A bit of background...

First post.

This is a blog of our house building adventure in Formentera.  Casa Sally.

I've also put a 'short' version at https://casa-sally-short.blogspot.co.uk for those who might want an overview rather than the day-by-day, week-by-week detail.

It all started when we invited an architect to give us some ideas about improving the house we inherited from my dad back in 2002.  After a few minutes listening to us, surveying the house, and asking a few questions he said 'knock it down and start again'. Maybe he wasn't quite so blunt, but that's what he meant.

The 'old' house was started in the 60s, and expanded in the following two decades by the addition of separate buildings loosely connected by walkways, surrounding a central outdoor living area. It's a lovely summer house, when we spend most of the time outside and just use rooms to sleep in. But it's an uncomfortable and inconvenient house when the weather is wet or windy. We thought we could come up with a scheme to connect the buildings so that you wouldn't have to dash through wind and rain to get from dining room to bedroom, or from kitchen to bathroom. Such a scheme would of course be possible, but since none of the existing modules had foundations, or provision for services (there was only very basic electric and plumbing in parts of the house), it would be a very expensive endeavour. There was also a regulatory issue: the existing house already exceeded the maximum build-surface for the size of land it occupied.

As it happens, we have enough land to build a new house without knocking the old one down. So we decided to apply for planning permission to do just that. Sounds simple. But ...

...this is Spain. Nothing bureaucratic is simple. It took from 2002 to mid-2016 to get to the point where the building permit was issued. First we had to resolve the inheritance. That took three years of to-ing and fro-ing between lawyers in the States (where dad died) and Spain, getting documents translated, officialised (the 'apostille'), submitted, notarised, approved. Simultaneously I had to resolve an issue with deeds (la escritura) of another piece of the land I had 'bought' from dad. That took five years or so. Then I had to resolve a discrepancy between the deeds and the land registry, which each had different topographical details. This 'ampleacíon de cabida' took another several years. Finally, when this was completed in 2014, we were able to lodge an application to build the new house. We had started the design process a bit before that, in 2012. The new house would have three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large open-plan living-dining-kitchen area, and a garage. The master bedroom and bathroom were to be on the second floor, with a terrace overlooking the Mediterranean in the West. Unfortunately, by the time we got to this point, planning regulations had changed and only a single floor house was allowed. So we had to redesign the floorplan to a single story layout, but that gave us an opportunity to add a study and a pool.

On the 5th of March 2014 our architect showed us the new plans and on the 5th of June of that year we agreed on the final plans and submitted a formal application to the local authority (el Consell) to obtain permission to proceed. This is the 'projecto basico', and consists of a full set of plans, elevations, a photo-montage of the rendered house on the land, a landscape plan and more. If and when approved, we would then have to submit a 'projecto de ejecucíon' and a few other bits of paper. Normally this is a rubber stamping exercise and results in the final approval to start the actual building project.

The projecto basico was approved in principle in April 2016, but we didn't get the paperwork until 10 June. There were a couple of questions that the architects dealt with. We needed a geologist to do a survey, with core samples. This happened on 12 June. We also needed a full archeological survey and  had to get a 'vinculacion' from Ibiza to bind the land and the building. That happened in November 2016. The archeologist came in January 2017 but weather impeded his work, which he completed in February. On 30 March 2017 we finally got the 'licencia de obra', the permit that allows us to proceed.

In October and November 2016 we had looked at local builders that were recommended by the architect, visited several dozen houses they'd built or were building, and selected one of them after getting fixed-price quotes and investigating their references. We had also initiated the process of connecting the house to the electricity grid via Endesa, the national power provider.

On 12 April 2017 our builder arrived on site and the actual project started.

Subsequent posts will give details of some of these processes, and then of the build itself.

Enjoy.


Here are a few pictures from the time leading up to the start of the actual build. Some of these are from the archeological survey (more detail in a separate post).

Eric signing the final formality in Ibiza, the 'vinculacion', early November 2016.

Signing the builder contract in November 2016. Antonio our builder is on the left. 

Bill, our architect, is the handsome guy standing and smiling.

The site of the new house. It has rained a lot and everything is unusually green.
Need to do a bit of clearing.

Me, Pep (technical architect and quantity surveyor), and Bill (architect). 

Marking up the footprint on the land. Where do we put it?

 Marking out the footprint of the excavations 

for the archeological survey. 

 Clearing the land. We saved the trees where possible. 

This is a small Sabina (Phoenician Juniper).

Partly excavated footprint. Old house in the background.
Septic tank is marked in chalk in the foreground
 and was excavated a couple of weeks later in February.