Chenogne was our first stop last Saturday. After finding the lot (only 10 minutes from Bastogne) we joked about the fact that the first was the best one, it turned out to be the only one, and we didn’t look any further. This lot fits the bill.

 Now, I can write down all the details, but I’m not gonna… There are quite a few obstacles with which we have to deal before we can celebrate. The local government has to answer a few questions, the bank has to give a loan and then we actually have to buy it.
Until the contract is signed, we stay focussed and keep our heads out of the clouds.

Our architect is happy, and that’s one for the home team.

Update:

We made an offer on the land!

Update #2:

We made a final offer on the land! Lets hope it sticks…

Update #3:

Our offer has been accepted. Now to make everything official, almost there!

The search does continue, of course, but it is painstakingly slow and cumbersome. We search for land on the Internet, then we email for information (i.e. address) and then we travel to Belgium again to take a closer look, if we can find it. And almost all of the time the lots are not adequate. Mostly it’s a south facing issue. This is the most important factor and has to be near perfect, so no buildings, slopes or trees may block the sun, but the south will also be our main view, and we do like a nice view…

We figured that our current line of action isn’t working well enough, at least not quickly enough.

So, this weekend we are spending the whole weekend in Belgium. We leave Friday so we can have an early start on Saturday without having to travel for 3 hours before we can start. Also we keep going until it gets dark, go back to the hotel and try again on Sunday.
The area in which we want to leave is around Bastogne and that’s where we focus our attention. We’re going to drive around and look for “For Sale” signs. This may sound odd, but a lot of the land is sold without broker intervention and these lots you’ll never find on the Internet.
We’re gonna try our luck. Systematically browsing the web and playing it via the realtors obviously doesn’t work for us, so a change of tactic is prudent.

Sun Tzu said: “Security against defeat implies defensive tactics; ability to defeat the enemy means taking the offensive.”

We’re taking the offensive…

Laila is been working on the first Earthship in Holland for the past week and the last time we were there (a month ago) they were still busy pounding tires. There was also work done on the systems which run under the floor.

Since then, another four weeks have past and so much work has been done. The roof is on, the framing for the windows is done and so much more. The Americans have been going at it, the Euro-team is been going at it and a bunch of volunteers have been helping out and learning about Earthships. Mike Reynolds (a.k.a. Mr. Mikey) has been tirelessly explaining his vision and enlightening journalists and visitors alike.

Laila leert ook.., naast het fysieke werk (glas snijden, cement maken, modder gooien en staal buigen, dat laatste heeft ze dan laten doen) was ze mede belast met het begeleiden van de vrijwilligers.

Van wat ik heb begrepen is het in het algemeen “gezellig” geweest. Overdag lol hebben en ’s avonds samen uit eten (en drinken) in goed gezelschap is zo tekenend voor het bouwen van een Earthship.

Laila heeft nog een week te gaan met het Euro-team. Vrijdagavond hadden we een klein vaarwel feestje voor de Amerikanen, zij zijn inmiddels terug naar de US. Het laatste stuk van de bouw wordt gedaan door de Europeanen en zij hebben nog 3 weken om het af te maken.., dat zal moeilijk worden…[/dutch]

The first Earthship being build in Holland with a permit has had its (old)media debut. Our national press picked the story up and ran a photo with a footnote about the tires, the build and the Americans.

If you want visit yourself, here’s the location.

For us it is clear that something needs to be done to sustain our way of living and one of the huge impacts on our environment is the way we put a roof over our heads.

In order to create a clean personal environment and to minimise our footprint we build “green”.

The goal of our adventure is to be as neutral to the environment as possible. We want this to reflect in everything we do. And our house is the largest and longest lasting part of the project. So it will get a lot of attention.

Earthships. A short personal history…

You may well be aware that for a long time we’ve had the intention to build an Earthship, hence the name of the blog. It completely fulfilled our needs the first time we laid eyes upon it.

And our needs at the time were getting off the grid. Earthships are capable of doing just that. Not all the systems they use and the way they’re integrated are completely original, but an Earthship is more than the sum of its parts and the combination works.., beautiful buildings can be made. I even made a floor plan based on the Trott’s Earthship.

But, as time progresses so do plans evolve. We meet people, read books and educate ourselves. Ironically, or maybe it’s just the way of the Universe, we met a young woman during a volunteering weekworking on an Earthship who studies to become an architect specialized in sustainable housing. Isn’t that brilliant? And isn’t that one hell of an opportunity, even our time-lines kinda match.

So, what are we going to build? Honestly.., no idea…, yet. The house still has to be designed.

But I can tell you some of the criteria, and obviously it has to be build as sustainable as possible:

Materials

The materials are, of course, very important, they define the building. As a consequences the choice of material is paramount to anything else, thus they have to be:

• locally purchased (getting it close saves on carbon)
• recyclable (for when the house is torn down, or rebuild)
• from a renewable source (minimizing our carbon and resource footprint)
• non toxic (we do not want to poison ourselves or the environment)
• recycled (mind you, a lot of stuff is already being recycled, disrupting existing recycle chains might do more harm than good)

They can’t, of course, comply to all of the above, but when all materials apply to at least one of the points we win something. When more can be applied even better. Getting our wood, for instance, at a local mill would tick of three of the criteria: locally purchased, renewable, recyclable and non toxic, ahh.., that’s four… not bad.

Not Expensive

Well, this is a cheeky one. Off course we don’t want to spend to much.., one of the reasons is, we don’t have that much to spend. Another reason is an exemplaryone. We’d like to show that people can build a self sufficient and sustainable home.

Off the Grid

As mentioned before, we’d like to be off the grid.
It is possible to buy “green” energy from the utility companies, but you’d still be depended on them. I would like to suggest that anybody who wants green power should choose that option, not everybody can go off the grid, or completly self suficient. I know we can’t in the house we live in at the moment.

So, in conclusion: We still have find a piece of land. After that we start designing the house. But, work is in progress, the architect is investigating possibilities and we are still searching.

Don’t forget to read the previous episodes: Process of Elimination and Off the Grid.

Comments and/or questions are welcome…

As a people, our reliance on the utility companies for power, water and gas is complete.
If anything goes wrong in these vast networks you’re lights will not come on, the tab stays dry or your house stays cold. Any one of the above causes real problems for a lot of people. In the future the cost will go up while the reliability goes down…
We want to minimize our dependence on an overly expensive and unreliable system and use what can be free to everybody.

In short, there are two flavors of “the Grid”. One is the information grid, like the banks, insurances, health care, a car.., anything that requires you to register or enable somebody else to track you, for whatever reason. One lives like this if one wishes to stay under the radar, out of sight.., hidden. This is not the grid we intend to get of..

We’re talking about the Utility Grid. Power, gas, water…

In Holland we pay all sort of taxes to keep everything running, more than 50% of our utility bill are taxes, no kidding. Next to the fact that it can be cheaper, it can also be, a lot, cleaner. Additional bonus of prducing our own is that we minimize our dependence on others. So, how are we going to do it?

Water

Water falls from the sky, at least in the better part of the world, and where we’re going to live for sure. We collect it via the roof and it gets collected in tanks. These tanks will be large enough to sustain us through dry periods.
From the tanks it is pumped through filters and comes out of the tap. We can shower, drink, wash clothes, whatever…
The waste product of these activities is grey water.., it’s dirty but not unusable. The grey water is used to feed indoor planters. The Earthship systems also use the filtered grey water to fill the toilet, which in turn is a low-use flush toilet. The black water from the toilet is flushed outside into a leech field where it is filtered until eventually leaving clean water to enter the ground.

This is of course a simple description of a complicated proces. When we have the design of the house ready, we’ll have a much better understanding of the finished system.

Power

We have one of the greatest energy sources in the universe at our disposal. Our Sun.

Next to wind this an abundant source and we’ll be focusedon utilizing this as much as possible. Depending on where we end up wind energy is certainly a viable option, the wind turbine, however, is visually intrusive and we’ll try to avoid them.

Solar energy is relatively easy to implement. Put a couple (i.e. enough) photovoltaic panels on the roof, have them face south at a proper angle and hook them up to a couple of batteries. The power created is 24 volts on which you can run, at least, the lights in your home. A 24v fridge is also possible.
Systems which use 230v will get their power through an inverter. At the moment the initial costs are still pretty high, but prices are dropping all the time with the systems getting more efficient all the time.

A wind turbine can be hooked up to the same system.

Heat

The house will be solar heated through the windows. Any additional heating will be done by a wood stove.
Warm water will come from a solar water heater with assistance of a regular, but energy efficient, gas heater. The gas will also be used for cooking and will be derived from tanks. We won’t be producing that ourselves…

Simple

As mentioned, the above is of course a simple view of a complex system. As with Earthships the whole point of the building will be its systems. Without them, it will be just a (sustainably build and environment friendly) house.

Later on, when we have a design and are actually building, we’ll get back to these systems with more detail.

Any questions or comments, feel free… and, in case you missed it, don’t miss the first part: Process of Elimination.

• South Facing
• On a Slope
• No Utilities
• Quiet
• Not in Town
• No more than 3 hours away
• Big Enough/Affordable
• Pretty

Some are more important than others and we can put a value on them and then simply run the numbers.., or the process of elimination.

South Facing is imperative and belongs at the top of the list. If it the lot would lie on a north facing hill the sun would be behind the hill for the better part of the year, leaving us cold and powerless (except when you live on the southern hemisphere of course). On a flat piece of land a clear view to the south would be needed.

On a Slope is just really nice. Our architect absolutely likes that. One can use the earth as walls when digging in and a multi level house is easier to build. Also the rain (capture and irrigation) or sewage is easy to direct (downwards). Gravity assists and saves power needed for pumps.

No Utilities is pretty much a must. I wouldn’t mind having them, especially electricity, we could make the meter run backwards if we have plenty and maybe even earn a bit of cash. But the site is more expensive with utilities.., although a telephone line would be nice…

Quietness is something we yearn for. We now live in the city and it’s just never quiet, well maybe in the middle of night it is, we do live in a more quiet part of the city, but still.., the neighbors, the tram, the cars, you name it and it makes noise.

Not in Town, a bit related to all of the above, but this is about people in general. While building we don’t want to bother too many people, it might take a while. When we’re done it comes back to peace and quiet.., mind you, we don’t want to shunt all human contact. We just don’t want to draw curtains to have privacy.

Driving distance is just a personal favorite. Anybody can determine where they’d like to live and at what distance form where they are now. We just need to drive up to Holland regularly, so minimizing the distance saves on frustration.

Big Enough is more in the line of what we want to do, rather than just status, or keeping your neighbours at bay. There are a few things we want to achieve for which we need space. Our own vegetable garden, chickens, a bee hive and maybe a goat or two, for this one needs space.

1000m² is a very bare minimum. The bigger we can get the better. But, every square meter costs money, so there has to be balance. And for the region we’re looking at, 15€, or so, per square meter seems reasonable and 2000m² or more is preferable.

Pretty, well, quite obvious. We want a nice living environment and the surroundings are as important as the building we live in. So it has to feel right.

Mind you, living out in the country is also very beneficial for ones health. We live in Rotterdam and I can tell you, it’s not the healthiest city in the world. Add growing your own organic vegetables and you prolong you life.., at least we hope we will.

Any questions or comments, please let us now…

This monday building on the Earthship Teahouse in Zwolle (The Netherlands) has begun in ernest.
Earthship Biotecture Europe has the lead on the build, but help from the US is also present.
Mike Reynolds will also be on site for a short time to give his expert advise.

Friends of mine are also working on the site, one is even part of the crew for the whole build. Laila is working on the build for two week in October.

It was a Saturday like many before, except now it was raining hard. We figured we’d beat the rain on our way south, but by the time Antwerp was reached the decision was made to head back home, it was to wet. Funny thing was that it was the second time that day we decided not to go on another quest.

After switching driver and finding our way back to the highway the choice to head south was made.., again. This time we stuck with it, and that was a good call.

As usual Laila prepared the trip by finding potentials on the Web. Feeding the information into the TomTom is as easy as pie and then we drive, in this case, for another two hours.

The first lot was messy (many, many tree stumps) and facing the wrong way (i.e. north). The surrounding area was beautiful and it did lie on a dead end road, but it just didn’t cut it.

The second and last lot, we wouldn’t visit the third, was hard to find. For some reason the brokers always give the wrong location on the map and/or the wrong address. Don’t know why, it just is…
Anyhoo.., we did find it and does look promising, I might sound a bit cautious and that’s with good reason. We do not want to get overly exited.., again.

But, it seems a nice big piece for a reasonable price, no utilities and facing south-east.

It used to hold trees and there will be some, or maybe a lot, tree trunks there. But the site has been.., ehhh.., dormant for quite some time. A lot of stuff is growing there for at least since winter. This is positive for us, ‘cause the longer a site is on the market, the stronger the need to get rid of it, we hope we can knock a bit of the price…

For now we will contact the broker, ask a few serious questions and if, or when, they have positive answers we will contact the local government and see if can actually do what ever it is that we’re gonna do…

Turns out the land is to be cut up in several lots and our gracious realtor picked one out for us. This will not do… to many restriction and neighbours who’ll be to close. Ah well., some of the excuses to hide disappointment. Not necessarily about the land, but more the effort and time… so we move on, on to the next opportunity.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.   - Thomas Edison -