Yes.., it is true.., we are almost there. And by “there” I mean we almost have our building permit.

Of course, this has not gone and still is not going without as smooth as we hoped.

Illegal

When we first talked with the local government we asked whether we could put up a temporary home.., we could. We do not need a permit to put a temporary home.
What was neglected to be said, or what I didn’t understand or what was simply lost in translation is that no, you do not need a permit for the temporary home, but you do need a building permit.

So we enter our request for a building permit and than we put up the temporary home. We did this with the best intentions.., we want to learn the language, integrate in the community, find local suppliers and contractors. And most of all, it really is a temporary home, we fully intend to remove as soon as possible (although that might be a few years).

Trouble

The first real bump came with a phone call from our Belgian architect.., the local government was not pleased with us putting up a temp. home before we had the permit.., this came, needles to say as a huge and shocking surprise to us and we were hurled into a bureaucratic nightmare we so desperately tried to avoid.

After some talk back and forth it was decided that our mistake and intentions were genuine. The temp. home could stay, we were relieved.

Double Trouble

Imagine our surprise when we received a [official] notification from the province (one authority higher than the local government) that our temp. home was illegal and consequences would follow.

And.., low and behold.., on 25th September the police visited us and handed over an order to remove the temp. home within 3 months.

So okay, by now we know the temp. home is illegal.., we get that.., but we believe we have a fair point in putting it up, and it is there, and we are applying for a permit.., so.., what is it? Why so hard on us?
Well.., it turns out we did it too well.., we put up too nice of a little house.., it just looks too permanent.

So it’s not the fact that we put something there.., the problem is we did it too well.

And sure it does.., we intend to be comfortable in it for quite a while.., but it doesn’t mean it will stay there.

Pleading

Laila went over to Vaux-sur-Sûre to pick up a sign we had to put on our property, a sign that explains what we want to build and ask if anybody objects.
While there.., she might as well have a talk about our predicament. After some sobbing and being sad they agreed on making a phone call to the person who gave the order to have our little house removed.
Turns out he’s not a total bureaucrat after all and sees where we’re coming from.., he agreed to take it up with his boss and see if they could drop the “charges”.

Legal

The local government is done with the permit, they build a beautiful dossier (we hope) and they are about to send it to Arlon, the capital of our province. There somebody has to sign off on it. They have to do this within 35 days of receiving it. As of this writing we still have no confirmation that it is actually send nor do we have confirmation on our stay of execution.

Point is.., when the permit is given.., the temp. home is no longer illegal. So we’re kinda fixed on getting it before 25th December (that is our deadline). And we should get it before x-mas.

So we hope, and wait and try to get information and confirmation, but it’s getting down to the wire…

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…

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.

A little bit of history. In our Great Weekend of Desperation we were determined to end the search for land once and for all.

During our search we’ve travelled through a good part of Belgium and a bit of France. Trying to determine where to look was half the battle won.
Of course, getting a feel of what we would need was a good start.., during our first trip we realized that this was not going to be easy. Then, during our second trip, we decided that Belgium was no longer an option, mainly because of the prices. It seemed the further we got from Holland the cheaper the land became. We did, however, decided that the Ardennes would be the area we’d focus on.

We visited countless sites (seriously, I have no idea how many). We came across very nice lots, and not so nice lots, expensive lots, lots with a beautiful location, but facing the wrong way.., lots not big enough, lots to big.., lots filled with tree trunks.., you name it. Luckily we had a process to guide us. If the lot did not meet the criteria, we’d leave it. With some lots it was hard to determine, others were quite easy.

One lot in particular tickled our fancy, a great view, kinda steep, big enough, out of town, sort of facing south. But, after a revisit we, together with Lotte, concluded that the tree orchard next door would grow on for another 20 years and in another 5 year would block out the sun completely, and that was a very big no no. So, we let the Sleeping Slope lie…

Somewhere in early November 2008, after nine months of searching we hit pay-dirt. We found what we were looking for.
In a desperate attempt to “get it over with” we planned a whole weekend, rented a room in Bastogne, wrote down a list of potentials and decided to drive around until we found a piece of land or die trying (not really, it’s just to illustrate the seriousness of the weekend).

Our first stop on Saturday morning would be Chenogne.., and that’s all she wrote.

We found what we were looking for and the video documented that first, and now historical, visit (it really is kinda cool that we taped it).

It’s funny how time flies. Even to a positronic brain of an android time can be relative. I can imagine that if someone is waiting for the next post on this blog, and doing nothing else, it can seem ages ago since my last post. In fact it’s been just over a month, which is hardly an age.

To me, the past month has gone by in a flash. We seem to be constantly thinking and talking about the house in one form or another, the design, the passiveness, the power, the labour, the money, all these things (and more) demand attention. We have to be careful not to get overwhelmed by the whole thing, which is quite hard.
Our new creed is: “One step at the time”. One just can’t rush a good thing. So, a month may seem long, but enough happens that I can’t blog about, or is just not interesting enough.

So, what can I share with you about the past month?

The biggest thing, or at least the most formal, is that we set a date to sign the official deed to the land. Now that is good news. The land will be undisputedly (I love that word) ours.

Architect

Our architect has been busy. She’s past her second whatjamacallit in her study. This means she’s on the right track, something we already knew, of course.
She also made a few models for us to look at and I have to say, it looks mighty promising. I won’t post them here, because these are the first tryouts, sketches of ideas. But, the house is going to be magnificent, not in size, but in design, and not the fancy artsy design stuff, but functional, liveable and innovative.

Off the Grid

We’ve also been searching for an energy solution. Obviously we’ll be off the grid, and the idea is to never get hooked on at all, ever. Even during the build we’ll not be connected. It’s an expensive business getting hooked up to the grid and we’ll invest that money else where.

We do have very nice neighbours form whom we could “borrow” some power, but only during the build.

This means we have to find a way to power our future home with alternatives (sun, wind, whatever).
Heating the place is one thing, we’re building a passive home, which means we heat the house with sunlight and insulate it thoroughly, and only use a heater to assist our “passiveness”.

Electricity is a whole different ball game and for now it seems that wind power is the way to go. It’s way, way cheaper than solar power. But, the wind doesn’t always blow, so we might need a few supplementary solar panels.
But the cool thing would be something like the Sunmachine. The idea is brilliant, but unfortunately not applicable for domestic use.

Ah well, this is a quest which is far from over. Seems like we’ll have to face one challenge after another.

Any suggestions a more then welcome.

And so an era ends.
The search is over, our quest is concluded. Like Indie, we found our holy grail.

Chenogne, that’s the little village where we found it. You might remember that this was the first lot we looked at during our Great Weekend of Desperation. At the moment one finds something it is way too early for one to brake out the champagne and celebrate. Although we did put it in the refrigerator, we didn’t open it.

We only popped the cork after a trip to Brussels and a meeting to sign the contract and arrange the mortgage. And maybe it’s because it’s in Belgium, but everything went as smooth as.., well.., you fill that one in.

Details

So, a few details then. It’s 4100 m2, that’s about 1.013 acres for the imperial ones. It is situated pretty good on the east-west axis. The lot is 20 meters wide and 205 meters long (66 x 673 feet). The first 40 or so meters are for building the house. The rest can’t be used for building, it is strictly agricultural. Which means we have a freaking big backyard. This will be used for the vegetable garden, the chickens, bees, donkey, goats, fruit trees, compost, whatever.

Chenogne

Chenogne is a small village, maybe 40 or 50 houses. It’s ten minutes from Bastogne which is a small town, but has everything we need. It has quite a history too. Major highways are also near by and Brussels is only a 1.5 hours drive.
We’re on the edge of Chenogne, like we wanted, not in the middle of a town. There isn’t much more to tell, it’s just grassland for now, with a horse on it (we don’t get to keep it). It’s been agricultural for ever, nothing ever happens in that town (until now). We think it’s perfect, it took us 9 months to find it.

Fase 1 is complete, now for fase 2, getting a building permit, but that’s a story for another time.