A new year, and new projects. This one we are building in Chamonix, in the French Alps.
Building in the Alps poses special challenges. Sloped plots, tight turns, narrow passages, snd scaffolding that hardly fits between the house and the neighbors fence.
But the view is magnificent. Mont Blanc, Aiguille du Midi, Aiquille Verte, Le Brévent, Auguille du… well there’s snow peaks all around.
There are many different kinds of insulation materials to insulate your house. Polyurethane, glass wool, rock wool, old newspapers, wood fiber, sheep wool and the list goes on and on.
In this video we compare three common types:
polyurethane glass wool wood fiber. One remark about cost. In the video we say that wood fiber is “almost cheap”, i.e. it is slightly more expensive than the other materials. But this video is from 2015 and since 2020 woodprices have gone through the roof, also prices for wood fiber.
In 2016 we built a house in The Netherlands, but were too busy to put photographs on our website. Better late than never, so here are some photos of this house. Architects design (Edward van der Drift), 190 m2 footprint.
This is when we had just handed over the house. The weather was terrible that summer but with some snow everything looks better.
We placed bitumen on the roof, our client later added sedum for the green roof.
In the South of The Netherlands we built the Riethoven house. Designed by the owner himself, this house is both a log house and a panel house: the ground floor is a log house, and then the second floor is a panel house, but constructed in such a way that you can not see the difference. If you would not know any better, you would think it is all logs. The panel construction gave us just that little extra flexibility to meet the demands.
For panel houses we usually take a 10 ton-meter crane, that is: a crane that can lift one tonne over a 10 meter distance. Or 500 kilo’s over a 20 meter distance. For the average house with 6-meter panels that is just enough to lift panels from a truck, swing around and hoist the panel on the foundation. For an average house we need a crane for about three weeks.
Almost finished: an American barn. More to follow… In Almere in The Netherlands by the way, where something comparable, but bigger, has been built a couple of years ago: the “Rode Donders”.
Last year we built a panel house in St. Jeans d’Aulps, about ten minutes from Morzine in France. And we promised to add some more photo. Here they are.
It looks like a log house, but like many houses in the Alps it actually is a panel house. We also have photos from the interior and then the difference is more obvious. We will show you later.
When we rebuild our website we lost quite some content. A post about a house that we built last year in St. Jean d’Aulps (just 10 minutes North of Morzine) also disappeared in cyberspace, so now we place it again.
Although it looks like a log house, this actually is a panel house. We built the wooden part, a local contractor did the concrete foundation (but we supplied the windows that went into the concrete part).
Today we started with a new project in The Netherlands. We are going to build a panel house, about 180 m2. The foundation is ready, crane is waiting, assembly crew arrived during the weekend, and Monday morning ten ‘o clock first truck arrived. We will need five trucks for this project.
There is very little space around the house, the truck can not get there. So we unload one kilometer down the road and place all materials in two containers, which we then drive to the building site.
Next to the Mont Blanc A beautiful three bedroom chalet built in the valley of Mont Blanc mountain, in Les Houches, with a big vide. Splendid view towards the Mont Blanc.
While building this house we tried to keep traditional local style yet we have implemented some modern details. A contemporary look, with Siberian larch cladding on the exterior and a plasterboard finish on the interior.
