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.

Had a meeting yesterday with the rakennusmestari and the sales person from the house company. Seems that most of the details are sorted out now and who does what is a bit clearer, but we now have a list of things to do. First the building permit needs to be delivered to the county council and then we need to arrange the electricity connection to the land for the building start. The planning for the foundations needs to be done now as well and also the initial plans for electricity wiring and water should be completed. The permit for the driveway connection has to be chased up as well. It has been over a month since we applied for that.

During the last week some more of the plans have arrived as well. The specifications for the roof trusses and the requirements for the foundations were included. The house company only completes from the foundation upwards so we need to get the foundations plans and construction done ourselves. The foundation work can start immediately after the permit is granted.

Here are a few of the pictures from our section I promised previously. This is from a few weeks ago during summer when we were clearing some of the smaller trees.

Got the last of the neighbours approval papers back on Friday, so now we have to start on the building permit. Otherwise not much happening at the moment. Just some new versions of the elevations with some added colour.

Sent all the approval papers a couple of weeks ago to the neighbours and have gotten all but one back so far. Not much else happening at the moment, but will start on the building permit in the next week. Also got a film developed today, so will scan the pictures and put a few online in the next day or so.

Prepared all the papers for the driveway connection to the road during the weekend. And also arranged all the papers for the neighbours. Have to get permission from all the neighbours for the building permit. We also have to submit a request for the driveway to the road department. They approve whether the driveway/road connection is in the right place. We also drove out to the section and marked where it will be. Still mosquitoes out there even though it has cooled down a bit in the last couple of weeks.