HAMADRYAD

Hey guys!

The first steps have been taken…. the point of no return has been reached!

Ok, so after bringing in all the ground (”Zavel”), I leveled the surface by putting 3 sticks in the ground and indicating the same level with a line. I used a laser to do this, but you can use a watertube instead.

Next I connected the lines with fine ropes. I put some wooden guides in the ground at level with the ropes and I used another stick to level the ground in between.

Next Mister Beck, the same man who brought the ground to the spot, compacted the ground…

I can only say that working with mister Beck was a real pleasure and I can recommendate him to everyone !!!

The next step was to dig the holes for the foundation.. they need to be 70 cm’s deep to prevent frost from pushing it upward. But to protect the holes against rain I had to cover the place with a plastic… The hole is about 30cms width

Note to myself and everyone who wants to try to put up a plastic of 10 to 15 meters: never try to do it without a center pole… it’s just impossible.. I tried it on every way….it just doesn’t work.

After digging the hole I put the grounding inside… if you want to do this, make sure you put it underground for a minimal resistance…

I also put in two tubes for my water drain. I will put in the water supply tubes afterwards as I will put them underneath the foundation… so no need to worry about that now…

Finally everything is ready to put in the concrete…

Uhhh… but there is one problem: no concrete mixer can enter the driveway! So I needed to make it a little wider!  But as I was clearing the pipe underneath the existing driveway I discovered it had collapsed … this is a huge problem, because in winter the water of the canal (going around the ground for drainage) will be blocked by the driveway now… The former owners of the ground had put a 50cms width concrete slab above the pipe… so impossible to remove that! I needed to make a new hole underneath in someway…

So here is what we did: Mister Beck asked a friend of his to come over with a truck which is used to clean out septic tanks (”een ruimerke”)… he filled it with water, we connected the hose with a pvc pipe and blew a hole through the ground pushing in the pipe deeper and deeper… it was dirty work, but it sure as hell was fun!

Uptill now there isn’t much really ecological about this construction is there? Well.. there are three reasons why I had to take concrete as a foundation:

1. Because of the local building regulations

2. Because it’s durable and so doesn’t need any maintenance or renewal

3. Because i’m building on sand which is not stable and needs some kind of slab foundation

4. Because it needs to carry a very have stove (see later) and a building with heavy green roof

At first I wanted to use concrete with bamboo reinforcement, but some tests conducted by the Nayer Institute (Sint-Kathelijne-Waver) indicated that bamboo reinforced is only half as strong as iron reinforced concrete… so on advise of my architect I had to use the traditional way of making a foundation.

After poring in the concrete I jammed in some rebars of 1m to make the connection with the concrete slab afterwards…

Next Wim (thanks for your help, man!) and I masoned a small wall of two bricks high to make a formwork for the concrete slab … the result is something like this…

The grounding comes out like this:

I left some space between the bricks and the rebars so that the rebars won’t be to close to the side of the slab…

So that’s where I am now… next steps are to dig in the tubes for water supply, prepare reinforcement for the slab, create a coolingplace underground and poor the slab!

There are two more things to say…

1. Since my place is not very close to the center of Stekene, I put a bicycle in the center, right next to the church… anyone who come with public transportation can get out in the center and take the bicycle! Just call me and I’ll give you the code of the lock!

2.  I have a mailbox! No, not the virtual on, but a real one! So from now on you can rie me a letter! ooh Yeah !!!

For you guys who didn’t figure it out.. it’s Speelhof w319, 9190 Stekene Belgium

Cya!

ps. I don’t have internet in the forest so if you want to reach me, better do it by phone !

This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 10:33 pm and is filed under Building the house. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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