One of the first things you need to check out when you are deciding where you are going to put your house is the underground.
I allready knew my underground was pure sand. There’s a downside to this: you need to go deep with the foundations. But there’s also a positive side on all this: it drains very well… so I don’t need to worry about getting too much water on the surface.
You can ask a specialised firm to get an expertise on the underground, but as I’m doing everything low-budget and I like to do things myself, I decided not to invest in this kind of expertise.
In stead I bought a metal stick of about 1m50 that has a section area of 1cm².
The problem is I couldn’t find a bar of 1cm on 1cm. In stead I found a round one with a diameter of 0,8 cm. As this wasn’t enough - and I wanted to be very precise - I bought a tube of 10 x 2 mm and I jammed it on the stick and it made a perfect 1 cm² stamp.
Next I digged a pit of 60cm deep. This way I was sure I was allready underneath the frostline.
And finally I rammed the sick in the ground at the bottom of the pit. I measured how deep it went in and added that to the 60 cm of the pit. How do you know you are putting the right strenght? Simple: Put all your strenght, you’ll notice at a certain depth the stick won’t go any deeper.
At the northside it went in quit deep… I measured a total depth of 1m50! This means my foundations will have to be 1m50 aswel…
Oohyeah… Normally you need to make at least 3 pits. I made four. One at every wind direction. It seems obvious you have to position the hole where there will be an outside wall later on.
(ps. It might be not such a bad idea to fill the pits again afterwards, you would be surprised how fast one forgets he digged a hole at that spot 
)
One of the disadvantages, but also one of the most “down to earth” consequences of building low-impact is that you are dependent of the seasons.
A disadvantage because you have to make a good shedule and “down to earth” because you are not abalienating (< ‘Vervreemden’) from your buildingmaterials…You are very aware of what you are doing during the whole year.
One of the tasks when building with strawbales is to gather willow branches. “Why?” I hear you say… Well, you need them to connect strawbales one another when piling them during construction.
You just put two willow branches right through a strawbale and into the one underneath. This way they won’t move and you get a nice straight wall.
In some countries they also use bamboo for this purpose, but as Willow trees are far more common in Belgium it’s more opportune to use them.
It might seem a simple and non time-consuming activity, but I notices how much time it takes just to strip of all side-branches and pile the main branches together… It took me about a full day to get all the banches I need… About 300 to 400.
More information on using this willow branches will come up when … well.. when I’m building offcourse
