New site, new house design, new language for the blog.

Those who are new to this blog just need to know that we are buliding a bungalow (with old age in mind). To follow this blog, just sign up to blogger.com and click "Follow" on this blog. Don't worry, it's safe. I've been using it for years now - and you don't receive any mails or spam, just notifications every time I update the blog. I've written this in English so that more people can follow it, but left the title "Baublog" so that interested Germans can find it on the web. Westergarten 6, 97253 Gaukönigshofen-Acholshausen will be the address of the house, hence the title "Westergarten".

Those who have been following the blog in German will know that we have been waiting for news from the town of Gaukönigshofen on when the site we were wanting to buy would be available to build on. The news a few weeks ago wasn't good - it looks as if it will be 2015.

We weren't prepared to wait that long, so we returned to the original site we had looked at back in May in Acholshausen (a hamlet belonging to Gaukönigshofen, but admittedly not much easier to pronounce), took our architect Helmut Borgmann along who surveyed the site, and we decided to go for it. It's the one pin-pointed on the picture in the profile of this blog. It's at the top of a hill on a flat piece of land overlooking the village to the north, and fields and a valley to the east and south-east. 945m² means we will have a decent sized garden.

Now,because every new settlement in Germany has its own building regulations and stipulations (which is a good thing, because it means you just can't build what you want, where you want), this means we will have to change our roof design - see post in September for original design. The new roof will be more classic in style, and reminds me of bungalows back home. The roof tiles will be rusty red which is typical for the area and as stipulated in the building regulations, which also stipulate that the angle of the roof be between 38° and 45° on bungalows.

The recent change of government here means that our original plan to build a photvoltaic system on the roof to produce electricity is no longer a viable option. Good news in a way, because it reduces the cost of the house considerably - money to spend on the garden etc.... Our heating system which is a central ventilation system with a heat exchanger which extracts heat from the air (down to -18°!) and passes it on to the warm water and underfloor heating. We are coupling this with auxiliary solar panels for the warm water and heating. For the technically interested, click here: Heat exchanger

We now begin the process of applying for building permission - watch this space!