More BIK Maison Woningen ??!!??

I guess it was inevitable, that somebody on the other side of the road will start building soon.

However - it was with some shock to see the BIK Maison / Woningen sign there.

Given how long it takes to build the first houses - these people must have extreme patience.

Consider - house number 7, a BIK Maison / Woningen house which has started during January 2007, still - despite all of the good weather in this year - is not yet water tight. The window frames are not all completed.

Yet, House number 2, a house which apparently is not built by BIK Maison / woningen, is virtually completed.. including the floor finishes. Also remember, that this house was built by one person.

Another Day on the Street

Well it is Monday - anything new happened on the construction.

House 9 there has been quite some activity with the wooden frame work. The floor for the next level has been completed (almost).. which means that the next level must be soon constructed. It will be very evident this week the overall size of this house.

Incredible that in less than 1 week, a house appears from nothing.

Sorry For Being Away

Have been very busy away from Everberg, so no updates during July and mostly August. What do you expect, it is Belgium after all - famous for the holidays.

Anyway, not too much as happened on the street because of the 1month vacations of the building companies.

Let me summarise.

House 1, they are now working on the 2nd level.
House 2, looks like the interior is being worked.
House 3, just started working on the first walls
House 4, working on the roof tiles
House 5, not started
House 6, not started
House 7, well - a big disappointment that absolutely nothing seems to have changed since I last wrote the message. The windows are still missing, which means the house is still not watertight.. which is a big pity considering all of rain we have had in May, and June and July. A lot of water inside the house isn't too good, is it?
House 8, well considering the house started at the beginning of this year - only now putting the roof joists in place, feels slow progress.
House 9, Something has started, like a mushroom growing overnight, a new company, Dewaele have arrived with the first floor wooden construction. Interesting concept of building, I wonder if Dewaele can follow BIK schedule or go faster, or go slower.

BIK & Huyzentruyt

Did you know that BIK was bought by Huyzentruyt?

Middle of the Year..

We are now in the middle of 2007.

This was apparently when you would have expected all the houses to be finished.

However lets look at the progress of the BIK Maison Woningen projects in Everberg.

So 3 houses that have some progress above ground in the pictures. Only house 7 has significant progress, roof completed, and most of the windows placed - and starting the plastering inside. However they have not done the outside brick pointing. I wonder on the colour?

House 4 - onto the 2nd level for the bricks - but slowed a bit as they are working on the foundations for House 3

House 8 - well this is the longest in progress, since the foundations were there so early. Now making some progress on the brick work.

House 9 Cellar

House 9 has completed the cellar..

Quite a large construction - the walls were completed within 3 days.

Shows what is possible with a professional company.

Weekly Progress.. house by house

View from the back

A view from the back of the plot, you can see house 7 almost completed until the roof, and house 2 fully completed.

Saturday in Everberg, Belgium

The street is quiet during the evening of a June Saturday.

So what is the progress this week.

House 1 Foundation done
House 2 Roof Completed, mortar in bricks Completed.. looking great
House 3 Foundation started
House 4 Bricks upto first level and first level roof in.
House 5 Not Started
House 6 Not Started
House 7 Bricks completed, and roof battens installed, no tiles yet.
House 8 Bricks started, approx 0.5 to 1 metre
House 9 Cellar started, first base concrete poured

House 9

Concrete has been poured into the base of the hole. It was poured on Friday 1st June, so the official start of the project for house 9.

The concrete will dry over the weekend and then the walls of the cellar will be created from the molds.

At the moment, this is the only house on this Everberg street in Belgium, which is having a full cellar. House 1 & 2 have a half cellar.

So far all the houses of BIK Maison are the only houses building with small foundations. The 3 houses which are not BIK, have gone for this different design.

House Progress on the Street in pictures

Holiday Monday

It's holiday this Monday in Everberg.. another lost day for the construction on the street.

In Belgium, there are a lot of public holidays in May.

House 1, 2 & 3

Don't have pictures of houses 1, 2 & 3.

However the progress is the following.

House 1, half cellar is now completed.

House 2, roof is almost completed, with virtually all roof tiles in place.

House 3, foundations have been dug and the concrete poured into them.

House 4

Actually quite decent progress on House 4, considering that they also dug out the foundations for house 3 at the same time.

This is is a different sub-contractor of BIK Maison Woningen than the ones building house 7 and 8. Will be interesting to see the speed and quality difference.

House 7

House 7 - brickwork looks now to be finished by the BIK Maison Woningen sub-contractor and they have also fitted the roof joists and the blue stone around the windows. So starting in January, it takes 5months to build this size house.. without a cellar. I

House 8

Again - House 8, looks the same as it did last week, and the week before that. All that happens on House 8 is the amount of equipment changing - but no actual construction work happens. This is very slow progress - the foundation has been completed for almost 4 months - but no bricks.

House 9

So House 9 has also started, this now means 7 out of the 9 houses have some form of construction. This leaves House 5 and 6 as the only house out of the first 9 - not to be started.

House 9 is being constructed by the 4th different contractor on site. Creabouw from Vichte. Looks like Creabouw has first removed the earth for a cellar.

The earth looks quite clay -

House 7 - Reaching the Roof

Picture of House 7 - one of the BIK Maison Woningen constructions on this street in Everberg, Belgium.

It is a multiple level house with 3 facades and 2 different types of bricks. Not so many windows in the whole house, so I wonder how dark it will be inside.

This was the first house that was started, back at the start of 2007.

Marks in the Ground

Some strange marks in the ground, looks like somebody has been driving over plot 9 ?

The Construction Schedule of Everberg Houses

What is the expected construction and completion date of each house here in Everberg Belgium - this the date when the house is turned over to the owner and they can start to live there. At that stage, maybe not everything is finished, such as drive and garden. Sometimes even the interior is not completely finished, however should be good enough to live in.

Here is my estimate based on the progress that we see today - and also based the amount of people working on the site of the different companies (including the hours that the companies are prepared to work each day) and allowance for the weather. The current contractors on site are the Unibuilder and two sub-contractors of the company BIK Maison Woningen.

House 1 -> March 08 ................Unibuilder
House 2 -> December 07.......... Unibuilder
House 3 -> July 08........ ........... BIK -Maison - Woningen
House 4 -> April 08 .................. BIK - Maison - Woningen
House 5 -> July 08 .................... BIK - Maison - Woningen
House 6 -> July 08 .....................BIK - Maison - Woningen
House 7 -> December 07 ...........BIK - Maison - Woningen
House 8 -> May 08 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,.,,,,,,,BIK - Maison - Woningen
House 9 -> ?

How accurate do you think these estimates are ?

Progress

The first sign was planted in Feb 2005 by BIK Maison Woningen.

The sign has now gone as house No1 gets under full construction.

I wonder who has the sign of BIK?

Who is working today?

Well today it was Friday, a nice day in Everberg.

Which building company was working today.

Was it BIK Maison - Woningen ?

No.

However progress was happening on House no. 1, but this is not a BIK Maison House.

National Holiday

Latest pictures from Everberg today in the below post. Nobody working because it is a national holiday.

House 1 - foundations have started
House 2 - roof is well under way
House 3 - foundation strings have been marked
House 4 - bricks already started
House 5 - nothing
House 6 - nothing
House 7 - working on the final bricks and starting the roof
House 8 - foundations completed
House 9 - nothing.

What a Week of Construction

Well, what a week.

Despite a bit of indifferent weather here in Everberg, there has been quite some construction activity on the street.

We now have 5 (FIVE) houses under construction.The two additional properties that have started are houses 1 and 4. It is not clear which building company is going to be constructing these houses.

Have a look at the pictures below.

House 8

House 8

House 7

House 7

House 4

House 4

House 2

House 2

House 1

House 1

Weather Changing ?

From the weather forecast the weather looks to be changing.

Next week the weather might not be so nice as the past 4 weeks.. I wonder what impact this has on the construction progress?

so since March 10th.. house 7 has been under construction by BIK Maison / Woningen.

looks like until this is finished, then BIK maison / Woningen will start on house 8. Which means no progress will be made on house 8 for another few weeks - but the foundations were completed at the start of March.. so for 2 full months, no further progress on that house.

the roof timber for house 7 was delivered 2 weeks ago.. there must be another 2 - 3 weeks of brick work left.. so does this mean they are already 1 month behind house 7?

What is the Box?

A new development here. What is this new metal box that has arrived on the street ? Is this the sign of another crew of people arriving to start building one of the houses - is it a sub-contractor of BIK Maison / woningen, or is it a different building company altogether. Maybe in a day or so we can find out what is happening.

It is strange that only 3 houses out of 9 have been started on this small street in Everberg, Belgium.

Earth Gone !

earth is now being removed.

Weekly Progress

and again, week after week.. the house not built by BIK maison / woningen is still the furthest in construction.

House number 7, the BIK maison woningen construction - how different is the picture from the previous week?

Beautiful weather again.. and lets see how much progress on this building site here in Everberg, Belgium, even though there was a national holiday, still plenty of time with perfect building weather. Here is house number 8. Again, Zero progress on this house.

Houses in Everberg, Belgie

The first post of May 2007.

So the story so far.

On this street in Everberg, Belgie, there were going to be 9 (NINE) really very nice houses built by BIK Maison / Woningen.

So far, just one house has some bricks laid, another house has a foundation - and that it is from BIK Maision / Woningen so far. Not a lot of progress, since the very sign was first put up advertising the project in February 2005.

The only other house that is under construction on this street at the moment - well that is being built by an independent builder, we call him the uni-builder, as he works completely on his own.

For the other 6 houses, absolutely nothing has happened on the site in Everberg so far. I wonder how many houses will be constructed by the end of 2007?

Have a read of this link

another link which might be worth reading if you speak French and want to build a house in Belgium. Not nice to read - explains some of the problems you might face.

http://forum.aufeminin.com/forum/preschezvous24/__f3521_preschezvous24-Nous-souhaiterions-construire-avec-bik-avez-vous-des-echos.html#25278

View of the Street

This is the view from the top of the street. As you can see in the picture, the big sign from BIK Maison Woningen.. from this sign you might think there was land for sale, however it was sold already in 2005!

You also might think that BIK Maison/Woningen is building all of the 9 houses. Well they are not building 9 houses. Why not.. maybe ask the owners of the land? At the moment - BIK Maison/Woningen have only started on 2 houses.. with only 1 in construction... it is now end of April 2007.. so only 1 house partly in construction after 2 years???

To confirm, the house in the picture is not being built by BIK Maison / Woningen. It is built by just 1 man.. but faster than the BIK Maison / Woningen project. Does this give you any ideas what has happened on this street?

The other thing on this BIK Maison / Woningen sign, is that the land size is shown. I wonder if the land size shown is the actual number?

just to be clear on progress when BIK maison / woningen has to build more than one house on the same street.. well it seems they can't do that in the Everberg project,. here is the photograph that demonstrates it...

this is house 8 in the first week of March 2007, and then the same position the photograph is taken.., at the end of April 2007.

Maybe there is just too much building work, and not enough people to build. So take care when you sign a contract, on which date they will start construction?

this is a project at another site... just a few weeks ago.. nothing was here..

this is a house made by Dewaele.. It is a timber frame construction, which is different from the brick and block method used by BIK Maison / Woningen.

Weekly Progress

OK, it is the usual weekly look at the Everberg site here in Belgium - to see how the uni-builder is doing and how BIK maison / woningen is making progress - surely perfect weather to build in April since not a drop of rain so far.

And as you can see from the pictures.. in sequence..

House 8.. Again it is a BIK maison / woningen construction, but again a nice week of weather has past without a single brick being laid by BIK maison / woningen. Just think how many weeks have past since the foundation was made. At least some of the sand has gone down.

House 7.. BIK maison / woningen have not yet finished the 2nd level.. so 5 perfect days of weather, and still not able go that fast.

And the winner for the 12th week in a row,, is the Uni-builder - he is now on the 3rd level of the house, but of course he does this by working on Saturday, until 5pm