New Creation - House Warming

[catmandewe]

Cool to see how they do things there.
You have a very nice place Adrian!

Tony

[adrian65]

Sheltie, Turkey and Greece have a very rich tradition in cooking lamb. I am glad I didn't have time to attach to the poor buck, otherwise it would had been difficult to enjoy the taste. But this way, it was easier. I just cooked now his Rocky Mountains Oysters, they were good

Mario, Molto Grazie. And with this, I used almost all my Italian knowledge Romanian and Italian are "relatives" languages, both having Latin roots, so even if I don't know very much Italian, it's easy for me to comprehend especially the writing. Italy is one of the beautiful countries I visited. Whole cities looking like museums, so many architectural wonders. Beautiful sceneries too. What part of Italy are you from?

Thank you vey much, Tony!

Adrian

[Pat]

Adrian, first I must thank you for posting your creation. I love to see beauty take shape. Though I don't plan on going into the building construction trades, I thoroughly enjoy seeing the work of others.

[connrock]

Well Adrian you can control a lot of things but not Mother Nature and if she says snow,,,,then it snows!
This gave you time to have some lamb stew and also give all the workers a short break.
I hope the weather improves for you and the work onthe house can continue soon!
If I don't "talk" to you before Christmas I want to wish you and your family and loved ones a VERY Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
connrock

[beefjello]

Getting caught up here Adrian, the progress on your castle is amazing! Glad you enjoyed your feast of lamb.. think I'd pass on the Oysters tho

Merry Christmas Adrian!

[Deleted]

Pictures of butchering lamb make me hungry! I love lamb. You can have the oysters tho'. I am too american to consider sheep nuts as food.

Butchering animals is not foreign to me. Now, I must go clean more ducks.

[Rockoonz]

The oysters are the delicacy.


Lee

[adrian65]

Thank you again everyone!

Tom, the snow could hardly come in a better time. Firstly, because it let me finish the major works we had in plan for this season. And, seccondly, because in the Christmass and New Year season there would had been anyway a pause on the site, due to the hollidays.

No new pics, as there have been no progress (excepting the coverage of the doors' and windows' hollows with plywood and plastic foil - to protect the inside from snow/extreme cold/moisture).

But a very important thing did happen though, these days: The "authorization of construction" has been finally issued! ;D Yes, it was done in the same time with the house itself, practically.
Of course I should have waited this authorisation firstly to start the works, but I would have missed the entire autumn season for constructions. So we started to build based on the preliminary paper, which is called "certificate of urbanism" and states the conditions of the buildings in the area, the distances between homes etc.
Our house, which is already rised, it's finally 100 % legal. Hard to believe that the issue of a piece of paper to aprove the raise of a house could last as long as the raise of a house itself, but this is true.

Having the authorisation, finally, is another big step and a long waited relief.
A victory not on the "real battlefield" but on the "paperwork jungle" which sometimes is more scary to me



May I also whish to all of you to have a wonderful Christmas and all the best in the New Year to come!

Adrian

[Deleted]

Sounds like the government there is as slow as it is here. lol

Happy holidays to you and yours also.
Jim

[Deleted]

Dec 20, 2012 10:32:04 GMT -5 adrian65 said:

Our house, which is already rised, it's finally 100 % legal. Hard to believe that the issue of a piece of paper to aprove the raise of a house could last as long as the raise of a house itself, but this is true.

Having the authorisation, finally, is another big step and a long waited relief. A victory not on the "real battlefield" but on the "paperwork jungle" which sometimes is more scary to me

Adrian

In the USA we call this "red tape". Perhaps someone older than I can explain why it's called that. To me it is the officials justifying their existence buy making the permit process seem complicated and difficult when all they are really doing is putting the documents in a file and then after a random period of time they pull it back out and stamp it approved.

Here in southern California, there is no possible way anyone would have spent so much time and money while still waiting for the permit. It would guarantee the permit is never issued and your building will be torn down at your expense. After all, the officials must prove that they still have power. They cannot allow anyone to show them up.

I have also learned that permits come faster if the correct elected official sees a contribution to his "campaign fund". Of course, this is not bribery. That is illegal in the USA.

Bucharest is a very different world from here. Thankfully, more forgiving of progress! I need to go. Must check real estate prices in Romania!

[montanamuskrat]

Adrian, Nice house. I see a lot of work site cooking. I did like the reference to Rocky Mountain Oysters, I call then "Tender Groins" I get 60 to 70 pounds each year from the ranch.. We have a "Testicle Festival" each year at the Rock Creek Lodge. www.testyfesty.com/
No one gets bullish
Tom

[adrian65]

Here in southern California, there is no possible way anyone would have spent so much time and money while still waiting for the permit. It would guarantee the permit is never issued and your building will be torn down at your expense. After all, the officials must prove that they still have power. They cannot allow anyone to show them up.
...
Bucharest is a very different world from here. Thankfully, more forgiving of progress! I need to go. Must check real estate prices in Romania![/quote]

Different indeed, Scott! Almost all the houses neighbouring mine were built the same. Thruth is that, once you apply for the authorisation of construction, they should issue it in no more than 30 days. After this, if no additional papers are requested, you can begin the works. So it's not that bad, you see.

Official bribe, LOL. Well, here they don't have accounts but they have pockets

[adrian65]

Hello again friends!

Works have been started here again. The two past weeks were cold and did not allow the crew to work at full throttle. Still some noticeable progress was made.

Firstly, we mounted the chimney for the fire place. Here you can see the progress of raising the chimney:








Here's the Y enrance which will be connected with the exhaust of the fire-place:


Then, after completing the whole chimney, we reinforced it with four angle steel shapes welded together as you see:


Then, they removed the casts on the outer perimeter of the house. Remember that bunch of steel braces to sustain the casts? Removing them and the casts took some 3 days of hard work. You can see now better the shape of the house, in this panorama picture (made of two photos):


Then, they started to set the shingle on the roof. For now, they filled two out of four faces of the roof:




This is how the house is looking on the outside now. Inside the loft, the mounting of the thermal insulation is also in progress, but I don't have pictures from there.

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

[deb193redux]

Glad things are moving again. I was missing the pictures.

[connrock]

Hi Adrian,
Well it's good to see you are making progress in spite of the cold weather.When we built our home in 1966 there was little or no out door construction in this area.Most construction workers had no work in winter so it was hard to make a living doing that work here.With modern building techniques and supplies today,,,construction goes on 12 months/year now.
I see a worker putting something on the chimney pipe with a red plastic "sheet".Is that cement he is using?
What is the "Y" entrance" used for?
It was -6C here this morning with a VERY strong wind so I hope it's warmer in Bucharest,,,or is it Budapest? LOL I will NEVER forget that one! LOL
Have good week building,,
connrock

[adrian65]

Daniel, I'm glad my pictures are appreciated.

Tom, Budapest, huh? LOL! ;D Here in Bucharest there were about -2 to 2 C degrees. The reccomended temp for mounting the chimney is at least 5 degrees C, so we firstly built a heater from a metal barrel. We put in it all the wood debris resulting from the construction (casts, etc) and we managed to raise the temp to the required one. No pics of that barrel heater, but I will do some and post here.
In addition, once the chimney was raised a bit, we placed a strong light into the lower hollow (see the welding picture). That light generated quite a lot of heat and mantained the temps inside the chimney well above freezing for two whole days.

There was a special powder delivered together with the chimney, especially meant for the pipes' assembling. We had to mix seven parts of powder with one part of water. At first impression, it seems impossible to get a smooth paste with such few water but after a few minutes of thorough mixing, it becomes uniform and fluid. I can tell you this because I was mixing all this grout for assembling the inner pipes. And yes, it was put inside that red plastic cone and then it was squeezed in the same way the cakes are ornated.

In the "Y" entrance will be inserted a flexible stainless steel tube, which will link the chimney with the fire-place.

Adrian

[connrock]

Hi Adrian,
I was wondering what that light was for in the chimney! LOL

When I went to Trade School to learn plumbing in 1961 it was customary to have the 3rd and 4th year students work on homes being built.The entire home was built by students at a cut-rate price to the owner.All of the concrete work stopped by early October but a lot of the plumbing was done during the entire school year,,,,including the winter months.
Another boy and myself were assigned to install the cast iron sewer pipes and basement floor drains in one of these homes in December.The 8 foot high concrete basement walls ,,the wood framing of the house and the roofing was completed but that was it.
The cold wind blew through the home and we were freezing!
I should add that we were left there in the morning and picked up about an hour before the school day ended.NO supervision at all! LOL
We were melting lead to pour the joints of the cast iron pipe using an old gas blow torch and a ladle,,,,as we bent down shivering to do this I got a GREAT idea!! There was a LOT of pieces of scrap lumber laying around so why not start a fire in a corner of the concrete basement walls!
We both gathered up a bunch of lumber and lit it with the blow torch!Before you know it we had a full blaze going with a LOT of smoke going up through the framing of the house!
We warmed up a little and soon after we went back to work we heard sirens coming from what seemed like everywhere??
We ran outside and found fire trucks coming up the road! LOL
Someone saw all that smoke and called the fire department,,,,and the school!
You can guess the rest of this story! LOL :nono:

Have a good week,,,
connrock

[kk]

Wow, you have gotten far in the few months since I last saw your posts here.
Looks great and looking forward to the next installments.

[adrian65]

Tom, we had a windy day when the wind brought back the smoke in the barrel and then into the house. Even if some windows hollows are not covered, the smoke was pretty dense and we had tears in the eyes because of it. So I can only imagine how was the smoke in that basement you were working

Here's a couple of pictures with the barrel, connected to the chimney. The fire-place will replace the heating barrel, the connection of the fire place will be pretty much similar to the connection you see.


As you can see here, the chimney has a very good draft; the flame goes upwards like crazy.


Adrian

[connrock]

Adrian,,,
My young friend and myself had tears in our eyes too but not from the smoke! LOL
The barrel heater makes a lot of heat fast but burns wood fast too!
A good way to heat the house and chimney with little or no cost either!
Once the inside of the chimney is heated a good draft should be established and the smoke will stop,,,I hope! LOL
connrock