Thermowalls are up

The thermowalls are build up now. In about 10 days we fill concrete.

Meanwhile we are taking a little break from the building itself and start to look at things we would like to put inside the house. We need to make decisions on what kind of floor we wanna have and the plan is to get tiles for the bathrooms. So we are enjoying a weekend with the whole family in Trondheim. We found a nice apartment to rent. Hotels are a pain to find if you are travelling with more than 2 kids. So if you need alternatives to a hotel I recommend "Trondheim Leilighets Hotell" (www.tlh.no)

Basement walls II

The work on the basement walls continues this week in the evenings. Of course not as fast as if we had a full working day but you can see the progress.

Two walls nearly done (the "window frame" missing in two windows)

The next window on the third wall just needs a tiny little piece to be finished

This will be the view when you lie on the balcony in the first floor

The view out the basement window

The plan is to finish building the polystyrene walls until the weekend. Should be manageable.

Basement walls

This weekend we started to put up the polystyrene blocks for the basement walls. This is basically just the insulation. The blocks will be filled with concrete. To strengthen the whole structure we put in steel. But I think we should let the pictures speak for themselves.

The first window is done - it will be a bathroom window

We got water! :)

Most of the weekend we spend carrying down all the polystyrene wall elements. They were being put in order by Roger so they would not be in the way when we start putting up the walls. When Roger got home today after work, he told me that someone had been on the construction side and moved things around. We were a little surprised and wondered who would do things like that. So we drove by after dinner to check it out. Nothing was missing or broken, all the things had been moved with care, we only found some tire tracks. After some time looking around we found out that it must have been someone from the community - cause the water was now connected. :)

The wall elements - 10 cm polystyrene on each side, going to be filled with concrete

Had the water-stream been black we could have shouted "We found oil" :)

Concrete

It was raining a little bit today but fortunately it was not so much that todays work was in danger. A little after 12 o'clock today the pumping truck came to pump the concrete into the foundation we prepared the last days. Shortly after 3 more trucks arrived with the concrete.

The pumping truck arrives

Preparations for the pumping

The first truck with concrete

The pump is being put into place

The concrete starts to pour

First we took the outer rim so the concrete could set a little bit

Afterwards the hard work started to distribute everything evenly

And this is how it looks in the end - nice and smooth

Foundation for the balcony pillars

To prevent the surface from drying out and make the concrete crack we sprayed it with some liquid plast. And in the end we put in reinforcements for the walls and the pillars for the balcony.

The foundation with the reinforcement for the outer wall

Foundation

This weekend we focused on getting ready for pouring concrete. On friday a truck came and delivered polystyrene for the insulation of the floor and also later for the wall elements.

Roger carried all blocks down on friday evening 

On Saturday morning Roger went to get all the stuff needed for putting out the radon barrier. Later in the morning Stein came and together they started with leveling out the ground to overcome the height difference of 7 cm.

A lot of whellbarrows with sand where needed to level out the ground

Pauline checks that daddy is doing a good job

After the ground was levelled they put the polystyrene out. On the sides they put out 7 cm pressure resistent polystyrene and in the middle 20 cm with regular polystyrene.

With the polystyrene in place we could now roll out the radon protection. We now have to hope for a dry night, so we do not have to pour the concrete into a water pool.

We rolled out several lanes

The overlap we taped with a special tape

The construction workers take a little break :)

Soon ready for the concrete...

Tomorrow we are getting the concrete, so hopefully the first part of the basement - the floor - is soon done. :)

Property

It took us some time to find a property we liked. In the beginning we were not sure if the property we chose in the end is the right one. Here in Rørvik alternatives are missing and in the end we found out that for our purposes the property we chose in Svahylla is perfect. It could have been a little wider - the house fits exactly in the designated building area but now we will not have to spend the whole time mowing the lawn next summer.

From the property we have a wonderful view over Rørvik. In the evenings you can see "Hurtigruta" when they come into Rørvik harbour. I am very much looking forward to sitting on the balcony in summer and watch the ships as they come in. And you can also see when Statoil is upping the gasoline prices... :)

This is how it looked like when we bought it. Hard to imagine that it is possible to build a house here.

Here are some pictures of the property earlier this year.

 This one is taken in January after blowing away the mountain and before taking away all the huge stones.

 These last two are from March when they were done with making the property look like a place where you actually can put up a house.

In April Nærøysund Entrepreneur started with levelling out the property and prepare it for work on the foundation. When they were done someone from the community was there to measure out where the house has to stand.

 Here one can also get an impression of the view we are going to get.

Until week 28 we have to be done with the foundation and the basement. Then someone from Hetlandhus will come and check that everything is as it should be. We have now on June 3rd started with the work on the foundation. The first step was to place the house on the property according to the data we have from the drawings. We also checked that the property is properly levelled and found out that there is a hight difference of ca. 7 cm from the northwest to the southeast corner. So we will have to fill up with some sand to even that out.

Yesterday the plumber was here to hook up all the pipes for wateroutlets and toilets.

It is progressing :)