Ventada 26 - we build a house in Portixol

I park in the morning on Calle Ventada and realize that it is a wall. And look over to the construction site. Because we are building a new house in Portixol. Right next to our office. In the Calle Ventada. It is so narrow that a car should not be wider than 2 meters. And so narrow that we often have to close the street for our construction site - much to the chagrin of the neighbors.

Narrow cars and fat trucks

Of course, we try to keep the times short. But both for the collection of rubble and the delivery of construction materials, we have to rely on smaller trucks here. Which of course have to drive more often. And take longer overall.

Speaking of "taking longer": We waited four years for the building permit. This is unfortunately typical for Portixol and Molinar and is due to the fact that every building application has to be approved by an authority called "recursos hidricos". Among other things, they are responsible for thinking about what could happen if the sea level continues to rise. And for this purpose - which also makes absolute sense - they have drawn up a map showing from which height level above the street the future house may start. In other words, we now have to allow houses to start between 50 and 100cm higher in the case of new buildings or serious reforms. Are unfortunately but further limited to the same maximum level of height as before.

Living room and shoe box

We therefore lose considerable height. This poses a problem, especially with larger houses. The lower the ceiling height becomes, the more we approach the look of a shoebox with large floor areas. Consider this: if the guest bathroom has a low ceiling height, you'll never notice it. But the open living and dining area, on the other hand, needs height. In this particular case, you can see that we only have a ceiling height of 2.20m in the entrance area. That's not really good ... We will certainly be able to optimize some things, but it is already depressing that one authority "raises" your building and the other then says: But it comes the same cover on top 😉

The building application is a long time coming ...

But what is almost worse: if we make the request to build according to yes exactly the existing map published by the Office, we wait three years for the result. And we are not talking about opinions, interpretations or the like. But a value is "checked", which the office itself has defined. Which we have applied for. Because there is no other option anyway. And this value, which is therefore clear to all parties from the outset, is approved in the three years ...

... but life goes on

That is why it takes so long to build a house in Portixol. The city hall "asks" the applicant to check first with "recursos hidricos". And only when they have placed their stamp, the city hall also starts. This then takes another year or so, which would be perfectly fine for me in isolation. But together it takes a good four years. And that's when some of the "use cases" change. Children are born. Or even older. Marriages are divorced. New couples find each other... The way life plays out must ultimately be reflected in the architecture. In order to be able to guarantee the utility value of a "home" in the long term.

No matter how, let's leave the excitement marathon and concentrate again on our house in Portixol. Finally it has started. With the little excavator tirelessly digging earth and stone out of the ground to make room for pools, pool equipment and for the so-called "Cama Sanitaria". Because at Predator we always build a semi-basement in all new buildings, which serves exclusively to insulate the first floor against moisture. Why? Don't we insulate? Yes, we do, but it is possible that such a layer will crack at some point. Or a mistake was made during construction. This can never be corrected. Therefore: double helps better. That's why we build these half-basements, which we then actively ventilate. Costs money. You can save money, but then you'll never get errors with rising damp out of the house again. Was with each house in Portixol so, which I have bought ...

There he is again

Anyway, there - smiling mischievously - is José Manual. At the back of the houses. As if he had known that I would come. And asked me what he was doing here. The chief engineer of IslaBau. This construction company, known for its quality, has already built the Molinar townhouses for us. Not really cheap, but still good. And because that worked out well, we are now building five more new projects with IslaBau.

José Manual will manage the actual construction site of our house in Portixol as "jefe de obra", Fede is the interface to me and takes care of the technical conception. I can torment him with Asana and other project management tools, which are otherwise rather unknown here. On the construction site itself, Toni Gallardo is present as "Encargado de obra", who instructs the colleagues present and is their contact person. As architect we once again have Magi Marqués on board, as "Arquitecta Tècnica" Neus Antich Carbonell supports us.