We went and saw the chief engineer/head planner guy yesterday. As part of the building regulations we have to employ both of these. Fortunately we found someone who can do both jobs and seems quite good. He works for the army as a civilian engineer as far as I understand, but has their permission to run his own company doing these building things. The head planner makes sure the building company did the plans correctly and helps with any design work and checks quotes. Then as the chief engineer he is responsible for keeping the builders in line and making sure there are no building mistakes as well as arranging the council inspections along with fire, electrical, etc, inspections. He already found one problem in the plans. When we converted the cupboard/toilet area into shower/toilet the architect left it as a wooden wall, it should have been changed to brick to avoid rot there later on.

Finnish lesson for the day:

Pääsuunnittelija = Head planner Vastaava rakennusmestari = Head building engineer/foreman

Went for a bit of a visit to the section today. There are quite a lot of wild raspberries growing there, so we thought that we should pick them. Last weekend we were away and it has been pretty dry and hot, so we didn’t expect too much. But after about an hour of trampling raspberry bushes and avoiding bugs, flies and bees we managed to collect about a handful :-). Most of them were dried up or pretty disgusting looking. The rest had worms in them and there were just a few good ones scattered around.

One of the biggest surprises was that we had our first visitor! One of the guys from work and his wife had been looking at buying a terrace house in a nearby town and took the back road past our place about 15 minutes after we arrived there. They noticed our car on the way past, otherwise they wouldn’t have had a clue where to find our section.

Visited the county council on Tuesday and took them the house plans to look at. They gave some suggestions of things to change for the building permit. Also asked about marking the land boundaries. According to them they should already be marked and they gave us a copy of the paper with the details on it (which the real-estate agent should have also had). So next time we are there we will have to look out for some stone markers. Although it was done in about 1961, so we will see if they are still there. Sent the house plans back to the architect yesterday with all the changes marked.

Last weekend went and cleaned up some of the trees we cut down. Stripped the branches and stacked them. It was pretty hot, so we didn’t stay too long. Will probably be out there again on Saturday to finish up the rest of the them.

We finally have the initial house plans now. Just after the last entry we met with the house company and arranged the plans. They were supposed to take only a couple of weeks, but have been almost four. So now we should approve/make changes to the plans and send them back. After that they make the full house plans that we can then use for the heating/ventilation and electricity planning, etc.

Last weekend Pia’s parents came down and brought a load of wooden pallets for us to put on the section. They will eventually be used to store the house components when they are ready (probably in November). We also went out to the land with them and cleared some of the smaller scrub and trees. Pia’s father brought a chainsaw and brush-cutter with him as well. As it turns out the council still haven’t marked the section. We saw some surveyors out in that area about three weeks ago and they were marking other sections out, so we thought they would have done ours by now as well, but no such luck. So we had to go a bit easy knocking the trees down just in case we managed to get a few that didn’t actually belong to us :-). We are thinking of going out there this weekend and cleaning up some of the wood we cut down and stacking it somewhere. Have to figure out where to put it yet though. Also discovered last weekend that the mosquitoes out there are the size of horses and I have the bites to prove it. There is supposed to be a bumper crop of them this year, so hopefully it isn’t always that bad.

Got a scanner now as well, so makes it a bit easier to put the house things online. Here are the initial plans we have at the moment. I translated some bits to English, so hopefully it is all understandable.

Frustrations today. The ground inspection was supposed to happen today, but at 1pm the guy doing it called to complain that he didn’t have all the information he needed to do the study, things like the planned location of the house, etc.

The funny thing is that Pia had talked with him several times last week and asked repeatedly if he had all the documents and plans he needed and his answer every time was “yes, no problem”. Needless to say he got an earful in return. From what Pia said he was also getting his other ear filled by someone at the site, so hopefully he learnt his lesson.

On the brighter side the house agent said that they can actually do most of the building license planning for us. So we meet her next Monday. Once they do some basic plans and the land is properly sub-divided and marked then we can get the ground inspection started again.

So the things still ongoing or need to be done very soon are the lainhuudatus, asemapiirros, rakennuslupa, maaperätutkimus and the completion of the kiinnitys.

Finnish lesson for the day:

Tontti = Section Omakotitalo = Own house/Detached house Kiinteistö = Real estate Lainhuudatus = Entry to the land register / legal confirmation of possession Asemapiirros = Site plan Rakennuslupa = Building license Maaperätutkimus = Ground inspection Kiinnitys = Mortage/lien on property

Well, the land is officially ours now (as of the 31st May), or the bank’s, depending on how you want to look at it.

In the end it came down to either getting a chunk of land in a small town costing about 45,000EUR for 1000sq metres. Or taking the one we did, which is 6400 sq metres for about the same price. Now the only thing left to do is figure out what to do with all the extra space :-). The choice becomes even less difficult when you find that most of the small towns in the area don’t have water or sewage connections either.

Anyway, for starters, the location.

Map of the greater Helsinki area. Click for a larger view.

The land is on the western side of the greater Helsinki area, just west of Espoo. About the same distance to work, since at the moment we are on the opposite side of town. Hopefully miss all the traffic in the mornings as well, but we will see. At the moment it takes about 45 minutes or more each morning/evening and traffic is quite often at a standstill.

The section is technically in Kylmälä, or just outside the small village of Lapinkylä and about 100m from the edge of a lake (Tampaja).

The section itself is a bit of an odd, shape, but generally seems okay. We are waiting on the ground report so that we can plan more of the building details. Once we get that we can start on the building plans, etc. We should also get an idea if it is worth installing the ground heat pump or just an air exchange system for heating the house.

Area map and section (in pink). Click for a larger view.

In the meantime here is a map of the area and a few photos of the land (thoughtfully provided by the land agents web site 🙂