dealings with our local government before.
Now, we did, or rather Laila and Lotte did speak to a potential and we hope that his price will be less enthusiastic as he was. As soon as we can agree on a price than we get cracking.
We need a somebody from Belgium because only Belgium architects can apply for building permits. Lotte would not be able to apply. A bonus is that a local architect can also help, a lot, with local contractors, and we’ll need all the help we can get with that.

Building Permit

In the talks L&L had with the architect he was very positive about the design (of course). He also suggested that it would not be a problem getting a permit on the design. Now, that is the design Lotte graduated on, it has slightly changed (see pictures).

Selling and Moving

These are a few issues that go together well. Selling the house, moving to Belgium, buying a (big) caravan and make Chenogne our home. This is also one of the most dramatic actions we will ever take in our lives and will definitely be the most dramatic move we’ll make this year.
Making a home in Chenogne will be tough, it has to be a temporary place, easily placed and maintained. But we’ll need (warm) water, electricity, something to cook on. All we have now is some grass, that’s it. A challenge to be met I’m sure.

Design

Last but not least. The house itself. Lotte has been creative again in providing solutions for our minor dilemmas.
Now, obviously all the ins and outs of the house will pass through this blog at some point, so I’ll leave you with just these images.

design and artist impression by Studio Middelkoop

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend

Wouldn’t it be cool to have this kind of technology. According to Steven Cowley it will take a couple of decades.., chances are.., that is not quick enough.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• Buzz it up
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post
• Tell a friend