Another weekend and some more trees cut down. We ordered a portable room for the contractors and to keep stuff in during the week. The rental place thought they wouldn’t have one available for another week at least, so we thought we could clear some space for it during this weekend. Turns out they found a slightly larger one and delivered it on Friday. And since there wasn’t anywhere to put it, they dropped it in the middle of the driveway :-(. Hopefully using the digger they can push it somewhere a bit more practical. Close to the power box would be best, but I’m not sure if they can push it there. So today we cleared some space to the right of the house and tomorrow we will move the tree pile away from the power box just in case.

Also, the base fill for the foundations has been put in place. So hopefully the foundations will be started on Monday as planned. A few more guests as well. There were rabbit tracks everywhere today and we had a quick visit from a woodpecker while we were working. Luckily it didn’t show any interest in the house wood!

Panorama from the same position as before. As you can see we have a few bits and pieces for the house. Mainly roofing parts so far.

Well, its finally started. The digging for the foundations started on Monday and there is already quite a big hole there! There is a panorama below looking towards roughly towards the south (the actual section heads down to the left of the digger) so you can see all the work so far. I took the picture on Tuesday, so they had just started, only difference now is that the hole is deeper. They are going down about 1.5 metres in total. The work on the foundations starts next week.

Also, the first of the house package arrived on Tuesday/Wednesday. We went out there after work on Wednesday to see what should be covered with tarpaulins. Seems like most of the wood is already wrapped in paper or plastic, so nothing very urgent at the moment. The rest, which isn’t covered, such as the roof trusses have obviously been stored outside for a while already and are covered in snow. So they can wait till the weekend when we can actually see what we are doing.

Today also ordered a workroom/storage place to the section, but that won’t arrive for another week at least. Decided on the fireplace as well and waiting on the offer from the house company. Also still waiting on the quote from the floor heating and air conditioning company.

The panorama is taken from about 10 metres from the road looking roughly south or southwest on Tuesday. Hopefully I can keep taking more of them from the same location in the future. As normal you can click on the picture for a larger one. But your browser probably shrinks the larger image since it is so wide. In Internet Explorer, leave the mouse over the image and when the small orange box appears at the lower right, click on it. In a recent Mozilla/Netscape, click on the image to toggle the size.

The start of a new year and the beginnings of work on the house. Well, next week anyway. But back to the things happening over the last two weeks or so.

We had the meeting with the land registrar mid December and the details of the of the land transfer have been finalised. The land now has a name, which is “Kevätkartano” as mentioned previously. That is “Spring Mansion” in English. Since then we have survived Christmas and done a bit more tree clearing on the section. I think most of the areas that should be clear are. Maybe the waste water drainage area is still not clear quite, but close enough.

The only main thing is that it has been quite warm for several days during the last couple of weeks and everything there is really, really wet. Seems to have all turned into a bit of a swamp. We had to fill in the ditch around the power supply box to make sure it didn’t get drowned. I think it is mainly surface water though since the ground was packed hard and dry all through summer. But I guess we find out when they start digging for the foundations.

Had a meeting earlier this month with our rakennusmestari and went over the things that need to be done soon. We also delivered the plans for the foundations to him as well that had arrived a few days before from the foundation planner. The main things are that the foundations will be a bit more expensive than a normal house because the ground is quite soft. But mainly that will be extra concrete. The worst case would have been if they had to drive in stone piles, but we don’t need to go that far. Probably the foundations are a bit hard to explain, so I’ll scan one of the plans sometime and put them here. Our rakennusmestari has gotten quotes for the foundation job and will select a contractor for that soon. We also looked at the details of the building permit, but he will meet with the county council next week to go over that with them as well as part of the “starting meeting”. He also suggested we find a contractor for the well, and Pia has last week found someone who seems quite good and has already given an estimate.

This week we have a meeting with the interior planner and the electrical planner to go over the lighting and other details. That should finalise those changes and we also have to confirm the plumbing needed. Speaking of the electricity we have the bills for the installation of that already. The distribution box they put in the yard came to 1000 EUR along with another 1000 EUR for installation and cabling! Then they sent us an estimated power bill for 250 EUR (2 months)!

Also during this week we have a meeting with the land registrar (I think that is the closest translation) to officially get our piece of land separated from the other land of the original owner. Once we do that it becomes an independent section registered to us. And it also appears that we have to give it a name! Suggestions welcome, but the frontrunner is a Finnish translation of the original Swedish, Vårgårda. The Finnish would be Kevätkartano or “spring mansion”.

Got a loan of a chainsaw last weekend as well. Now that things are getting a bit close we thought we would clear the last of the larger trees in the location of the house and waste water drainage area. Saturday was fine, but about -3, so quite a nice day compared to the last few weekends. Days are quite short though now, sun is hardly above the horizon at about 10am and it is gone again about 3.30pm, it barely gets above the trees at the end of the section though the whole day. But we managed to spend nearly 4 hours chopping things up. We did get a bit of a surprise when we arrived at the section for the day. Just after we got out of the car Pia noticed conclusive proof that we have a moose infestation! Later during the day I almost stepped in further proof.

Pictures, left to right. Moose print at the end of our driveway (about where the back of the car is). Our ever growing pile of wood and the pile of clippings the moose was eating. The interior plan the designer came up with.

Hmmm. Been a bit slack lately and not put anything here. But anyway, some news. The building permit has arrived. And arrived to the tune of 1000 EUR too! But still, it means that everything can pretty much start now.

In the last few weeks we have done some more cleaning up of the felled trees on the land and stacked a bit more firewood. The electricity has been installed and the phone cable is on the way as well. We have had a couple of days of snow as well. Typically it only snowed on the days we actually wanted to get something done!

Still to arrive is the foundations plan. We are expecting that this week. We also had the plan by the interior designer. She has suggested a few changed that we are still thinking about. The house company doesn’t have anything against them, so we have to discuss it further and see what happens.

In the next couple of weeks there is a meeting with the county council about the start of construction and then the foundations should start. The house materials arrive the beginning of next year.

Some pictures, from left to right: Power supply, then car in driveway, ditch for power cable, view up the road, all from two weeks ago. The power supply is from end of October. You can contrast the picture along the road with this one from a couple of months ago. Don’t let the pictures worry you though. The snow has gone again and we have been back to drizzle for almost the last two weeks.

Well, something is happening! Today we got the driveway half completed and the trench for the electricity is dug.

Although the weather couldn’t have been much worse. Today was the first real snowfall of the winter and it is quite early this year. It snowed overnight and kept snowing until after lunchtime, eventually we ended up with about 10cm or more. Made life difficult, especially considering we hadn’t changed the tires on the car to winter ones yet :-(. But we managed to survive :-).

Lea and Risto (Pia’s parents) came down for the weekend and also brought along Pia’s aunt and her partner (who live just out of Helsinki). Risto had arranged for a local guy to do the driveway and trench. Not the best conditions, but he managed to do both and we even had a BBQ :-).

Lea and Risto brought a tent with them and that was set up under the trees along the section boundary. The guy who brought the tractor couldn’t get the fill for the driveway today, so he cleared the drainage ditch and we installed the pipe Risto brought. Then using some of the dirt from the driveway he covered the pipe and smoothed out the surface. Risto also brought some sheeting with him that goes between the driveway base and the upper layer. It prevents the mixing of the layers (I’m not sure why, but it probably prevents frost damage). During the week the guy will finish the rest of the drive with a truck-load of dirt and then flatten it all out. He also dug the trench for the power cable. It is about 10 metres long and had to be just under a metre deep. Just as well he did it, the ground is quite full of tree roots, so it wouldn’t have been much fun to dig it out myself. Risto had the chainsaw with him as well, so we cleared all the trees that might be in the way and added them to our wood piles. 

Here are some pictures from today. You can compare these with the ones from last weekend! From left to right: Before starting, tractor making the driveway, Lea making coffee, the semi-completed driveway, BBQ time in the tent.

Well, its all go again. Pia spent the last week trying to get hold of the house rep and the rakennusmestari and organise the heating info for the building permit. Now finally everyone has answered and given the information we need. Tomorrow the final paper is going to the county council. Next weekend we should hopefully get the driveway entrance constructed and the trench for the power cable. Also we decided to get the maaperätutkimus (ground inspection) done just to be sure. Once that is completed the foundations plan can be completed. And hopefully by then the building permit is ready.

Last weekend we went out to the section on Saturday and Sunday and cut up the trees that were still lying there from the previous time. Took nearly 3 hours on Saturday and another 5 on Sunday to finish them all, but we eventually ended up with a pile taller than Pia. We also managed to cut down a few more where the driveway will be going. Saturday was pretty wet at first, but dried out a bit. Sunday was mostly fine and dry and about 3 degrees, at one point there was a slight shower of snow pellets! But still pretty hot work.

Here are some pictures from the weekend, starting from left: The construction sign, the section looking south on Saturday, looking down the road on Saturday and looking north towards the road on Sunday. Finally, the end result of the weekend work.

If you compare these to the summer pictures earlier you probably notice a bit of a difference!

Last Monday (06.10.2003) we collected up the stack of papers that we have spent weeks preparing according to the instructions we got from the county council only to find that they have changed the rules at the beginning of October.

Now they want another form completed, this one having to do with specific heat and insulation calculations for the house. We passed that one on to the rakennusmestari and he passed it on to the house company. Until that is completed they won’t go ahead with the building permit. On the good side it is supposed to be a quiet time of year and the application should only take 4 or 5 weeks once they finally start.

Also visited the property on Sunday with Pia’s brother. It was wet and only about 10 degrees, but we managed to clear up some more of the trees that have been cut down by the electricity company. Will go again next weekend as well. We probably have to clear some of the trees where the driveway is going to be and mark out where the trench for the electricity cable will go.

Visited the section today to put up the “building” sign. All construction projects are required to place a sign up that details the builder, owner and other relevant details. The house company gave us one the other day, just a corrugated plastic thing. We were going to attach it to one of the trees on the roadside, but when we arrived there it turns out the electricity company has been along and cut all the roadside trees down. Most of them were pretty close to the power lines before, so they finally got around to doing something about it. They left all the trees just lying there, so we cleaned up a few of them and moved the other bits of wood we had cut previously to a place a bit more out of the way. Have to go out again next week to move the rest of them. While we were there one of the neighbours (from across the road) turned up to see what the noise was. He was quite happy that someone was going to move in across the road since they are only living there during summer. So it looks like winter will be a quiet time there. Only one of our immediate neighbours seems to live there all year round!

Pia talked to the rakennusmestari yesterday as well and it was agreed that we take the building permit application (and all the other papers) to the county council on Monday morning and he will go there sometime later to sign all the bits he has to sign.

Yesterday the approval for the driveway connection to the road arrived. That was one of the last main parts for the building permit. This week we also picked up the first version of the electricity and water/sewage plans. Hopefully we can deliver all those papers to the county council for the building permit this week.

Other things done are the house specification papers for the foundation planning. They have all been collected and sent to the planning engineer. He probably wants us to do the ground survey before he makes any detail plans though. We also arranged for the electricity connection to the section. They install the main switch box in the garden (or where ever we want to put it). This is the main electricity point for during the building and also the main box and meter point when the house is completed. For the installation of the box (3 x 25A connections) they charge us a nice round 1000 EUR. That’s the good news, the bad news is that I have to dig a trench 0.7m deep and 0.4m wide and about 10 – 15m long for them to lay the main power cable in :-(. That is probably needed in a minimum of about 5 weeks time.