Day 52: No Chimney

Today we were supposed to build the chimney through the roof to its final height. However, the morning started at –25°C, but the temperature rose to only –2°C at lunch time. It was a perfect, beautiful, sunny day, but at the height of the roof the wind was so cold that work was not feasible. Thus we did some preparations and installed some planks on the roof to move about safely, and we shall try again tomorrow.

However, today the interior got the finishing touches, which means that all skirting boards were installed, and the remaining corners were tidied up. Also, the windows and doors got their final touches: the wooden strips were put in place, which hide the gaps between door frames and adjacent plaster boards. Also, the blinds where released and tested. Above is a view of two of the living room windows.

Another team from the house company arrived today. One of them will do the plumbing, i.e. place sinks and toilets and install taps, while the other will do all the electrical stuff. Today the latter managed to get all electrical, aerial, and internet sockets installed, and most of the switches. The photo above shows the corner where our TV will be located and where all three types of sockets are present.

Also the thermostats appeared in most rooms, thus we can now control our floor heating in a per-room fashion. Nice.

By the way, I learnt this morning that our houseshow will take place on Thursday, 11th April 2013, between 1700h and 1900h. Then the sales person will be present and anyone can come and have a look.

Day 13: Roof and Walls

Now the further development of Our House project is in the hands of Muurametalot, the company we bought it from – with the sole exception of the fire place, which will be built in weeks 5 and 6. We can mostly relax and wait until they give us the keys. This important event is going to happen on 11th April apparently, so we anticipate to move after that. In the meantime we will of course check on the progress, it's just so exciting to see the progress.

Last night and this morning, the roof was made weather proof, and also the gaps between the four modules are closed now. Also, in the morning the team from Rovakaira arrived one more time in order to connect the main fuse box to the electrical grid and of course install an electricity meter. We didn't tell them yet that we are planning to make as little use of it as possible: heating the house with geothermal energy and using modern energy-saving LED lighting wherever possible.

The photo above was taken today in the early afternoon. It looks ever more house-ish. We have been told that the outer layer roof material will be delivered on Tuesday, and if possible we will try to film the installation of that, at least on the western side of the roof visible in the photo above.

Day 10: Huge Claws and FinnFoam

Today, work resumed on the site. In the morning, the digger arrived again, and brought an interesting and very handy tool: a gigantic claw, which can be used to break frozen ground. The claw can be rotated at the end of the arm, i.e. it can poke forward, or claw backward. Here it was used to break through compacted gravel and poke a hole under the foundations for additional electrical cables to be passed through. This was an omission in the original build, and now this problem is fixed and we can have electricity where we need it.

In the afternoon, we were treated to a stunning sky again at sunset. Lapland in winter is really beautiful, and we are extremely lucky that we have clear skies, but only some –10°C frost. At this time of the year, it is not uncommon to have –20°C and even down to –40°C. Double lucky, because at lower temperature the construction would have not been possible, thereby delaying the entire process, and also because it's much more enjoyable when not freezing one's toes off.

After the cable conduits were dug under the foundations, the area between the walls was filled with fine sand to make it smooth. An improvised piece of plank served as a rake to make the sand nice and even. On top of the sand, finally the FinnFoam was installed, a job that went well into the night. Fortunately my colleague Juha dropped by to give a hand with moving some heavy stuff around. Tomorrow we'll do the other half of the foundations, and then we are ready to received Our House.

Watch a time-lapse movie of this first part of FinnFoaming.

Day 8: Moulds Removed, Concrete Drying

Today not much happened at the site. In the morning, the moulds were removed, and the walls were covered by large tarps. Also the heating system for the concrete was removed. In the early afternoon, I met the site supervisor at Our House, and we discussed the work so far. First, however, we used a very fancy thermometer to measure the surface temperature of the concrete foundations. It turned out that they were frozen in some places (which is bad), and clearly above freezing in other places (which is good). Later in the evening I returned and with the help of my colleague Juha, we covered all the remaining walls. Now the chemical reaction in the concrete is the only source of heat. Let's hope that is enough. The countdown is definitely running: the house will come in a week's time!

The instrument, when pushing a button, projects a crosshair with a laser onto the surface to be measured, and then it does the measurement instantly using the infrared radiation from that surface. In the photo above I am checking out constantly cold floors in our current flat with the instrument. The minimum and maximum temperatures are the ones observed during the same session, and in this case I had pointed at the cold window, and at a halogen spot light. The device is rated to measure temperatures between –35°C and +950°C with an error of less than a degree. This comes at a price, the IR thermometer costs roughly a thousand euros, but fortunately we were able to borrow this one for free.

Since no new photos were taken today, here's an old one from 18th December, when the company, which owns the local electrical grid, brought the cable to our plot. Since we will be slightly off the main road, Rovakaira needed to place three poles to suspend the cables from, and then continue underground to our plot. From there, we had to bring the cables to the house, which happened on Day 5.

Day 5: Start of Foundation Work

Today was my first day on the site, and I learnt an important lesson: if you know what you want your contractors to do, don't leave them to do it alone. Quite a few things were not as expected, despite detailed drawing and explanations. Thus the morning was a race to work around the missing bits. Most importantly, the electron inflow promised for Saturday had not been done, and thus a long trench was dug first thing in the morning. Fortunately, we had asked for spare tubing to be inserted in order to feed electricity out of the house for future buildings and lighting etc. These came in handy now, because they proved the only way to get electricity delivered in first place.

A big "Thank You!" goes to the technical staff of Rovakaira Sodankylä, which – for the second time in a few days – changed their plan for the day instantly to respond to my calls for help. Well done! The photo shows them suspending a cable drum from a crane above the trench. They then unrolled the cable from there as much as needed.

The cable was then tied together with a copper grounding wire and pushed through my 50-mm white plastic tube into the area inside the foundations. The white tube on the right is a bit cut off accidentally by the digger – we had to rush, and there was no time for shovels, because the next work team had already arrived.

A lorry from Oulu brought all the bits and pieces to make the moulds for our foundations – and those of an identical house to be built elsewhere in Sodankylä soon after our's. Here one can see the team unload the first pile of wooden walls, which will later form the moulds. Also visible is the FinnFoam, which has been spread out in the areas of the foundation walls. The foundation will be hollow, consisting of a rectangle and a wall longitudinally in the centre for extra support. The thing on the tripod in the distance isn't a camera (not yet!), it's a laser levelling system.

The final photo of today's blog entry is a picture of the van belonging to the other member of the two-person foundation work team, bringing extra equipment, and featuring a 220-V inverter and a microwave oven. More important for us is the machine in the foreground, and the canisters. This is the heating system, which allows for the concrete to dry our fast despite the cold. When the concrete will be poured in, pipes will be embedded in it, through which a special, heated liquid will be pumped. The machine in the picture is a pump and electrical heater combination. By heating the concrete, it will dry out in some 24 to 36 hours.

Fortunately, the temperature was a rather pleasant -10°C all day with a thin cloud cover, but in the evening the sky cleared up and some stars were visible, so it might get cold. Tomorrow early morning, the concrete will arrive.

Day 4: A House Needs Electricity

Today, Saturday, our contractor Arska arrived himself on the site to dig in the electrical cables for feeding the house with much needed electrons. In addition, four 50-mm flexible irrigation tubes were put into the gravel, which allow additional electrical supply lines from the main fuse box in the house to eventual other consumers on the yard: most importantly the cables for external lighting and for the the cars' block heaters will need to be installed before the next winter comes.

The yellow piles in the background were delivered today, too, with some delay due to the delivery person falling ill last week. They are FinnFoam sheets, which will be spread on the ground to prevent the ground from freezing under the house in winter. FinnFoam is a lot smarter than polystyrene in that it is non-compressible, and completely sealed: water can enter only the pores directly destroyed by cutting the sheets, i.e. the top couple of millimetres. Even if submerged for a year, FinnFoam stays dry on the inside, and thus retains its insulating capabilities.

Why does the ground need to be prevented from freezing? The problem is that water, when freezing, actually expands, and thus a process of freezing and melting under the house can lead to shifting of material under the house, and the house can end up at a strange tilt – though I doubt frost had anything to do with the tilt of the famous tower in Pisa... :-)

Finally, a nice photo of today's sunrise – or is it sunset or indeed midday? At this time of the year, the Sun doesn't rise much above the horizon. It looks like the digger's been here, too...