HAMADRYAD

Hi all!

I was asked to make a presentation for some kind of eco-festival concerning the future of Stekene and all the environmental consequences…

I made some panels to present the project and it only seemed logic to put them online for you to see them. So you can download it by clicking here.

It’ all writen in Dutch… sorry for that, in time I will translate them to english asswel..

You could read in the previous posts that I allready have a workingspace and water. Now the only thing I need more is a toilet!

The toilet is of a major importance to nature! We can try to recycle plastics, to sort paper and glass, but as long as we are not organising our “human waste” in a good way we are not helping nature one bit!

You might ask yourself why human waste would be harmfull… well.. it wouldn’t be harmfull if we were with only a few million humans on earth and if we would live like nomads… this way human waste would be a great fertiliser. The main problem is that we tend to hook up in cities and villages all together… putting a great amount of nitrates and bacterians in the ground. We pollute or own underground watersupply !!!

It’s not easy to solve this problem… and I didn’t find any good solution to stop the pollution totally. There might be a sollution which involves mixing urine with some chemicals to neutralise it, but I wouldn’t be sure that these chemicals (and the production of it) would be that ecologically. And it would make you dependant of the chemicals… which isn’t my way of doing things…

The best solution I found untill now is a composting toilet.

There are many different forms of a composting toilet and some are worth to carry the name, others aren’t.

The main trick to a good compostingtoilet is to divide urine and faeces before they are processed. How?

In my compostingtoilet I used a metal plate dividing the toilet in two compartments. One directs the urine to a purifying pond and the other is collecting faeces. These faeces are kept dry and will make up a good compost later on.

Here are some pictures of the construction. This is only a temporary toilet (for use during the building), the permanent one will be integrated into the house later on.

First I put some vertical poles into the ground. Remember this is only a temporare construction. If you want to make a permanent one, it would be better to put some kind of stone fundaments underneath so the wood wouldn’t rotten .

Next I made a wooden skeleton off it. Make sure all your poles are perfectly vertical and at fixed dimensions. I wasn’t that fixated on making it perfect so I didn’t mind having a perfect straight construction, but my god!  Did I regret it later!

The day before I started the construction I found allot of wood in a container nearby, so I used it all to coverup the toilet! I didn’t spend a dime on this compostingtoilet, even the nails are recovered from the old chalet!

Notice the slope underneth the sitting area. This is the area where the faeces are collected and dryed. If I would do it over I would make the slope seperately so it can always be replaced without a problem.

Also note the hose connected with this chamber… this is to ventillate the collecting room and prevent it from getting moisted.

The ventillation hose connected to a chimney on the roof…

In front of the slope there is a double pole. This allows me to slide a plate in between them necessary to empty the collecting room when the faeces are composted (after about 1 year if you use it regulary with about 4 people).

On the picture below you can see the toilet almost finnished… On the roof I put a plastic sheet covered with ground. I used the ground of the forest and only one week later there were allready growing little plants o the roof!

Notice also the metal plate underneath the toilet. This plate collects urine. On one hand the urine is collected seperately in the seating of the toilet and directed to this plate via a plastic tube (PVC !) on the other hand if any urine would make it to the collectiong room it would drip throught the wooden plates onto the metal plate and  directed to the purifying pond. (this might be more clear on the technical drawings –> see underneath).

The roof covered with plastic:

Normally the ground and plants would regulate the rainwater. But to be sure there wouldn’t be too much water on the roof I made a little opening in the roof and coverd it with a perforatd metal plate. Again.. if this would have been a permanent toilet I would make it more durable.

And this is the result (it only needs a door):

Oohyeah! I put some straw on the slope underneath. this way the moist can be absorbed and the faeces don’t fall through easily.

How to use this toilet?

It’s important to throw a handfull of sawdust after every use. It’s also important to close the lit to prevent most of the insects to get inside.

There is no need to use water for flushing.

I have been using the toilet for some weeks now and I dare everyone to stick his head inside the collecting room… you won’t smell a thing!

More information on the technical side of all this, see page 8 of the brochure

Hi all!!

You can’t imagine how much you start realizing the importance of water untill you really don’t have it around!

I only stayed at my woodland for the weekends and some days during the week… sometimes I forgot to take a barn of water with me… and I always regretted it deeply…

You can’t put any thee on, you can’t wash your hands and face after digging ground all day, you can’t clean your material or do the dishes… and this is only when I’m around for a weekend.. imagine what it would be to live without water… impossible!

When building you’ll need water for all kinds of things.. one of them is to construct the fundaments… and as it is the first thing to do… I just had to arrange a watersupply!

In the chalet (which’s gone now) used to be waterpump… but as it has been many years since the chalet was used all there was left was a metal tube coming out of the floor… actually two of them…

I digged them up and one was leading to a pit right at the spot where my fundaments are comming! BUMMER! I’ll need to fill that one up to prevent my house from sinking in…

The other one was connected to a flexible tube.. That’s the one!

Now, old waterpits (yes, dear Wouter, that’s a word! - sorry inside joke-) have the nasty habbit of collapsing when they haven’t been used for a while… and this one wasn’t used for many years… so there was only a little chance it would still work…

But guess what? It did !!!

It seemed almost magical to see the water, chrystal clear, coming out of the ground… a gift from nature!

More information and pictures are coming up on this subject!

Oohyeah, on a personal note:  Riet, your butterfly has become a permanent inhabitant in the forest… she’s been around since the first day!

Ok,

Here’s the rest of the “Water”-story.

Because the watertube and the pump were located inside the groundings of the house I needed to move the pump somewhere outside the building area. At that moment I didn’t know where the old waterpit was located.. and to be honest at this moment I don’t know either… What happend?

As I was digging the earth from around the tube I noticed how it went further and further into the forest… when I was well outside the buildingsite surroundings I stopped digging as I was sure the waterpit had to be somewhere inside the forest… There was no reason for digging the soil further on and hurting the roots of plants and trees..

So now I had a large amount of tube comming out of the ground. I could do three things:

1) Cut the tube and use the remaining end to re-install the pump

2) Leave the tube above ground

and

3) Put the tube underground

I chose the last option… If I would have cut the tube than I would have had a problem when I needed a longer tube when the house is finnished… so I needed to install a connectionpart between the two tube ends… I don’t like connection pieces as they are always a hazard to leaks. I didn’t want to put the tube above ground because all plastics tend to degenerate in UV-light… so it was obvious to put the tube underground.

Because I didn’t want the water to remain in the tubes when I would disconnect the pump (in winter), I decided to roll the tube into a spiral and protect it with roof tiles.

After covering everything with earth, I needed to make a “holder” for the pump. And preferably one that’s stronger than the previous one (which was only temporary).

I made a little “construction” with bricks I found underneath the old chalet and fixed a big pole in between.

This way I could use my chainsaw to easily sharpen the end.

Once again I could use the pole rammer which my friend Gène made for me (again with great greatitude!!!) to ramm the pole deep in the ground (making sure not to harm the tube offcourse). This would make a perfect holder for the pump.

Oohyeah … about the waterpits: Good news! It seems they aren’t that deep as I was affraid for! They seem to be only 1m deep… That means I don’t have to worry about filling them up after all!! Woohoo!

Hi all!

It has been a while since I wrote something on the hamadryad blog… Allthought there are no real breakthroughs in my housedesign, I have been very busy!

I decided to give up the rent for the workingplace in Stekene center and use the barn on my little woodland  instead. It’s not only cheaper.. it’s also allot easier to have all my equipment nearby the buildingsite.

The barn was .. how shall I put it… “a total waste”… The roof consisted of asbestos plates and two of the four walls were collapsed.

The first thing I did was remove the roof and bring all the rubbish to a recycling parc. It took me 3 rides with a fully packed van…

Secondly I reinforces the two walls and builed a skeleton in front of them with wood I recovered from the chalet I broke down.

Then I cleaned out the floor.. there was about 20cm’s of mudd and woodchips.. it was hell to sort out all the pieces of plastic and metal.

I put a plastic ceiling on top of the barn and supported it with wood I recovered from the chalet (which I plan to use for the floor in my new house later on).

There was a huge pit in the middle of the barn. It was used to work on cars before. Now I prepared it to store all my stuff behind lock. So i put a plate on top with some pivots at one side and padlocks on the other…

this way all my stuff is out of the way when I’m working and it’s still close enough when  I need something..

And this is the result:

That’s it for now… comming up next in this topic:

- building a temporary composting toilet

- Arranging water supply

Hi All!

The moment you’ve all been waiting for… well.. at least I was!

I asked Greet Van Autgaerden to paint me an impression of  the house and the surroundings… And she did an excellent job!

Based on some 3D-images I created on pc and some guidlines she succeeded to paint the global idea of the house and it’s implemantation in the surroundings, making it low-impact.

I met Greet only a few weeks ago. She was having an exhibition of her paintings in Mechelen. The exhibition was called “Camp” and well… offcourse that drew my attention. It couldn’t be a coïncidence!

We started talking… she told me about her idea of the exhibition and I told her about my project.. It seemed that we had allot in common… both wanting to return to nature, a strong interest for survival, self-sufficiency and a dream of being able to find a good equilibrum between nature and society.

Thank you, Greet!

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

Hi all!

My architect, Marc Schepens, has finished the first impression of the groundlevel!

I met Marc a few years ago and I was impressed by his unusual architecture and interests… Allot of his buildings are organic or seem to be inspired by nature.

As I have always been a big fan of organic architecture it seemed almost inevitable to contact Marc and ask him to design my little house. After the first meeting allready I knew I made the right decision.

I explained Marc my goals with the project and what kind of building I would like to realise. Together we made some quick sketches and discusses what is important and what’s not.

Offcourse the most important issue is the environmental aspect. This means also thinking about placing the house on the right spot and positioning it in the right direction. I’m not going to explain everything right now, but I’ll put the picture of the groundlevel up first and gradually (in time..) explain why we made some decisions…

by Marc Schepens

The bottom is South and the top is North.

As you can see allot of the windows are directed Southward. However there is a large roof overhang above the terrace. This allows sun to enter in winter, when sun is low. And protects the house from heating up in summer.

You can also see two different kind of heating devices. One of them is an Aga.. this is a kind of stove you can cook on. The other will be a finoven or tilestove (still deciding what will be the best sollution).

The aga could also provide warm water for the bathroom and kitchensink. It’s very important that kithen and bathroom are close to one another as these rooms require water. As the ground is sloping slightly downwards towards the east, it’s also very convienent to have the “water cell” on the highest part of the house, this way it’s more easy to drain the filthy water towards a purifying pond and still keep it close to the surroundings.

Another benefit is that the current bedroom is located in the east, wich makes it very nice to wake-up with the early morning sun. I’m not sure, however, if I’m going to keep this room as a bedroom. it might be more convenient to put the bedroom on the upperlevel (under the roof) and have this room as a big storage closet.

In the North, the house is protected and “insulated” by a little hill. This hill will also capture the sun heat (warmth inertia). However, because we are building with strawbales there will be only a very small amount of heat transfering from the hill to the house. Strawbales are known to be very isulating and this works (sadly enough) in both directions.

At least, in winter,  the difference in temperature between the interior and exterior will be diminished by putting ground all around (60cm below groundlevel, the temperature never drops lower then 3 to 5°C). I’m also thinking it might be possble to integrate a grid of tubes which collect air from the outside, transfer it through the hill to the interior of the house. This might be a good way to warm up incoming air in winter and cool down incoming air in summer. This system is allready used in modern, high-tech ventillation sollutions… Might be fun to make my own low-tec sollution

Well… I have lots more to tell you, but for now time is running out… So i’ll continue later on!

Right… where were we?

Oohyeah! I had a selling agreement on the ground in Stekene. My notarian phoned me last week to inform me that finally all the paperwork is done and we can arrange a meeting to transfer the ground from the former owners to me… that also involves paying for the ground.. aawtch…

Just so you know.. it took the notarians (one of mine and one of the previous owners) 5 months to finalise the job! This is almost twice the legal term !!!! Take this into account when  you are buying a ground !!!

I was also breaking down the chalet and shed and well.. I still am!

The reason why it takes so long is because I have been busy informing myself on building with wood and also because I was moving from the farmhouse in Zottegem back to my parentsplace in Mechelen… Officially I still live in Zottegem, but nowadays I’ll be more in Mechelen than in Zottegem… I’ll probably stop renting the place in Zottegem real soon!

I want to re-use allot of materials from the chalet and shed for the low-impact building. Untill now I was storing all my wood and stuff in the shed. BUT! Because the roof is made of plates consisting asbestos, I really want to get rid of it. Untill this same year I can bring the plates to Antwerp for free. Next year however I’ll have to pay for it (and it will be allot!). Because the year is almost over I have to hurry to complete this operation. The problem however is that when I take of the roof I’ll no longer have a waterproof place to store my wood and other materials from the demolition.

I will also need a place where I can work with wood for the post and beam construction of the house. It has to be safe and not too far from the ground. At first I was thinking of putting up a tent on the ground itself. But than a tent of big size would cost me about 800 Euro and it’s not really save… People could just enter and steal all my equipment.

This is why I went on looking for a cheap place where I can work and store all my stuff. Strangly it took me only two days to find this place!

Now I’m renting a 100m² working area with electricity, gaz, a shower and a toilet! I agreed upon a 100 euro’s a month with the kind lady who is renting it.

It’ located in the center of Stekene, this way I have almost no transport costs and I have a safe place to store all my stuff and to work there! GREAT!

I also went looking for equiment.. as uptill now I only had an ax and some little tools, but for preparing the post and beam construction I’ll need havier stuff!  Not far from my current job there was a shop having a total sell-out… and guess what… they sell handycraft equipment!

I bought almost everything I need for about 650 Euro’s (everything at half price) ! I only need a good drill and a big jigsaw!

We’re getting somewhere now !!!!

Here are some pictures I took tday of the place I’m renting and the material I bought… More pictures of the ground and the demolition of the chalet and shed will come up soon !!!!

The workingspace

The equipment

The materials I took from the chalet and shed to re-use

OOYEAH !!! At this moment I could really use some extra hands to break down the remaining of the chalet and shed!!! So if you have some time to spare don’t hesitate to contact me!!!

Greetz

Washing clothes is a timeconsuming activity when you want to do it by hand.

This is why man probably invented the automated washing machines

As far as I know there are two types: one works on electricity and the other on gaz…

If you are able to make your own biogaz you might find the later a good ecological alternative.

Washing machine on gaz

If you are washing on electricity, you might want to check the powerconsumption of your machine… It goes from 1 to 4 KW (which is a huge difference!)

As for me… I want to try a different approach…

First of all I went to ask older people how they were washing their clothes before any washing machines existed…

Wel.. most of the time I just found out that people (especially farmers) were throwing their dirty clothes on the attic. Once (or a few times) a year they spend one or two days doing nothing but washing those clothes…

“Laundry Day”

They warmed up a huge tub and washed by hand.

This just didn’t seem a good alternative to me… I guess society wouldn’t accept this kind of attitude anymore, hehe…

So I went on looking for alternatives… and then I found something that’s in between both our modern automated machines and doing it by hand:

My Washing machine

Yes, my dear people, this “little monster” enables you to do your laundry by hand, without spoiling electricity!

I have bought it from a very nice Family in Wervik for only 40 Euro’s. It still needs some work, but as soon as it’s finnished I’ll make a test drive and let you know about my little experiment!

<To be continued>

I’ll update this topic once in a while. But If you are looking for information on this subject you can always find a shortcut on the page “Basic Needs”.

As it will take some while to put all information here I’ll just start writing and complete it with time.

What’s the difference between Ovens, Heaters, stoves and fireplaces?

Well… actually they are just words to describe a device that provides heat in someway…

I’ll use following (selfmade) definitions to make a distinction between different types of heating devices:

Heater: This can be any kind of heating device.. including ovens, fireplaces, stoves, ….

Stove: This is a closed system with or without little window. Generally it’s made from cast iron, but there are also “Tile ovens” wich are made from firebricks and special heatresistant tiles or loam ovens (as it states they are covered with loam)

Fireplace: This is an open system. Normally the fire get’s in direct contact with the air of the room. The new fireplaces have been provided with a transparant side to be a little more energy-efficient and to make them safer.

Oven: This is an open or closed system provided with a room for backing stuff (ceramics, food, …)

It might seem stupid to give a definition to all these different types of heating devices, but I noticed when I was talking to people, they didn’t use the same words as I was to distinguish all these devices..

There is one exception in all this: a “Finoven” … although it sais fin-”oven” it’s not really an oven… actually it’s a combination of all kinds of heating devices… primarily it’s a stove, but you can use the heat for different purposes aswell…

ok, that said… I first have to explain some main principles….

- Different types of heating principles:

Radiation: This is heat transfered by waves… it’s like the direct heat you receive from the sun… Imagine you are in the mountains in winter, but the sun is really shining very strong than you might still feel warm, even when the air around you is very cold. This is due to radiation from the sun.

Convection: Heat transfered by the movement of matter… most of the time this is air or water moving… Hot air and water move up because they are lighter than the air or water surrounding them. But this movement can also be forced by circulation (ventillation or by a waterpump)

Conduction: Heat transfered by movement inside material.  For instance a metal plate will get warm when you put it in the sun… even if the plate is half in shadow, this part will also become warm because of conduction. Conduction depends on the material… metals will conduct more heat than wood or plastics…

What about the Pro’s and contra’s of different heaters?

The finoven

My personal favorite is the “Finoven”… This kind of heater works on the radiation principle. There are some pro’s about that.. First of all, because it’s working on radiation, there is almost no air getting heated. Because no air is heated, there is less movement of warm air going up. And because there is less air movement, it’s better for allergies and astma (dust doesn’t circulate anymore).

Another pro is  that the sense of heat is less dependent of the distance. Radiation goes as far as the heatwaves go. And because there is no air heated, the air surrounding you can stay on a very low temperature, while you are feeling warm.

Most of the finovens use a second combustion, which means after having fire in the first room, a second “explosion” is introduced in a second combustion room. This means there is almost no smoke exhaust!

Finally and probably the most important pro of these kind of heaters is the big amount of inertia. Because finovens are build very massive with heatresistant stones, they keep warmth inside for a long period of time and release it drip by drip. This way it’s sufficient to heat a finoven only 1,5 hours a day to keep you warm all day!

A great thing about finovens is that you can use the smoke or warm air to heat up different things…

For instance an oven, a water boiler, a wall and/or seating, a bath thub, … you name it!

There are two big contra’s though… first of all it costs allot! When you build it yourself with a DIY-pack, you pay about 2 000 to 3 000 euro’s. When you would buy a full system it can cost up to 15 000 Euro !!!

The best alternative is to fully build it yourself… Up to now I haven’t met someone who did this… But I’m going to try it anyways…

A second contra is the weight… It weights a few ton… up to 3 or even  4 ton for a big one… This means you have to take this into account when building the fundaments!

And finally, the last contra is that the heat is only felt in a certain range. For instance… when you put it on the groundlevel you’ll not really feel the heat on the second floor (remember less air is heated!) You can only heat up a room of a limited area… normally that’s around 80m² at the most… but all depends on how big you build the oven offcourse…

<More technical information comming soon>

The Tile Stove

This heater is very similar to a finoven. Actually it’s difficult to make a clear division between the two of them…  As for me, it seems that a tile stove is just a different way of dividing heaters… it has nothing to do with the system itself, but with the fact that tiles are used to cover the oven. these tiles heat up and work as a radiation element on the outside of the oven. You can perfectly turn a finoven into a tileoven just by decorating it with tiles (duuh!). So in a nutshell: a tile oven can be a finoven, but not every finoven is a tileoven.

A “Tichel” stove

This is a very interesting stove because you are able to build it yourself and even break it down and rebuild it in another place. This stove works on the same principle as the finoven, only it is smaller and made of prefabricated building elements.  It’s perfect for smaller places!

The only downside of this system is that it’s not really made for building allot of different add-ons on it (like a pizza-oven) or to heat-up water. it’s just a plane stove to heat a room…

Build-in systems (<”Inbouwcassette”)

You can find allot of pre-fabricates systems you just have to build in. the adveantage is that you don’t have to worry about all the technical difficulties and still are able to build a relative inexpensive stove (it will still cost you 2 000 Euro’s though). You buy the system, place it on a good spot and start building walls around it.  You can get systems with central heating systems or to heat up waer for the bathroom or…. whatever you want actually! Make sure you buy one with a second combustionroom though!

A Pellet stove

I don’t really like these kind of stoves… for me it seems like some kind of marketing trick..  You pay allot for them and you never know what is going to happen with the price of the pellets… Nope… I’m not convinced..

If you are lazy and you don’t like filling up the stove with wood than this stove will win your heart… it has an automatic suply of pellets.. so the only thing you have to do is check once in a while if there’s still enough pellets around and buy new once when needed.

A pelletstove is good if you have money enough and you aren’t worrying about the prices of the pellets going up OR if you have no way at all to put a chimney… one of the good advantages of these stoves is that they don’t really need a chimney… you can just put a tube through the wall!

A traditional stove

A traditional stove is made of castiron… The good thing about this stoves is that they get warm in a relative short period of time. A disadvantage though is that they don’t keep their warmth and are primarily working on convection. As soon as the flames go down the room is getting very cold.

There are traditional stoves with a secundary combustion room… I have no clue if they really work as efficient as a finoven with a secundary combustionroom. I doubt it because it seems to me that the secunday combustion can only work well when there is enough heat kept inside for a certain amount of time… and traditional stove just doesn’t keep this warmth inside…

This kind of stove is good if you haven’t got allot of money or you are not that handy to build a really good stove yourself. It’s also good if you want to cook directly on the stove… this is offcourse not possible with a finoven because the surface isn’t really hot in the later case (you can easily put your hand on it without burning… don’t try this with a traditional stove!).

A Fireplace

When we are talking about ecology and technical strengths this is the worst kind of heating device!

As soon as wood burns it spreads the warmth all around… There is almost no radiation and you can only feel the heat if you are very close.

If you are building green: don’t use a fireplace! I know… I know… we “nature people” like to see the fire, put a stick in it once in a while… That’s fine! Do it when you are hiking in the mountains .. don’t use this heater as a general system to keep you warm in winter… it’s extremely polluting and inefficient.

Some considerations about the choice of a heating device…

It seems that all heaters have pro’s and contra’s… How should you choose your heating device?

The only good way to make the right decision is to ask yourself what you want to do with it and how you are going to use it…

In my case for example:

As I’ll be at work during the day, I’ll only need to be warm in the morning, in the evening and in the weekend during the whole day. It’s a waste to kep a finoven burning all day if you’re not around… So also not possible to heat up a finoven in the morning, because it will take me too much time before I get heat out of it.. by the time I feel a little warm I allready have to go… IF I get lucky enough to feel warm.

So a traditional finoven won’t do the trick… unless in the weekends… This is a tipical problem in our climate… we aren’t living in Norway, Canda or Finland! We have rather soft winters and soft summers… we don’t ned a die-hard heating system! Especially when you are working during the day!

You might think “Well.. just buy yourself a traditional stove than!”…  It would seem the most appropriate sollution, but I’m not convinced… there must be a more ecological way!

What if I would combine the pro’s of both systems??? Would this be possible??

YES ! On my quest for the perfect stove I found a system that combines the inertia of a finoven with the speed of a traditional stove.

This kind of oven is build with firebricks like a finoven, but has a special exhaust on the back… So when you are having cold and the heater is out you just put wood inside, make it burn and open a valve at the back… The warm air is ventilated inside the room and within 15 minutes the room is pleasantly warm!

Now you close the valve and the heat is kept inside the oven. The bricks are absorbing the heat and are functioning like the bricks of a finoven! During the weekends it’s sufficient to burn wood for about an hour and a half to have a full day of warmth.

A very nice family, not far from where I live now have this kind of stove. Here are some pictures:

This is the front side where you enter the wood. Notice the little door on top used as a baking oven.

Here you can see the exhaust ventillation system. You can open and close it as I described above.

< To be continued>

As you allready might know my plan was as followed:

1. Break down existing structures

2. Build a log house

3. Get all materials and information on low-impact building

4. Start building a low-impact house

Because of allot of different reasons I decided not to go by this plan.

First of all… everything was pointing in a another direction:

1. People around me were asking why I ‘m not building a strawbale house rightaway

2.  I met some interesting people who might be able to provide me wood from Belgian forests, which would be, offcourse, more ecological

3. My architect became more and more enthousiastic about the low-impact idea

4. I met two women who asked me to help them with a strawbale project in france

5. I visited some conventional strawbalehouses and got allot of information allready

6. I followed a lecture on lime (<”kalk”) finnishes and the possibilities for coating strawbale walls. I also got allot of practical information on loam (<”Leem”) finnishes…

7. The plan of building a log house would have taken more time than anticipated: it seems they have problems coating the logs in winter… so I would have to wait untill the winter is over.

Another reason why the loghouse is taking more time than expected is because all formalities aren’t working out that well… my notarian is still inspecting everything… (luckily there is a legal timelimit to this… in my case 4 months).

So I would have to spend 4 to 5 months more without starting to build… this would be enough time to gather all information on low impact building (as I allready have lots of that)

8. Building the low-impact house was my goal and building the loghouse first would just be a time- and money consuming activity…

9. By now I have assembled so much information on green building that there aren’t many secrets to the  benefits and downsides of each building method… so I’m able to make a prutty good decision on which buildingmethods I can and want to use.

The only problem I’m having is the lack of experience… sure I know allot from the books I’ve read, from my studies as an architect, from things I have visited and so on… but there is a huge difference between reading it and doing it.

Building with strawbales is easy… but building a wooden structure in a good way isn’t that easy… especially if you aren’t using any professional tools… and doing most by hand…

I might build a loadbearing strawbale house, in stead of one with a post and beam structure, but I don’t like the idea of having a 6 Ton roof above my head, knowing it is supported by straw…

Once the straw get’s wet I would have to take it all out and by result dismantel the roof aswell… This would be a good sollution if I was making a (cheaper) temporary house… which i’m not!

So! Here’s the new plan!

Before/during winter:

1.  Break down the existing structures on the ground

2. Gather more information on strawbale building and alternative building methods

3. Collect willow branches (<”wilgentakken”) for building with strawbales (more information later on)

4. Design the low-impact house, make an architectural plan and model

After winter:

5. Make a foundation

6. Get the wood

7. Prepare the wood

Before summer:

8. Assemble the wooden structure

9. Prepare the roof

During Summer:

10. Build the strawbale walls + put in the glass and doors

11. Do all the plumbing and integration of the low-impact sollutions

12. FInnish the walls and floor

13. Make a little dance of joy!

As you can see there’s allot to be done!

During the building proces I’ll provide you from all information and visuals on the building method. Aswell as the time I’m putting into the proces.

I’ll also try to put on allot of information about other methods I won’t be using and the reasons why I’m not using them… (they might be usefull for other projects).

So.. that’s it for now…

Normally I’ll have a meeting with my architect next week about the new plan and hopefully we can figure something out we are both enthousiastic about.

Oohyeah! For people wanting to build a loghouse, this is the firm I was planning to work with:

Rhino Loghouse: http://www.rhino-loghouses.nl

Some time ago I visited “De 12 ambachten”, wich is some kind of research center for ecological living sollutions in the Netherlands.

The good thing about this center is that they have been experimenting allot and they share all their experience at their homebase in Boxtel.

You can visit their site on: http://www.de12ambachten.nl

Even though it was very intersting to see all those nice little “inventions” in real, I didn’t really discover somehting new. What I saw where sollutions I had allready found on the internet.

Another big dissapointing thing about this organisation is that they are asking allot of money for their paperbacks… I can understand that it’s not easy to keep financing their project, but still … more than 60 Euro’s for a paperback on purifying water.. come’on! I can get that information right from the internet aswell…

So in short: it’s worth the visit if you really don’t have a clue of all different kind of ecological inventions , but don’t expect too much if you have been doing some research on the subject allready…

Some interesting sollutions they had:

This is a scalemodel of a composting toilet they invented and experimented with… For those who don’t know what a composting toilet is: I’ll put a page online with all the information about this topic (and many others)….

The goal was to have a turning device that would “inject” fresh air in the Humanure to stimulate the composting proces. Sadly enough the design became too big to incorporate in a existing situation.

Another remark: A few hours after visiting “De twaalf ambachten”, I also visited “De kleine aarde”, wich is an organisation with somewhat the same goals as “De twaalf ambachten”, but they have grown bigger and more commercial. They also had a composting toilet and after visiting the little room and checking out the composting unit underneath, I discovered that there was no smell at all! So I went to ask the owners if they turn the pile upside down once in a while… and they didn’t… Another good resource on this subject is “The humanure handbook” (by Joseph Jenkins), you can download it for free at http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure_contents.html

It also states that turning of the compost pile isn’t really helping the composting proces…(thank god, you don’t have to get your hands filthy!)

This is a “finoven” (more info on this subject will be provided later). They discovered that by putting a wall next to the oven and using water tubes running through the wall, they can capture enough heat from the oven to use as a central heating system. Also this method isn’t new, but it’s intersting to see it at work…

A section vieuw of the “heating wall”…

Allright… this is a “drying system” for frute, vegetables, meat or whatever…

The special thing about this “instrument” is the way they force ventilation by using a “heatpipe”.

There are two ways of stimulating ventilation:

1. By airmovement outside the structure and by using a chimney. The wind will “pull” the air through the chimney as it is moving in a perpendicullar sense to the ax of the chimney.

2. By using a difference in temperature. Hot air is lighter than cold air and will (as you all know) move above the cold air (like oil on water) as a result.

This system uses both principles. A chimney will allow wind to pull the air through the cabin and as they have put a glass clock around the metal pipe, this will become hot and by result the air will start moving upwards aswell..

Underneath another detailed vieuw of the “heatpipe”.

You might ask yourself “Building a loghouse.. isn’t this bad for the environment? cutting all the trees…”

Well.. you’ve got a good point there… but from all building methods, this one is the least energy-consuming! The only thing you need to do is chop the trees and work the wood. The good thing about loghouses in stead of plain “chalets” is that the logs are easy to make and don’t use as much wood. Two things happen with the tree that’s chopped…

1. They take of all the branches and the outer part of the bark (that’s the part where al the little animals like to live = not good to have in a house!)

2. They chop a dove-tale ending on both sides of the log

and that’s all there is to it!

Next you start placing one log on top of the other and build your house!

A chalet is made of shelfs. making these shelfs is a rather energetic proces and you have allot of wood going dada… Often only the centerpart of the trunk can be used and with every cut you loose wood by the widthness of the saw…

The only not so environmental friendly part about building a loghouse is the transportation of the wood. But, hey? Whatever you build… you’ll always need materials, right?

If you are lucky and you can get cheap wood from somewhere near and you also find a sawmill in the neighbourhood than you can really go low-impact.

In my case I have some trees, but to cut them down, transport them to the sawmill and back would be a waste of those beautifull trees… my goal is to live in nature, not to break it down and build a house with it…

Or as the great Satish Kumar states: “Tree is good in itselfs, tree is not good because it is good for human” … “When we take something from nature for survival.. that we should take with gratitude, not as a right”.

(http://revver.com/video/703871/deep-ecology)

The wood I’ll be using comes from a “controlled chopping area”, this means they grow these trees just for choping them and for every tree they chop, they have put another somewhere else…

I hope I’ll be able to buy myself a little forest I could use for this kind of purpose when I will build the low-impact house… it’s also very interesting to have a small forest just for firewoods… If you use it wisely, you can grow wood for a heating system without damaging nature! (More about this later…)

Allright… this is the design of the Loghouse…

The roof will be a “green roof”… wich doesn’t mean it’s painted green, but there will be plants growing on top of it…

It’s about 10m long and about 6m width

At the back I wl build anarea for the composting toilet and maybe a shower… i’m still thinking of the roofdesign of this part… I might want to put a waterbarrel on top of it…

This is an impression off what the inside is going to look like…

Well… you need allot of imagination to make something nice out of it… but the good thing is: I HAVE LOTS OF THAT

That’s it for now !!!

Well…

The loghouse will come at the same spot as the chalet… so that has to come down first..

Breaking down the chalet

I allready took out all the pannels…very carefully so i can use them again… Now the skeleton is still standing and I’ll have to break it down with brutal force… release the beast!

Putting sticks in the ground to make a sawing mould for firewoods

At the farm in Zottegem I found an antique tool for sharpening knifes. As no-one has been using it for ages I took it to Stekene to use it for sharpening my axe.. It works smooth!

The loghouse is going to be on the spot of the chalet. This way I’ll be more or less in the middle of the ground and I won’t have to bother about any neighbours or so…

There where “Roddodendrons” everywhere! So I cut most of them down with a small but powerfull saw. This way the ground allready looked allot nicer and I am able to enter without having wood poking me everywhere, hehe…

I gathered all wood and put them on piles to clear them afterwards… the big pieces I will use as  firewood. After taking away most of the rododendrons I started to see the chalet nextdoor… I’ll plant other trees to cover the view afterwards..

As you can see, I can allready park my car on the ground itselfs! before it had to stand on the road in front, hehe

Now I’m able to see the barn !!!

I also cleared the way to the chalet…

Allright.. here’s the current state of the project:

I have a selling agreement with Geert and Christine. This doesn’t mean the ground is mine… it means I have to look for a notary who can check out everything about the ground… wether there are fines on it or if there is rubbish in the ground and so on…

It takes about 2 to 4 months before he’s ready and we can sign the notarial deed (>”Notariële akte”)…

This can happen any moment now!

Meanwhile I take advantage of clearing the forest a little and start designing a loghouse!

Let me just show you what the ground looked lke when I bought it…

This is about all I could see standing on the little road in front of the ground…

The jungle

After a while I could find a little path going through the forest…

At the back of the ground there was a wooden barn full of broken down stuff…

The barn: You can’t see it from this point of view, but the roof of the barn came down long ago….

A little further to the north of the ground I could see an old chalet standing

The chalet

Well…. as you can see there’s a lot of stuff to get busy with!

“All great ideas need a great plan.”

At first the plan was to start building a low-impact building right away… but here is what I was thinking:

- I need to find all materials

- I need to get building experience really quick

- It will be difficult to legalise the low-impact building… it might take a long while untill I can convince local authorities

So… here’s the plan…

1. Buy the ground

2. Buy a second hand chalet

3. Break down the chalet and transport it to Stekene

4. Rebuild the chalet

5. Spend the winter in the chalet

6. Start experimenting with all kinds of low-impact methods

7. Gather all materials for building

8. Build low-impact house

9. Break down the chalet

–> it all went down in step 3…

I bought this very nice chalet for only 1 500 Euro’s… And the seller (Ignace de Coster… remember this name!!!) even told me that if I couldn’t break it down I get my money back.. If I could break it down and build it up again than I should pay him an extra 1 500 euro’s…Sounds fare, right?

The chalet

So one week after the agreement I started breaking down the chalet.. After only one day I discovered it was impossible to break it down without ruining it… As you can see on the image below… all pannels where attached by nails in stead of screws… so I had to break all the pannels… actually the whole chalet was build like this…

So… I call him to tell him it’s impossible to break down the chalet and to claim my money back…

Mister De Coster sadly enough didn’t keep his word and forgot to mention all about this agreement in the contract… so… bye bye 1 500 Euro’s!

Yeah I know… it’s all my stupid fault… but hey… I believe in the kindness of people!

So… that brings us to a new plan!

1. Buy the ground

2. Buy wood

3. Build a loghouse (>”Blokhut”) on ground 1

4. Experiment with low-impact methods

5. Build a low-impact building on ground 2

6. Start living in the low-impact building

7. Leave the loghouse on ground one and use it as an extra room or for renting it to people

Yeah! this seems like a better plan, doesn’t it?

Let’s do it !

Actually the whole “Low-impact”-idea started a little before buying the ground…

About one and a half year ago I moved out from my parents place to live in a farm in Zottegem (as you can see on the picture below)…

I’m still living there with four other people: Charis (the decorator) , Koen ( the trailer man), Wouter (the tree man) and Cyriel (the angry man)…

I won’t bother you with the whole story about this living society… but as you can imagine, it’s not always easy to live together with all different kinds of personalities..

Wouter is my companion in the whole farm-adventure. We seem to have allot in common and as he is a decade (he’s not going to like this) older he allready experienced allot of things I still need to experience… So he helps me out with the whole low-impact project and I help him out with his business (being a tree-worker and importing products for treeworkers).

One of the things I really wanted to get experienced in is having my own vetg-garden… and this is actually the beginning of the low-impact project! I learned to make up a shedule for growing vegetables and taking care of them. And as you can see on the pictures below … it was a great succes!

Offcourse this is only a small experiment… it will be allot more difficult to start a garden in the forest (bad soil and less sunlight)…

When I start growing vegetables in the forest I’ll also put step-by-step information on the net…. but for now you guys have to be satisfied with these impressions…

The whole garden, about 1 month after preparing it

The first salade-plant came out… sadly enough it got eaten by animals

Potatoe plants

Onions

Tomatoes

Delicious Strawberries

Raddishes

… and lots more!

I learned allot and I will take this experience to the next stage: The woods!

Living in a trailer was my first idea… I also found out all regulations about this way of living. If you think of doing it the legalised way: don’t… you get a piece of land where you are able to put your trailer, together with a 100 other gypsies… most of the time the piece of land is situated near a highway or something.. not nice at all… The best way to live in a trailer is to put it next to a farmhouse or so. It’s allowed to put one trailer next to a house without having the need of a permit.

Because I don’t like to be dependent of other people to put the trailer and also to transport it (by tractor!) I didn’t want to live like this.

After this I was thinking of buying a cheap recreation ground without building permit to put a small house… but in the end.. it’s just a waste of money… you’re really screwed when they force you to break down your house…

So… after finding out all the stuff about what is and isn’t possible I decided to find a recreation area with building permit for myself. It took me a few months untill I found what I was looking for.

At first I was looking on the internet…

Here are some links where you can find recreation grounds:

I’m very pleased with my current job. So I’m not planning to resign in the near future. This is offcourse a determinant for the the area where I ‘m going to build the house. If I choose to live low-impact I’ll have to make sure that the distance between my permanent living place , my work and the Hamadryadproject will be as small as possible. 

So I decided to just hit the road and check out some of the recreation areas in Oost-Vlaanderen (where my job is situated)
. I found out that just by walking around there and asking people if they know a ground for sale in the area, I was discovering good opportunities much faster!

It took me three visits and I found my little paradise in Stekene (between antwerp and Gent, near Sint-Niklaas) !

I met up with two very friendly people (Geert and Christine), who now became more friends than just sellers.

They had three pieces of land for sale who were connected one another. They heared out my story and as I was telling them about the idea of low-impact living, they got more and more enthousiastic… At first the price they asked was the normal price, but then I could only buy 1 piece and that could be a problem. Because if the future neighbours wouldn’t respect “nature’s code” I could be caught between two betonn walls … So, a little dissapointed I just went on searching for another ground. After a while my father told me that he was willing to help me out with the costs of the ground.. and that opened a whole other perspective. I asked Geert and Christine to make a price for two grounds and all three grounds… In the end they came up with a price I just couldn’t refuse!

And I agreed to buy all three grounds… a total of 2500 m²! (three times 850 m²)