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Okay I’ve been considering this thread for a while now, wasn’t sure how I should start… 1) Wait until the project is finished and make a megapost when it’s all done or 2) post it in increments, diary style. Well I’ve decided on the 2nd option, otherwise I won’t be posting this until sometime next summer or spring and it will be a gigantic megapost that will probbly sprawl and meander even worse than this one will... First, bringing you up to speed. We’ll start from the beginning, in april 2013 I found out my fiancé was pregnant. After the initial shock I started looking at our apartment that we had lived in since 2009, two bedrooms, a livingroom, kitchen, toilet, balcony, about 790 sq.feet. Not really big enough for us and a kid. But! The surprises hadn’t run out just yet! At the first ultrasound checkup we where told they where twins (identical - they where born on friday the 13th in september, 10 weeks too early, ATM of writing they’re out of the incubators and are doing well by all respects given their situation). That cinched it, this place has gotta go. It’s time to become a home owner! Part of me was happy because I want to move back out the country from whence I came and have a big yard with a big garage with tools and stuff, even a little wood shed where I can go and be all manly and chop firewood, all that stuff you can’t do in a city. OTOH it’s an added financial burden since nobody is rich enough to build a house without a loan. We sold our apartment and moved into a rented place (wasn’t as fast as that but lets try and keep it short). Then we went house hunting. At first we looked at used houses but they where mostly from the 70s/80s and could have hidden problems, not to mention they mostly used oil furnaces or other less economic methods of heating, as well as a less efficient design and technologies. The idea of buying used was quickly discarded in favor of building new, it’s not really any more expensive and the savings from modern building methods and materials are substansial over the lifespan of the house. I want the most technologically advanced and energy efficient solutions in my new house, I aim to make the cost of heating the place to not be that much more expensive than our old apartment. After a lot of searching and talking to various house builders in the area we decided to go with the house model “Peippo / Bofinken 137” (link in swedish) from a local company called Hartman. Our reasons for going with them was they where one of the few that actually responded to our requests for offers with more than just a standardized response and actually seemed to want to sell their product. The process here is as follows: The house built by this company for us, it will be built to almost completeness, then we take over and do the final interior work, all the heavy lifting and things requiring electricians and plumbers is done by them and included in the price. All the interior stuff such as the floors, kitchen equipment, fireplace etc etc is also included in the price. Something only this company could offer. The main attraction was the completeness of this builders package. It’s always been a problem for house builders, all the unpredictable costs that can run away. For instance heating, even with the most complete solutions from other companies they do not include a heating source in the price, so it’s up to the customer to fix it on his own dime. Here it’s all included in the price and it’s the best heating option you can get with modern technology IMO. It’s called a ground heat exchange pump (Nibe F1245) combined with hydronic floor heating. I can give more info on what this is later if anyone wants to know more. Another factor was that we where able to get things like the bathroom pre-assembled which is important here, due to strict regulations on areas like the bathroom which has to be made by someone with the right certificate/education in order to prevent shoddy building and use of improper techniques. With another company we’d have to hire out that to a 3rd party for our own money and it could get expensive. However this builder could get their own guys to do it for much cheaper than us hiring someone. This holds true in a bunch of other areas for the house as well. And even if it’s not the best price then it’s at least an unknown factor written off and something you can budget for. I value that highly, death to open ends! Some specs on the house: The house is 137 m2 or 1475 sq.feet and the actual living space will be 121 m2 or 1300 sq.feet. It has 4 bedrooms, kitchen, a “scullery”, livingroom, two bathrooms and sauna. We customized the package in the following ways: -Enlarging the back terrace and extending it so that it wraps around one side of the house. -Swapped the electric sauna heater for a wooden one, this made it neccessary to replace the wall against the sauna and living room with a brick wall and also the livingroom fireplace has to be moved a bit to the side, on the plus side that has left a nice spot to keep a minor amount of wood stored. -Tiled floor in the kitchen. Here you can see the builders own picture of how it ought to look when done, I like the color scheme and we’ll be going for the same style.  I guess this will be smaller than the average american house but it’s average in finland and I don’t see the need for a bigger house, the very cold winters make big houses a money sink as well. If you really plan badly you’ll end up like my cousin who got electric floor heating (this is bad because you can only ever use electricity to heat the floor, with hydronic floor heating you have a choice of methods for heating the water), so during winter he’s spending like 800 euros a month keeping it warm. With hydronic heating and the pump we should pay under 100 per month in heating costs during the coldest months and hardly anything at all during summer/spring/autumn. Garage  The garage is a pretty simple affair of 43 m2, unheated, one primary room for the car and tools, one part that’s just a roof and two smaller storage rooms. The smallest one I will make into a hobby room, I’ll insulate it and fit a small heater in there to keep it warm and the rest of the garage cold. A heated garage for the car isn’t good for the car either (causes moisture buildup from melting snow and ice every time you park it in your warm garage), I use the in-finland-mandatory engine block heater instead, optionally you can put a heater inside the car and hook it up to a timer to start an hour before you leave for work and the interior will be toasty as well. Ok that covers the basics I guess. In my next post I’ll post more about the yard itself and what we had to do to get it ready. So anyway, you can ask me any questions about building a house in Finland, or just building in general (I'm no expert though). Might be interesting to see how laws and building techniques varies from country to country as well. Maybe this will help someone looking at building their own house as well. I am guessing we have certain... artic considerations to take into account here though that you probably wouldn't bother with in other places. e: formatting touch-ups. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 11:52
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So that’s the house done with, moving onto the next problem, where to put it? We’ve lived since 2007 in the city of Vasa in Finland but I grew up in the country and I’ve always wanted to go back some day. My workplace is out in the boonies too (yet I work in IT), I would cut my commute in half by moving to the rural municipality of Malax, which is also where my fiance comes from (well her parents came there from vietnam in the 80s). It took a month or so before we could settle on a lot and we almost bought this one place for too much money but the seller backed out at the last minute. But then we found a nicely sized lot that’s 2,340m2 for sale by the municipality in an area that’s being developed by them and private contractors. Nice location and daily bus routes into Vasa so my fiance won’t need a car to get to work and we can keep getting by as a 1-car household, infact she will have a shorter walk to and from the bus than when we lived in Vasa. The lot was just a piece of “unbroken” natural land. Me and my dad spent multiple days cutting down the trees and seeing where the garage and house could fit. We had it mostly cut down in july, I have some pictures of this somewhere on my mobile phone. Until then here are some of the early stages of construction: Seen from the road:   What you are seeing here is the view from where the corner of the house will be, a ditch has been dug up to the corner of the yard, sewage, electricity etc. will be hooked up there. You will also note the strange things drilled into the ground near the camera, those are blasting charges, or at least where they will be put. More blasting charges:  Turns out the bedrock was very close to the surface and we’re gonna have to blast to get down to the depths the pipes require (+2 meters, to avoid freezing in winter, we also added extra insulation on top of the pipes afterwards to be safe.) That’s a lot of rocks   We’re saving the biggest rocks for landscaping the garden later on. I want to make a rock wall that will separate the south-west area of the yard into a lower portion, with a stone steps down into it. That area will be turned into a playground for the kids and whatnot.  The ground waterflow is copious, we’re in a hilly area and we’re in the middle or so, so water flows down from the north and the blasting had probably created lots of cracks in the bedrock that allowed it to flow even more freely so we had some issues getting all the water away. Permits & The Law At the same time as we where starting doing the work on the yard we also had to get a building permit. This required meeting some legal requirements. They where mainly: -Get a person that will act as an independent inspector during the construction phase, it will be this persons job to spot check the builders progress and report any flaws or errors. -We also get a “construction diary” from the government with lots of checklists for you to tick off as the construction proceeds. The person you hired also needs to put his signature on multiple places, approving this part of the construction process. -The municipality will also perform their own inspections during the construction to see that things are built to code. The main reason you need all these certificates and stuff to build is not just to make sure that the people doing the job are competent but also because you can kiss any home owners insurance good bye unless you can prove you haven’t cut corners on your house when building it. In the next post we'll be seeing the foundation being built.
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Oct 16, 2013 11:54
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Laying the foundation: Finally we can start actually building stuff! The ground has been cleared, water, sewage, electricity are in place - Now we just wait for the foundation guys to come and set it up. Took a few days, I never even met the guys who did it, I was at work and every day I’d go there and see how it progressed. Our houses concrete foundation:   Here’s what the yard looks like from the road in it’s current condition:  The latest work has been filling in the foundations with gravel to the specified height, then compacting and vibrating it all down, we have also been laying down drainage pipes.  The black stuff that’s sticking up is a sort of plastic that we’ve wrapped around the foundation to work as a moisture barrier. From the height of the foundation now you can see we’ve filled on a lot of earth. You can’t see it either but undernear the ground, 2 meters out from the foundation there’s insulation to protect the house and foundation from freezing, we also added extra plastic covers on top of the insulation because even though it’s supposed to be water proof, people say it’s not gonna be so forever, so we’re being proactive on this. Here’s also the foundation for the garage in it’s current incarnation:  .Okay that’s as far as we’ve gotten for now. We’re being held up by a slow rear end plumber at the moment before we can move onto the next phase, which is laying down the floor, which will be a concrete slab with floor heating pipes running through it.  Yard seen from north-east, around 5:20, winter darkness is coming faster and faster now. Edit: This is far as I've gotten, I took the last pictures just yesterday. Won't have much to post about until the plumber gets his rear end in gear but I'll answer questions as best I can while also spending almost all my off hours at the hospital with my boys. Oh and we're having to move to another rented apartment because the place we live in now- Mold! 
His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 16, 2013 11:54
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Well if you want some technical stuff, here's a schematic that shows a cross section of the foundation and wall, as well as the plinths that the terrace will be supported on. As you can see it's insulated from the side, from below and outside, even the plinths are standing on small pieces of insulation. The guy who prepared the yard called it overkill, but the good kind. I'll post stuff as I find something suitable to share.
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Oct 16, 2013 19:31
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The_Franz posted:How are the walls going to be constructed and insulated? Timber frame with traditional insulation or spray foam or are you going the passivhaus route with concrete filled insulated forms? It is a timber frame house and it uses the traditional insulation design where you got an outside and inside wall and filler space between, with some extra additions like moisture barriers and whatnot. The cross setion shows a simplified version but it's pretty close to how it looks, the seller showed us real life cross sections of the walls and such when we where still shopping for houses. We have something called energy certification in finland to determine how effective a house is and every new house has to get one of these, this model has been given the grade B (A = best grade), I believe all the houses from this manufacturer meet B grade, C grade is minimum for new houses after 2012 I believe. We could have chosen the "energy plus" package but even the dealer said the additional benefit doesn't outweigh the extra cost in his opinion and the standard model was pretty effective already.  There's also solar power package but we didn't opt for it either, the ground heat pump is really a form of solar anyway. We might consider it in the future though, they should only get cheaper and more effective. I found this cross section of a piece of outer wall on the manufacturers site just now, shows how the wall is made:  EDIT: I found my own energy certificate papers now so I got more technical stuff to shoot at this thread. This house should according to the certificate require 113 kWh/m2/year to heat, for the interior that's then 113*121 = 13673kWh per year. The ground heat pump should provide around 9500kWh per year so our actual energy needs aren't 13600kWh but more like 4000-5000kWh per year in heating costs. Of course we're also installing a wood fired masonry heater in the living room and we have many years of free wood from felling all the trees that where on our yard, so during the winter months we'll be using firewood to heat the house as well, this will stop the heat pump from automatically using grid electricity to supplant the heat from the borehole, which on its own won't be enough when it's -20 or -30 celsius. Edit 2: Not sure which fireplace design we're going with, liking this design but we might go for something modern and white too:  Or maybe this one: 
His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 05:11
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Shimrra Jamaane posted:I can't even throw together a model airplane kit and here you are building houses from scratch. Very impressive. Fortunately I don't have to consider such things myself, house is designed and planned by someone competent, I won't even have to put it up myself I'll just stand there and watch people do it for me  All included in the price of the house.
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Oct 17, 2013 05:13
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Groly posted:Congratulations on the twins! Thanks! And yeah we don't use a french drain though, we have these underground pipes that have lots of holes in them, they lead away water into four separate collection wells that are at every corner of the house and garage, the wells are all connected and each one is at a different height so all the water flows into the lowest well and from that through another drainage pipe that leads to the ditch at the road. Here's the original plan we got, we did not follow it entirely and routed the pipes differently, but close enough:  We're also hooked up to municipial water & sewage, it's what you noted in the corner there. LAAATE EDIT: I just wanted to note we probably do use a french drain, I mistranslated what it was at first but I've looked at what it is and it seems they're the same things. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 05:29
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TATPants posted:Why aren't you pushing for an A rating for efficiency? You should ask your builder about numbers instead of his opinions with respect to efficiency and determine the cost/benefit for yourself. Hmm I'm not actually sure their Energy Plus package (which is mainly a different form of insulation for the walls) would have brought it into the A rating or not as we didn't ask. But we did ask about the math and their standard energy saving package already gives a lot of savings and pushing for the Plus package would have added a lot more to the cost for a few dozen euros saved per year. I would rather add a solar array later on to provide more energy than put money into this area. So, the ROI wasn't good enough and we have a budget we have to keep. quote:edit: I deleted my bit about geothermal because I saw that you already mentioned it It's not actually geothermal, it's actually a form of solar as it uses the ground water which is always around 4-6C all year round, the ground water is heated by the sun and not the earths interior. So it's a roundabout form of solar. Think of the ground water as a massive solar heat sink. We're also doing some extra cheap insurance to the ground heat pump by adding extra insulation over the pipes and the borehole (which will be anywhere from 120-180 meters deep). This should improve efficiency beyond the standard setup. Edit: Also we also got an air ventilation system that uses a heat exchanger to extract heat from the indoors air as it's vented out of the house. I don't think it's a matter of great savings here but it's part of the standard ventilation package. His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 07:04
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themrguy posted:It seems crazy that it would cost the same to build a house as it would to buy it. Did you have to take out a loan or anything to get to do it? Is it more expensive up front, but cheaper over the long run in terms of mortgages, etc., or just cheaper/comparable up front? It's more expensive in the long run. when we where still considering buying used we looked at a house built in 1984 in the same size class but with a 2nd floor, it was 180k with yard, garage and house. Though we didn't like the location, heating method (oil/wood boiler) or really anything about it. We'd rather spend more now and have a house that costs way less to heat and run and won't be needing repairs, etc. in a good long while. The house & garage package we're buying are about in the same price class, but you have to add costs for stuff like -Buying land -Hiring people to prepare the land for the house building company (they won't do it) -Building permits and fees (small stuff though) -Hooking up electricity/water/etc We have a budget of 230k, so far it's looking good and I think we might keep within it barring any unforeseen expenses. The worst was so far that we required blasting which ended up costing 2400 euros. We got more than 230k to spend since we've got saved up money from before and also made a slight profit from selling our old apartment. We're also saving a bit thanks to the guy we hired to do the digging and stuff, he's thrifty and takes advantage of things like nearby construction projects. He got us the blasting people who where nearby to work on our yard, they had proper equipment for serious blasting on a larger scale than we needed, so they did it all very fast. If not for the luck of having these guys nearby the blasting could have been like 5000 euros instead if we would have had to hire some smaller company without the same oversized equipment. Likewise they're building a new store complex a few kilometers away and have lots of earth they need moved away, we need filler for the yard and lots of it, so we take it from them for about a third of the price of buying from a gravel company. Stuff like that helps keep costs down.
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Oct 17, 2013 09:45
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Groly posted:Is the space between the ceiling and the roof useable as an attic? And would the insulation be above the ceiling, under the roof, or a combination of the two? It will be kinda usable for storage, accessible from the outside with a ladder, not suitable for living in. The floor of the attic will be layers of various materials with insulative properties and moisture barriers and also ducting will go there. The floor, sides and roof of the attic will all be insulated. quote:And will the trees be allowed to grow back in once construction is complete? Or is the intent to have a yard to the east and get more sunlight? (It doesn't look like everyone is so worried about forest fires that they have to keep a moat of grass/rocks around the buildings, and the statistics seem to back that up.) The trees we have left are the ones we want to keep, we'll plant some apple and pear trees later, maybe plums, not sure where exactly. But no more trees on the property than that. We definitely want the sun to shine on our backyard which will face east, that's where we have our terrace as well. The way it is now we'll have the morning, afternoon and evening sun there, but late evening will only shine on the south and west face.
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Oct 20, 2013 09:44
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Those videos are part of why we moved here. edit: Hopefully I will have some more updates in the following days, should be getting some material deliveries and there will be people coming and actually starting work, believe they're putting up the walls and roof now. Plumbing and casting of the concrete floor plate was postponed because of the winter weather, plate can't dry if it's exposed to sleet and snow, better to let it be "inside". His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 11:37 on Oct 21, 2013 |
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Oct 21, 2013 11:33
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nyerf posted:What's the expected ambient temperature inside the house when it's built? How cold does it get outside in winter, and how hot in summer? I live in Australia (though one of the cooler wetter areas where overnight in winter it can drop to -2C to -4C and in summer it can get up to 30+C during the hottest part of the day), so always interested in trying to keep energy costs down. I guess we're looking at keeping it 20-24C in the house, plus hotter when we use the fireplace. If it was only me and my GF we'd keep it 19-20C but little babies need to use their energy to grow instead of on keeping warm. Outside summer temperatures can (for a few days per year) top 30C but this year that didn't happen even once, think 28C was the max, I'd say it varies between 12-24C during may-september. Winter temps here have been down to -38C in this area but they average 0 to -25C, coldest months being january and february with temps of -10C or so being the most common. quote:I also watch a shitload of Grand Designs and want a passive house so bad I'd almost sell my left leg to have the chance to build one--too bad convincing Australian builders to do new and different things is like teaching a camel to tap dance. I'm particularly keen on eco-technologies in house building, e.g. recycled newspaper/wool insulation, straw bale or rammed earth building, passive house technology, etc. Sounds like you've got some of this already on board, like the ventilation heat exchanger, hydronic underfloor heating etc. Yeah I'm definitely interested in having an energy effective home. I don't know about stuff like recycled newspaper etc. though, performance/efficiency is more important to me. quote:In a more general sense, how did you learn about the process of buying or building a house? I'm pushing 30 now and have only vaguely heard of friends buying a house or selling a house, but generally it seems like a mysterious process that noone ever really spells out. I feel incredibly sheltered about the whole thing. I didn't know jack about building a house and I am still terribly uninformed about the whole thing. Fortunately my parents built their house and could answer questions, albeit somewhat outdated. I googled the poo poo out the internet for a month or so and registered on all the local building and family forums and read old debates between people that talked about what heating sources where best, which companies to avoid, etc. I was also lucky that the guy I hired to set up the plot was experienced in this and very willing to talk and offer tips and advice, hard to shut him up even I met an ex-coworker who is now building too and he felt exactly like you do, I tipped him to hire the same guy as well.quote:How did you go about finding your land to buy? Did you go through a real estate agent or something, or is there a unique process to your country/province? How did you select the land, what factored into it apart from general locality? E.g. Land geography etc. Did you have a land surveyor or similar person do an assessment before committing yourself? I found the plot via the municipality's website, I also put out ads on the local craigslist equivalent and looked at some private options as well. But I went with this plot because it was in a good area and very cheap (4,30 euros per square meter, 0% VAT), the location was also ideal, bus station, stores & schools are all nearby, yet it's far out in the country all the same. Municipal sewage and water ready to hook up where also important factors because there's a lot of changes going on with having your own sewage wells and the like now, apt to get expensive, you avoid all that stuff with municipal facilities. And like in most of Malax they got a solid fiber optic internet "back bone" so I will be pulling a cable straight into my house, the hookup is just across the road, already got several empty pipes laid down that go into the house. So they just need to pull it into the house when it's done. I didn't do any surveyor checks, I talked to the neighbors who had built their houses, as the engineers at the municipality and I got a pretty good idea of what to expect, i.e. there was a big risk of bedrock being near the surface. But finding that out wouldn't really have changed my thoughts on the plot as it was just a nice location and nothing else offered was half as good for the same price. So I just factored in 5000 euros for eventual blasting jobs in the budget, turned out I needed half that amount.
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Oct 21, 2013 13:02
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Baconroll posted:Is it easy to get permission (zoning/planning permission) to build a house on land there ? In the UK its very hard to get permission to build on a green fields site like yours - for most areas its effectively impossible. It was rather straightforward to get a permit there, the area was pre-designated by the municipality for building small homes and rowhouses on. They also want everey person they can get to live here, same dilemma that faces all small places, though this place is doing quite well. In the middle of a local baby boom right now. And Finland is larger than the UK while having only 5 million people so we dont lack green areas and the demand is lower. Which explains the prices. Some of the private develpments near the sea where 2-3 times as expensive. A beachfront property near Vaasa can go for near half a million OTOH.
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Oct 22, 2013 05:17
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Yeah it's a bit of a mess, the company mostly works in finnish but they got swedish speakers in the local office and they're trying to serve me in swedish since that's my native language, but since 99% of their stuff is finnish from before it's a bit of a mix. I appreciate the effort on their part though. They will want to do it if they want better market penetration in the areas north & south of Vaasa though.
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Oct 22, 2013 13:38
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Yeah I wanted to do that but I forgot and then I couldnt edit it afterwards. I should ask a mod.
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Oct 22, 2013 16:17
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Hey an update. Got a material delivery last night. Roof trusses:  Lotsa timber and other stuff I dunno what it is:   Unlike most other house suppliers here, the walls and stuff like that are not pre-assembled at factory and shipped as elements. They build it from scratch at the site instead.
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Oct 23, 2013 08:39
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Small update, mostly photos. Walls are up, as are the rafters. Not much to add really, it's starting to look like a house.   
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Oct 27, 2013 09:06
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Well, to get access to the roof for whatever reason. Mainly chimney sweeping I guess. Shoveling snow off roofs is rarely something that is needed. Retrieving frisbees is probably more likely.
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Oct 27, 2013 18:03
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iv46vi posted:Would you happen to know the size of the studs and the spacing between them? Are there standard sizes for wood products in Finland? Sorry, no idea on that. I can look through the blueprints later and see if they mention it. I guess there must be standard sizes but I've never considered it.
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Oct 28, 2013 09:02
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iv46vi posted:...tuba-foh equivalent in metric... A what now?
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Oct 28, 2013 14:01
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I'm looking at some of the plans here for the rafters and they include dimensions on the materials, they all seem to be 42x something, such as 42x98, 42x123, 42x73 and 42x148. I assume they're in millimeters and it indicates width and height if I understood it correctly, it mixes english and finnish this bloody thing when using abbreviations. There is also a specification of "strenght" of the lumber which according to wikipedia follows a standard. All the lumber listed here is grade C30. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber I see others have covered the topic of the finnish ladder theory quite nicely.
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Oct 29, 2013 13:30
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Another minor update. The structure is slowly getting more complete, they put up a plastic layer on the roof now so it won't actually rain in. Also got a delivery of insulation. Looks like standard stone wool.   I believe someone wanted a close up on this kinda stuff?  Noticed they used 90x3.1mm nails if that's of any interest? Next week on tuesday another company should come and drill the borehole for the heating system, it'll be interesting to know if we'll get any water out of the borehole and how deep it'll be (anywhere from 120-180 meters I believe).
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Nov 1, 2013 09:46
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Sorry about the late reply, bit of a busy weekend. It's going to be a metal roof yes, red tile looking style, like the example house shown in the first post.
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Nov 4, 2013 12:59
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It's getting darker and darker earlier and earlier nowadays so I have problems getting photos with proper light, so here are some flash enhanced ones:  Went there last night and covered up all the building material with tarps. I had left tarps and other plastic materials for covering up the material and I told the building company of it. I had just assumed if things needed protection the builders at the site would know and put them over if needed. That was too much to expect it seems. The builders on site won't do a single thing beyond building the house, they'll throw junk anywhere and I clean up after them, they won't cover up or protect the materials after they're done either. So I didn't even know it needed covering until I heard it in a roundabout way from their office that I should cover up the materials. TBH I'm getting a bit pissed at their lousy way of informing me of what I should do or not, it's not the first time we've had snags due to lack of information. Plumber showed up too, pipes have been laid down here and there. I dunno what all of them to aside from the obvious sewer pipes.  This is also a problem:  That's the main waterline and an extra pipe I will use to connect the house and garage later on. It comes up out of the ground where a door will be and that's no good. My dad and I will go there on saturday and try and dig down as deep as we can and try and move the pipe so it sticks up next to the door instead. This is another one of those things I am pissed about as when I asked how exact we had to be with the placement of pipes and stuff the guy who answered said "just in the general area, as long as it's inside the house it's good". Didn't have any detailed enough plans sent to us in time either to be able to notice this. EDIT: Oh yeah another company was there this week and drilled the borehole for the heating system, doesn't look very impressive, just a pipe in the ground with a lot of mud: 
His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Nov 8, 2013 |
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Nov 8, 2013 10:03
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It was I and another guy who laid down all the pipes and stuff on the yard and it was us who placed it in that place. According to the contract we're responsible for all the prepwork required and have to have it done before the company starts building anything. The plumbers job is to hook it and all other stuff up inside the house, but no actual plumber has been involved in laying down the waterline, that was all us. Though as I said I felt we where given inadequate information to do the job properly.
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Nov 8, 2013 14:39
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Well we did the moving of the pipes and it wasn't that hard, physical labor aside. Dug down a good meter or more and then it was easy to shift the pipes to their new location and fill it back up. This better be good enough or they can do it themselves. Cell phone pics only today. So this is the corner in which the water comes in and is heated, you can see the blue pipes which go through the ground to various places in the house. And they finally got the garage roof struts up, once they get a roof on there we can start using it for storage of building materials.  Here's a daylight picture of the house as well, there's still two more windows not yet cut out but it's moving fast I think. 
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Nov 9, 2013 17:50
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kinmik posted:Additionally, how much does cost of living in the country compare to, say, living in Helsinki? This is an older question I missed, but I don't really know what the costs are for living in helsinki. I know the rents and prices for buying apartments are all atrocious though. At the moment we pay 420 euros a month for this place we're renting, which is 60 square meters in size. Maybe someone from Helsinki can chime in on what a similar place would cost in Helsinki. In addition to that there's gas which used to be 250 euros a month, if I didn't have to drive into the city every day to the hospital I would effectively halve my gasolline(diesel) consumption. Electricity is maybe 30 euros a month. If I worked in Vaasa rather than even further out in the country where no busses go, I could get a monthly bus card and just take the bus everywhere for 70 euros a month. Food costs is maybe 70-130 euros a week depending on what we buy. We could stand to shave this down and eat cheaper. Anyway on the house front, they've put up the insulation in the walls of the house now and left quite a mess. I'm gonna try and reclaim as much as I can of the larger pieces so I can reuse them on the garage as it won't be insulated, but I am gonna insulate and heat one small hobby room. Construction is stopping for the moment util friday when the county inspector will come and look over the progress of the house and make sure everything is up to code. Concrete has been ordered for the 25th of november as well.  
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Nov 14, 2013 06:36
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Groly posted:Did the county inspector have good news? They didn't find anything to complain about but we got more problems that we found ourselves anyway. Turns out the water main has a fold in it, that's no good and there's not enough surplus to cut it and have enough. So we're considering either: 1. making a join inside the house. 2. digging up a hole outside the house where the protective hose ends and join it there instead. That way if there's a future leak, it'll be outside the house. A bit wary of putting a join even if it's supposed to be very good at a level that will put it in the concrete slab (albeit inside a protective hose). Option 2 is more expensive and more involved but it's safer in the long term. We also had a storm this weekend, spent the weekend in the hospital with the boys and two trees had fallen over outside. Visited on sunday and the storm had thrown tarps free and strewn poo poo all over the construction site. Also tore free stuff from the house, plastic moisture barriers and such. I assume the builders will put it back up. Spent a few hours cleaning the place up. Two more trees had also fallen over there, not on our yard fortunately, but right next to it, and it fell right over a small playground, right on the jungle gym. Went and checked it out and saw lots of old trash (plastic and styrofoam) from the construction site there, the kids apparently pilfer junk from our yard and play with it. No pictures because I was dead tired and forgot.
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Nov 18, 2013 07:40
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Looks like we went for option 2 anyway. Welded the water line outside the house while taking it from 40mm to 32mm instead (still sufficient for a households needs). Here's the pit they dug, the yellow pipes are for fiber optic cable, TV, phone, etc. The "water central", the new pipe is more than long enough now.  The builders meanwhile have been busy and I guess they're pretty done with all the pipes and are now putting down rebar and the hoses for the hydronic floor heating. 
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Nov 19, 2013 17:02
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Thanks, stuff like that makes it all the more motivating
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Nov 19, 2013 17:28
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punakone posted:You, you are the fucker moving out from the city ruining my countryside with your suv and or holier than thou economy car. Or you cant take care of your dogs so when ours protects its house you get mad. Or you cause rezoning of traffic signs making stuff stupider cause off course this big new development is more important for ease of traffic. And your kids are hooligans too with their mopeds and vandalising Actually I'm moving back out to where I came from. I grew up far more rurally than this. Little village of 10 houses near Hinjärv, 5km to the nearest real place with a few hundred people and an actual store. My grandparents lived 200 meters away & where old school farmers, my childhood was like a series of scenes from that old 1920s comic "out of our way" they post in BSS.
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Nov 21, 2013 12:28
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Just a Fish posted:Pretty much yeah, can't remember any new houses where we would've installed radiators. Floor heating is just a lot more energy efficient since you dont need to keep the temperature as high to feel warm and basically the only way to go if you ever want to take advantage of geothermal heating Well they do install Ground heat exchange pumps in old houses with radiators too, not as efficient they say, but a substansial upgrade.
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Nov 21, 2013 12:33
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Just don't do like my cousin who went for electric floor heating when he built his house. 800 euro electric bill in january whoops.
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Nov 21, 2013 13:35
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I'm afraid I haven' been able to take pics for a few days now since I've come down with the flu, had a fever of 38 degrees (100,4F) last night and I'm clogged up with mucus. Can't even visit the children incase I infect them. Just sitting at home, passing the time and drinking homemade sea buckthorn juice.
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Nov 22, 2013 10:00
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Not much news on this front, the metal roof is up on the garage but construction seems to have slowed down, probably for the concrete pouring which is today.
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Nov 25, 2013 06:01
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Mostly it was just a matter of not finding the right model of house that had such a configuration. I simply liked the look of this house more than the ones that had attached garages and then I felt the separate garage solution looked nicer too so I went with that. Walking over to the car isn't that big a deal to me, and the garage will be unheated except one room I will turn into a hobby room. When I grew up we didn't really use the main shower in the house but we used the one in the furnace room in another building that heated the greenhouses, so every morning before going to school I'd step outside and walk 50 yards to the other building in sandals and a bathrobe, even if it was -20C (OK I'd slip into my ~*nokian rubber boots*~ if it was that cold). At least the furnace room had the upside that it was always 30 degrees C minimum. I guess after doing that for most of my life walking to the car in the cold isn't a big deal.
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Nov 26, 2013 05:51
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Yeah I actually bought a pair of Nokian Naali boots last night, the warmest winter boots I know of, it's what we where issued in the army (conscription in finland) and they where some solid boots. I needed some quality boots for later when I'll be outside and working on the garage (we're doing the finishing work ourselves there, putting up the paneling and doors and such). Nokian Kairat are a slimmer/lighter version for people who don't need extreme cold protection, lots of people say they're good for most winter conditions, but my feet always freeze easily so I went for the best. Some more photos of the house, windows have been assembled and it looks like the roof has had more work done on it:  I couldn't get inside for a look because the doors are barred with plastic sheets to protect against the wind:  Behind the house:  All those boards running up and down across the walls are what the paneling will be attached to later, that way you get an airgap between the outermost layer and the rest of the wall.
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Nov 28, 2013 07:58
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EssOEss posted:This thread makes me want to build a house Yeah I got an electrical plan here but it's in finnish, but gigabit ethernet will be installed in most rooms. Fiberoptic cable will come in near the door and I hope to put the network central there. timg'd for size: 
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Dec 1, 2013 09:06
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Today we overcome a great obstacle that's been bothering me the whole week. Had real problems all week trying to get the hoses that connect the heat pump to the borehole, the hoses are supposed to go in through tubes that go underground and then under the foundation but the guy who was there to hook everything up said it was impossible, the bend in the tubes was too extreme, in fact it went in like 2 meters then back out and then up through the floor. So instead of a gentle L bend like the plans said, it was more of an S shape. But the guy who actually laid down the tubes and other earth work, insisted this was fine and it could be done. Well I doubt it's fine and that this was meant to be like this. But if we could get them through then we could avoid the alternative, which is having the hoses come up outside the wall and then go through the wall itself. This would require us to build an insulated box outside the wall and the guy who laid down the tubes just didn't think it was good and kept insisting we could get them through. (edited above for clarity, I was a bit tired last night) So today we dug them up (again, by hand, I am sore) and he took the hoses home, washed them off and kept them in a boiler room to warm and soften them. Then again at 19:30 we went back and started working and through some immense effort that left my underclothes entirely soaked in sweat we where able to get them through. Hallelujah! I am seriously happy we where able to get this done and we wouldn't have to rely a makeshift solution that's usually done on older building that get these pumps installed later on. Some pictures from earlier today:  
His Divine Shadow fucked around with this message at 05:40 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 1, 2013 20:34
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Motronic posted:Good job sucking it up on the geothermal...or were those radiant pipes?. Either way, a little pain now make it a lot better for a long time. I'm not sure what you mean by radiant pipes in this context? We got a borehole that's 130 meters deep and a loop of anti-freeze liquid travels through this hole, sucking heat out of the ground water, then it goes up, through the hoses we had all this trouble with, into the house and then to the heat pump in the corner which through some real nifty heat exchanging can extract every bit of heat from the water, which we then use to heat all our water as well as the hydronic floor heating. This is what the setup looks like:   This system was ordered as a package deal along with the house, which is why I favored these builders as well, less to hire out to 3rd parties the better.
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Dec 2, 2013 05:56
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