4 Before the Foundations

When we sat down together, Harald Kellner, Dietmar Frohn, my son and I, to begin the planning process we thought we were going to be using quite a lot of the old timbers in the new building. As the demolition proceeded we took photos of the structure and noted the carvings on the beams, keeping an eye on the demolition workers and stressing frequently that under no circumstances were they to throw away one particular oak beam, the one forming the sill below the first floor, which appeared to be sound enough to be re-incorporated. Hardly had our eyes and those of the local conservation officer gone off for lunch one day than we discovered that self-same beam on the skip and in three pieces! Fury and frustration! With hindsight, however, I think they did me a favour. I managed to get hold of better quality old oak beams and ended up with a much more solid structure.

The term planning application seemed in England to make people groan. Dealing with local authorities was apparently the cause of much irritation, as far as I gathered from friends who had built their homes. So I was prepared for a complex process. However, the whole business of getting planning permission was dealt with by my structural engineer who knew all the officials from many previous occasions.

First, it was necessary to get permission to pull down the old house. The previous owner had applied to do so already and, though that permission had expired, there was no problem getting it renewed, provided I signed an agreement to rebuild within a year. We thought this a bit tight and got it extended to two years, fortunately, in view of delays to come! As the house was within the city walls, ie. in the oldest part of the city, I was instructed to report any archaeological finds to the chief archaeologists in Weimar. Also, the mediaeval vaulted cellar had to be preserved. No problem as we intended to do both anyway.

The actual house plans went to and fro between the engineers and the authorities several times in the course of meeting all the fire safety and statics requirements as well as those of the Conservation Department, whose agreement was given verbally but took an exceptionally long time to arrive in writing. Archaeologically the site had, fortunately for me, very little to interest the people in Weimar, and a fairly informal dig was carried out alongside the excavator working on the foundation trench. The fees charged for the whole planning permission process amounted to about 0.7 % of the total building costs.

I began to notice a feature of life in Mühlhausen which has consistently helped to circumvent problems throughout the building process: everyone I worked with was somehow an old friend or schoolmate of the people we dealt with. Why? Because, unlike the constantly moving population of my home town in the south of England, they had remained in the city of their childhood, been to school there and kept up with schoolmates. Even after university years elsewhere they had returned, found work, married and started the next generation within only a short walk or drive from the rest of the family. And many come from large families so that there is always someone to call upon for help. And my! How they celebrate their family relationships! There seems to be an endless round of huge birthday parties preceded by the baking of umpteen cakes.

Before I could even buy the little old house I had to make sure that there was no ownership dispute to any of the property, tiny though it was. In England such legal matters can sometimes throw up problems but nothing like the minefields caused by wars, several changes in political regime, waves of evacuees and refugees needing housing, military requisitioning of property, enemy occupation, expropriation and the forced moving of whole sections of the population. People coming back after the re-unification of Germany to reclaim property they had been compelled to leave for one reason or another often find themselves depriving others of the home they have occupied in good faith for forty years or more. In my case there was luckily one undisputed owner, so, after making sure that the city authorities had no intention of buying the property (They have a right to first refusal), I was able to move to the next complication.

In order to get planning permission you have to ask all the owners of neighbouring properties to sign that they have no objection to the plans. My son on the eastern boundary certainly wasn't going to object since the entire idea stemmed from him. But on the two other boundaries west and south the land belonged to the owner of a restaurant who, because I wanted to build right up to the boundary, was required to sign a document waiving the right to build within a certain distance on his side for reasons, apparently, of fire prevention. Understandable in a city jam-packed with timber-framed buildings where houses are dated by the years of certain major fires. Some quite tricky negotiations followed coupled with some expensive, but above board, persuasion, and I eventually had his signature. Again, local knowledge worked wonders.

On the advice of my friendly estate agent, who had personal experience of building within the walls and of the geological traps that lurked along the edges of various rock layers, I engaged a firm of geotechnical engineers to check out the terrain. Erhard Gotschol, founder of the firm, is seen above testing the ground. His son, Alexander, has now taken over the firm after spending six months helping the Chinese build the track for one of their high-speed railways.

Alex Gotschol it was who advised me on the possibility of drilling for geothermal energy on my site. It was about to save me from dependence on gas prices and all set to start until the authorities made difficulties about the drilling. Rather than wait a long time for them to clarify exactly what the problem was, I decided to go ahead with gas and have underfloor heating which could be adapted to geothermal energy at a later date. Meanwhile, of course, Russia has started putting up the price of its gas to former Soviet republics, and Germany, much of whose gas is also from Russia, is getting nervous about supplies. Prices are rising fast and I have missed a chance to do something for the environment as well as save money.