Ventada 26 – we’re building a house in Portixol

In the morning I park in Calle Ventada and realize: it’s a wall. And I look over to the construction site. Because we’re building a new house in Portixol. Right next to our office. In Calle Ventada. It’s so narrow that a car really shouldn’t be wider than just under 2 meters. And so narrow that for our construction site – much to the neighbors’ annoyance – we often have to close the street.

Of course we try to keep the time spans short. But both for the pickup of rubble and for the delivery of building materials we depend on smaller trucks here. Which of course have to make more trips. And take longer overall.

À propos “taking longer”: We waited four years for the building permit. Unfortunately, that’s typical for Portixol and Molinar and is because 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 sea levels continue to rise. And for that purpose – which is absolutely sensible – they created a map that shows from which elevation level above the street the future house is allowed to start. In other words, with new builds or major renovations we now have to start houses between 50 and 100cm higher. Unfortunately, however, we’re still limited to the same maximum height level as before.

So we’re clearly losing height. That becomes a problem especially with larger houses. The lower the ceiling height gets, the more, with large floor areas, we approach the look of a shoebox. Pay attention to it: If the guest toilet has a low ceiling height, you’ll never have noticed. But the open-plan living and dining area needs height. In this specific case you can see that in the entrance area we’re only reaching a ceiling height of 2.20m. That’s really not good … We’ll certainly be able to optimize quite a bit there, but it’s already oppressive that one authority “raises” your building and the other then says: But the same lid goes on top 😉

But what’s almost even worse: When we submit the application to build exactly according to the existing map published by the authority, we wait three years for the result. And we’re not talking about opinions, interpretations, or anything like that. Rather, a value is “checked” that the authority itself defined. The one we applied for. Because there isn’t any other option anyway. And this value, which is therefore clear to everyone involved from the outset, gets approved over the course of three years …

That’s why it takes so incredibly long to build a house in Portixol. The town hall “asks” the applicant to first check in with “recursos hidricos”. And only once they’ve placed their stamp does the town hall start as well. That then takes about another year, which, viewed in isolation, would be completely fine for me. But together it’s a good four years. And by then the “use cases” sometimes change. Children are born. Or simply get older. Marriages get divorced. New couples form… That’s just how life goes; in the end, architecture has to reflect it in order to be able to sustainably ensure the utility value of a “home” as well.

In any case, let’s leave the excitement marathon behind and focus again on our house in Portixol. It’s finally started. With the small excavator, tirelessly digging earth and stone out of the ground to make room for pools, pool technology, and the so-called “Cama Sanitaria”. Because at Predator, for all new builds we always construct a half-basement used exclusively to insulate the ground floor against moisture. Why? Don’t we insulate? Yes, we do! But such a layer may crack at some point. Or an error may already have been made during construction. That can never be corrected again. Therefore: double is better. That’s why we build these half-basements, which we then actively ventilate. Costs money. You can save it, but then you’ll never get issues with rising damp out of the house again. That was the case with every house in Portixol that I’ve bought …

In any case, there he stands – smiling slyly – José Manual. Behind the houses. As if he had known that I was coming. And would wonder what he’s doing here. The lead engineer at IslaBau. The construction company, known for its quality, has already built the Molinar Townhouses for us. Not exactly cheap, but good. And because that went well, we’re now building five further new projects with IslaBau.

José Manual will run 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 concept. I’m allowed to torture him with Asana and other project management tools that are otherwise rather unknown here. On the construction site itself, Toni Gallardo is present as “Encargado de obra”, instructing the colleagues on site and acting as their point of contact. As architect, once again we have Magi Marqués on board; as “Arquitecta Tècnica”, Neus Antich Carbonell supports us.

Here’s another fun video of the excavator operator very virtuously hoisting a pillar into the truck. And navigating in the tightest of spaces: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4mRsSO4a2C4

By next week, demolition and excavation will be finished, then planning for the execution of the shell construction begins. From now on we’ll make progress “one thing after another” with our new house in Portixol. Stay tuned, I’ll keep you up to date! And if you’re interested in renting, I’ll be happy to add you to the list of interested parties without obligation. Just contact me directly.