Preliminary Work

Before beginning construction, I had to do a number of things. Originally I had planned to build on a plot of land in north central Spain that my mom had given to me. This land was one of several adjoining plots belonging to my mother's extended family and being farmed by my mother's uncle. The land was used for growing wheat, and strawbales were made on the land every year - enough bales to build a small strawbale house. When my wife and I had saved enough money to begin our plans, I began to look into what legal procedures I would have to go through to get the necessary permits. To my surprise and disappointment, the property was within a zone that had been put off-limits to construction in order to preserve agricultural production. So began a search for a new land property on which to build a self-sufficient, self-sustaining eco-house.

I began searching for land in the thinly populated fringes of Madrid province. Madrid is my birth city and the one I most know and cherish, as well as being the location of most of my family and many friends, so I naturally want to remain near it. During my search I looked into the construction law and was highly saddened to find out that I could not legally build a strawbale house as no code existed for it, so I had to decide upon a new construction material that would meet code, be affordible and accessible, be environmental, and, crucially, be easy enough to work with that I could build the house myself. I settled with AAC, which I'll talk about in the next post.

After looking at many properties my wife and I finally found a piece of land that both of us were comfortable with. A splendind, abandoned three hectare vineyard overgrown with trees and thick vegetation located to the southwest of Madrid city. Most of the vines had gone wild. It is in a rugged, rocky area at the fringes of a forest and at the foothills of a mountain range. The property is about equidistant from the three nearest towns, 7 kms away. It is completely off-grid, with the only connecting infrastructure being a rough, jagged and gutted, narrow dirt road - the nearest paved road (also rough and narrow) being one kilometer away. I had to spend a good chunk of money solidifying one stretch of this dirt road which became a hybrid mud-quicksand vehicle trap during the rainy seasons. I did this by putting down a sufficient layer of 'zaorra' - a mixture of granite rocks of different sizes and of granite dust - from the local granite quarry three kilometers away. Zaorra is their main production waste byproduct.

On the land, I had to locate the best spot for the house, one with good solar access to the south, plenty of windbreak trees to the north, with a slight slope for wastewater to flow out by gravity but not so steep as to require ground leveling, without any trees that would need to be cut, not too close and not too far from the finca entrance, etc. Luckily, a spot more or less in the center of my land was ideal. Then I quickly had a small borehole well drilled to the rear of where the house would go and not too close. Water was an immediate necessity not just for drinking and cleaning but for necessary construction work.

When my wife and I arrived at that property in early June of 2000, the very first thing we did was set up two tents. One for sleeping in and the other for storage. I had planned on living in the tent until construction of the house was complete. I had foolishly expected the process for obtaining the necessary permits would be relatively quick and trouble-free; it was anything but. There was a seemingly never-ending stream of paperwork, bureaucrats and incompetence to be dealt with. In short, the process took over one and a half years and drove me to the brink of insanity. And at the time I felt like a fool because over 90% of buildings in the surrounding area are illegal; every local I met asked me why I was going through the hassle of getting a license - even the Guardia Civil! In any case, after living in the tent for three months and realizing the start of construction was some ways off, I decided to build a simple storage structure divided into two sections. This would serve to store construction materials, tools, systems components, etc. that needed to stay dry and secure (much of which would arrive way before construction would begin); it would serve as a 'dog house' for my three dogs; it would be a temporary garage for my small car; and it would give me a sheltered place - out of the wind, rain and sun - to put my sleeping tent. As fate would have it, the day after finishing the roof of this structure in mid-September, a ferocious wind-sand storm ripped through my land. By this time, my camp had grown to five tents; at the end of the wind, one and a half remained. Luckily, I managed to jump in and save my sleeping tent from major damage and moved it into the storage structure.

At the same time that I built the storage structure, I built a tower for an elevated water storage deposit. I had wanted to place a six meter high steel tower, directly over the well, for this water deposit but gave up on this idea after failing to find a local welder willing to guarantee that they could build one capable of supporting over 1000 kg of weight and withstanding very strong winds. I decided to build one out of simple local brick, like the storage structure. I made an enclosed tower to safely enclose the well, plumbing and LCB wiring setup and to give me extra storage space. I made it three by three meters to allow for adequate space to walk around the almost 1.5 meter diameter water deposit during maintenance work.

With those two structures finished enough to be useful and with time on my hands, I began cleaning up the property. I took away dead vegetation and trees, pruned vines, bushes and tress, planted fruit trees, cleared the land of surface rocks, cut away weeds, built up the collapsed and ruined stone wall that runs along my northern border, dug a pond reservoir, put up a good fence around a 7 by 10 meter area in front of the storage structure as a dog kennel, put posts and two strands of barb wire at the borders of my property, etc. Even so I still had time to kill and, therefore, started teaching business English in Madrid to executives on a part-time basis. I eventually got the building license after what seemed an eternity and began a new phase - house construction.