Libramont Building Project

Solid ground and live wires

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:56:55 GMT

The final layer of concrete has been poured and we know have a proper floor throughout the whole building. It makes the place feel more complete because everything is on the same level. I received the bill this morning in the post and it was quite a bit less than we were anticipating. This means we can get on with some other stuff too - namely the insulation and rendering of the old building. We had to decide whether to go ahead with that by the end of last week. The contractor had told us that if he couldn't get started reasonably soon we'd have to wait until next year he's got that much work lined up.

This is a view from the small hall/kitchen area looking through to the main hall. I don't think I've taken a photo from here so far so it's a new angle. François has ordered the tiles that will be laid in the coming weeks. I've seen a couple of examples and they're very nice. There will be big tiles in the main hall - 40cm x 40cm I believe... - and slightly smaller ones in the old building. It's going to look good.

The final photo today is of the electrical "installation" in the entry hall. Everything was connected up a week or so ago and we now have real, live, proper electricity in the building. The only plugs though are the ones on the right hand side of the photo. All of the others are just boxes with wires poking out. At least it means that Alain no longer has to lug his portable generator to the building when he needs power.

We've finally, officially, launched our 1000x50 project to raise the money that we need to complete the building project. There is a website at www.1000x50.com that has all the details for those that might be interested. So far we've raised, as of today, 4,720 Euros - nearly 10% of the total - Thank you Lord!

Feeling warmer already

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 17:43:39 GMT

I'm going to start off with one of my holiday photos. We've just got back from a week (more or less) in the UK having a bit of a break and seeing my parents. We were staying in Hastings but spent a day in Brighton with my sister and her husband and kids. This shot of the pier was one I took whilst we were waiting for the bus back to the Park & Ride. I'm quite pleased with it - high-res version available on request.

Whilst we were away, living it up on the South Coast, work was continuning apace at the building. We popped over with François to have a look after our Easter service. You will notice that the floor has, yet again, changed. This is a layer of insulating foam that has been sprayed all over the floor in the whole building. You can't quite see it from the photo but it is pale yellow and kind of crunchy when you walk on it. The final layer of concrete is due for the end of the month.

The lines that you can see traced in the foam are all of the conduits for the electric cables, laid by the guys from the church, along with the pipes for the water. The foam seems to be about 4 or 5cm deep. Somehow the whole lot reminds me of a model train layout... if you were to dump a couple of kilos of icing sugar on it.

This final image is of the point where all of the water pipes come together for connection to the boiler. At least I'm guessing that is what it is, I didn't actually ask. Thought it looked quite interesting anyway.

As mentioned in one of my recent posts we should have had the electricity and gas connected up last week. Well, it didn't happen. The sub-contractor of the sub-contractor has got a back-log and didn't get round to us. This meant that Alain wasted three days waiting at the buildng for them to come. Would have been nice for them to let us know. Theoretically they're coming this Thursday...

A Happy Easter to everyone who stops by to read this post! And to go back to my Anglican roots: "He is risen, He is risen indeed!"

Hot (and cold) stuff

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 17:04:15 GMT

Early trip over to the building to take some pictures before the service. Guy was due to do a presentation and I wanted to add some last minute pictures to the PowerPoint file. Got the pictures OK but then discovered that the church computer couldn't read my SD card with the pictures on - some computer fixing to do this week.

The first picture was taken looking through the front door into the main hall. Those pipes are for the heating - work has started! I didn't have a key so couldn't go in and take any better shots.

Zac was with me so we then wandered round the back of the building to have a look into the main hall through the side windows. At the back of the hall there is a new(ish) pile of rubble. This is the 6m³ of dirt, stones and large chunks of masonry that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I had wondered where it went...

A look through the back door this time. Not too much to see expect more new pipes.

Finally a shot of the building taken in the morning sun - it was about 8:50 am when I took this one.

More from the archives - Part 5

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 11:45:41 GMT

It's been a while since I posted anything from the church archives but it just so happens that I was clearing out a cupboard today and found a small packet of old photos, three of which were taken at the building well before work ever started. The first two are shots of how the old building looked upstairs, probably around 2006.

There were a number of tatty rooms built of breeze blocks. If I remember correctly they were used either to house chickens or pigeons - the mess was significant. We had a work day one Saturday at the building to knock all of the walls down and clean everything up. It was quite fun laying into the walls with a sledgehammer.

This is how downstairs used to look. The floor was compacted earth and bricks. There were two garage doors only one of which opened properly. To the left of the picture you can just see some wooden doors. These doors led out to a shed type thing that we had to demolish. When we demolished it we discovered that the roof was made of asbestos - which proved to be quite expensive to get rid of as no-one, understandably, wanted to deal with it. On the far left is a picture. I have no idea what it was of or why anyone would hang a picture in a garage...

When I look at these photos I realise just how far we've come over the last few years. And that is thanks to the generosity of the people who have supported the project both financially and by giving their time to work at the building. Thanks are due also to our God who in his mercy and grace has provided us with a place to work on in the first place!

All together now

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:28:29 GMT

I've been working on a flyer about our soon to be launched 1000x50 project to raise the last 50,000 Euros that we need for the building project. To that end I took my camera to church on Sunday and got everyone to stand at one end of the hall so I could take a photo. Despite the title not everyone was actually there, it's very rare that we're all there at the same time, but here is the result:

Edit 23rd March 2012: Michel has sent me a slightly edited version of the photo that gets rid of all the bits that were poking out of people's heads and the like. We didn't actually have a wall available that was so beautifully white... maybe in the new building, perhaps.

The writing's on the wall

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 10:31:38 GMT

Some new news from the building project though I have no pictures this time. The heating company are going to start installing the heating this week. François called a meeting at the building Saturday morning to decide where to put all the radiators and the like. I wasn't able to attend but Olivier filled me in on what they did. Everywhere that they wanted the company to put a radiator they wrote on the wall, a kind of "radiator here" message. Hence the post title... sorry.

This morning I've payed just over 10000 Euros of bills. More than 7000 Euros was for the floor seen in the previous post. The rest was to pay for having the building connected up to gas and electricity. Apparently, once paid, they will come and do the work within 30 days. It'll be great to finally be connected because it will mean that Alain no longer has to drag his own generator into the building to provide power.

It suddenly feels like things have picked up speed which is kind of exciting really after a few months where things have been pretty dormant. If everything goes to plan (when does it ever...) within a months or so all the heating should be done, the second layer of insulated floor poured and maybe even the insulation of the old building should be completed.

Having said that, I've been writing the blog here at anzoid.com for just over three years now. The other night I read through the whole thing from beginning to end in one sitting. I found a few spelling mistakes which I shall leave for posterity but one thing that stood out as I read was how many times I said something was about to happen and then… it didn't. It may just be that I'm a lousy writer who has no clue about what is going on - a distinct possibility I admit - but it got me thinking. So far our building project has been an exercise in patience. Things simply haven't happened as quickly as we had hoped, or sometimes, had been led to believe, they would. I don't really think that anybody is at fault, building work seems just to be a little unpredictable like that.

So all this activity of the last few weeks, whilst encouraging hasn't removed the fact that we're having to learn to be patient, to jump on things that need doing as they come up but also not to get to stressed out when things take longer than planned.

Moving along

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:38:14 GMT

I decided to wait until the work was actually done to write this post... The main hall now has a proper floor as you can see in the accompanying picture.

The company that did the work last week had to remove about 5cm of rubble from across the whole hall - about 6m³ of dirt and stones altogether - before pouring the floor. At the end of last year we had the an Energy Audit done on the church and found out that if we put down a well insulated floor we could claim back from the Belgian government €1 for every €3 spent. Bargain!

So, the 5cm had to be skimmed off the top before putting down the first layer of insulated flooring. Once the heating is in the final layer will be poured. We're hoping that the heating engineer will be starting next week.

It so happened that Stephen and Ruth Trump were with us today at church. Stephen was pastor of the church from 1990 to 2005. Stephen and Ruth were the driving force behind getting the original building project started. Stephen raised the money for the purchase of the old building that the church bought at the end of 2002.

Edit: I've been asked what the pipe is in the middle of the floor. The answer: it's for a drain that will eventually be level with the tiles on the floor. The idea is that you can wash the floor with soapy water and a raclette (giant squeegee) and push the water straight down the hole. The drain comes out on the side of the building somewhere. It's a continental thing that I'd neither seen nor heard of before coming to Belgium. Makes keeping the floor clean brain dead simple.

No news is good news...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:22:01 GMT

I popped over to the building after church yesterday just to have a look. There's not actually been much going on of late as the weather has been so bad. Night time temperatures have been down to -17°c or so and during the day around -5°c. Getting anyone to come and work outside, or inside in a totally unheated building, is pretty much impossible. Anyway, I took a few pictures, Oli was with me but he decided to stay in the car because it was too cold to wander round the building.

Alain has finished the plastering in the main hall - right up to the ceiling. As it is currently the room is actually quite bright and airy feeling. We'll have to make sure to keep that feel when we decorate.

He's also been working in the smaller hall to get everything covered in plaster. Again, it all feels nice and bright.

Just because it was there: A photo of a bucket of ice. I should have tipped it out and down some ice carving but I've only just thought of that...

Happy New Year 2012

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 11:24:48 GMT

Not a huge amount of news about the building over this holiday period. I wanted to write just to say Happy New Year from all of us here in (and around) Libramont.

The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

All systems go

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:05:26 GMT

A piece of good news to report today. We can go ahead with the installation of the heating and, then, the pouring of the concrete floors. I spoke to Guy the other night and we've got the go ahead from the person who did the energy audit to start on the heating.

François is going to visit the heating engineer and will be signing the contract for the work. If all goes to plan the installation will be started towards the end of November. There are a couple of details to sort out - particularly insulation of the pipes that would normally be placed under the concrete floor, or have the concrete floor poured on top of them...

One idea was to have half of the insulated concrete floor poured, the heating installed, and then have the other half poured but this doesn't look like it's going to work out. So, François will be talking to the engineer about lagging the pipes i.e. insulating them directly whilst he is installing them. We'll see what the response is.

Anyway, it is good to see things moving along. I would imagine that we'll have to wait for the beginning of the new year to get the floors done but even so it means that even as the weather starts to improve (ha ha) working in the building will be much more pleasant.