Hello my friends!
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
Ok folks,
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 !!!!
Hi all !!!
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!
