Garden – Building a House in Germany Blog

Driveway, Paving and Lawn

The ground outside our house is either completely hard (like concrete) when it hasn’t rained for a few days, or completely boggy (as soon as it starts to rain), so we are really happy that already in January we had met with a local landscape gardener and planned and ordered the block paving for the driveways and patios.

Originally they had given the impression that they would do all of it in the first week of May (which was a short week), but in the end they didn’t start until the 8th May and it was not until 31st May that they had completely finished (although most of the important bits were done during the first week, and fortunately most of May was quite dry).

Now we are watering the grass seed and hoping that it will soon start to turn green!

Tiling Complete, Rainwater Tank Installed, Garden Levelled

Another week is over and looking back, a lot has been achieved.

The tilers finished grouting and set off for home at around 1pm on Thursday, having done all of the tiling in three and a half days. Someone else then showed up to start the silicon joints. The painters should be back again next week to finish off.

The electricians have now finished connecting up all of the wires, and the LNBs are now on the satellite dish, although the cables are not yet connected to the LNBs. The distribution cupboard is ready for the electric meter to be installed, once we have our mains electric connection.

Outside, a 3m x 3m x 2.3m deep whole has been dug out and the rain water tank installed. The downpipes for the water coming off the roof are now connected and as it is likely to rain in the next few days, the tank should start to fill up.

The road was dug up on Thursday to connect the waste-water and rainwater pipes to the mains, and new tarmac was laid today.

We also had the garden levelled at the back and side (where we are not laying driveways) so the original heap of soil that was dug out for the cellar and the new heap that was dug out for the rain water tank are gone!

Sockets, Light Switches and Diggers

We visited the house this afternoon to ventilate it, but no need as lots of work was going on and most of the windows were already open.

Inside, the electricians are back and have been installing sockets and light switches.

Outside, more work was going on. The diggers were at work burying the neighbours rainwater tank which has been installed today. We talked quickly to one of the digger drivers who told us that they will be starting with our groundwork on Monday (connection to waste water, rain water and installation of the rainwater tank).

Garden Visualisation

As mentioned earlier, we had a first meeting with a local landscape gardener in early January. After receiving a quote, considering all of the options we talked about at the first meeting and making a few small alterations, we met with him again yesterday.

We are now waiting on an updated quote for the following work, which we are hoping will be done at the start of May:

15m driveway at the side of the house
7m parking space (at the front of the house)
3.5m x 5m terrace on the west side of the house (back garden)
2m x 3m terrace on the south side of the house
All of the above will use Caldera block paving from Kreher Beton in ‘Muschelkalk nuanciert’ (Nuanced Shell Limestone)
Levelling of the topsoil and grass seeding
A step at the front door
A couple more steps from the parking space up to the garden level
Gravel drainage bed

We have decided that we might leave the fence a little while, as we don’t know exactly when the road/path will be finished and are not sure that it makes sense to install the fence before that is done.

To try to get an idea how it will look, we made this ‘artists impression’ in Photoshop just for fun…

Less than 80 days to go!

Happy New Year – Only 100 Days To Go

So finally, the long Christmas Holiday is over and work on our house should get underway again this week.

Having said that, since the only things that are in the plan for the coming week are installation of the solar panels (which is already done) and cleaning the bricks, not much is really likely to visibly change.

The scaffolding is due to come down in 10 days time, so hopefully progress will not be held up by the current wintery weather. At least it is nowhere near as cold as it was last week.

Yesterday we went shopping for a couple of new things for the house in the new year sales:

Saucepans that will work with our new Induction Hob (they need to have magnetic bottoms). Finally we ordered these online as they were about 40% cheaper than in the store.
Two bar-stools for the kitchen island / breakfast bar (we got these early because they were reduced to close to half price)

Today we went to the site to see our house in the snow for the first time!

Tomorrow we have an appointment with a local landscape gardener, and have spent the afternoon going over the sketch we drew while on holiday in Italy back in September, so that we are ready to talk about the driveway/parking places and the path around the house as well as a fence.

6600 Litres of Rainwater

watering-791312_640 One last thing for our planning application preparations is to decide on the location of our rainwater tank.

When I first read the list of local regulations and saw that we have to have a rainwater tank, I had a 250-litre plastic water butt in mind. Wrong!

What we are going to have is a 6600-litre concrete tank, buried in the back garden. This will collect rainwater from both sides of the roof, and there will be a pump inside so that we can connect a hose to it for watering the garden.

The plants will be happy with that!

Picture credit: Pixabay

3D Model in Sketchup

In the last post, we were waiting for the price for the metal carport. When this arrived with a much higher number than we expected, we changed our minds again and have finally now decided on a wooden one after all as it is less than a quarter of the price. Our current thoughts are to paint it white.

We have also been busy making a model of the entire plot in Sketchup.

The large patio area is on the west side of the house, so should be able to sit in the sun from around midday until evening. Since we might light to have breakfast or morning coffee in the sun, we are also planning a smaller patio on the south side.