House Site Plan Development

There is no better way than to start with a house site plan development once you have settled and bought the land to built your house. We learnt this in hindsight. Looking back, if we had started developing the land section immediately after purchasing , by now the outlook would have changed quiet a lot. But then in Zimbabwean terms, if that is at least to happen albeit at even a slower pace, you definitely either to live there or have some presents at the section, in order to ensure those development occur prior to finally building your dream house.

Thankfully, my lovely sister Mai Shaniz, surprised me with a call one day. She suggested to leave the comfort of the city and move in to live at the section. The area already had neighbors, who surprisingly had been living in cottages built on their sections as early as year 2010. It has now been almost 3 years since we had bought the land, and so the thought of wishing we had done that earlier too crept up, but that never meant we were too late. Crowhill Views area is still under development, a handful of people have already built their mansion. Electricity lines were being pulled up on a daily basis, the only disheartening thing being only the

development of proper good roads, sewer and water lines . Looking through the newspaper ads, it is also clear that most people are simply buying the sections only to re-sell them. Currently, the prices are USD 10 000 per 1000 m2. We bought  ours at USD 4 000 per 1000 m2 in November 2011.For us, the idea of buying to resell was not ours. THIS IS HOME.

The first thing we did was to erect a 2 roomed cabin and fenced the section to provide security. Not that the area is riddled with crime,  its so remote and quiet and virtually anyone associated with the area is there on some business or another. Of course there has been one or two cases of burglary here and there but there have been far in between.

We erected 2.2 m high fence around the 2600 m2 section. Cost for the fence, labour including the fencing material was USD 1500. In a space of two weeks the workman had completed. The work involved clearing the thicket of bush and through the gorge which passes through the stand. Gladly no incident of snake bites occurred although sightings of a one or two snakes which were eventually killed occurred.

At this point, my sister Ally and family had moved in and were adjusting to life living in the cabin. On further review of the living conditions. we realized that it was imperative to have a place for storage of material when we begin to build. Thus instead of considering to erect another standalone cabin, we opted to extend the existing cabin, and give it a better outlook, irrespective of the fact we considered it to be a temporary dwelling. The philosophy being if it is temporary it doesn’t mean it has to be UGLY. In Zimbabwe generally cabins are built to the same design, we decided that joining two of the standard designs into one, and throwing in windows and a french door, will give the place a fresh perspective to what cabins on construction sites generally look like.

We bought two standard cabins, and had them installed them a distance apart between them, creating a living space area, and then covered the back and the front ends. The back end formed part of the exit at the back, and ingeniously included the toilet, whereas the front end is where the french door was installed. To provide more light and air circulation, windows frames were cut into the panel. The window frames, and doors frames were cheaply sourced from auction houses around Harare, all for less than USD 100. To cap it all, a fresh new paint was brushed over the new look cabin.

Due to the slow or non existent pace of servicing of area by the land Developer , we had no choice but to erect and install a water stand and tank. All the while my sister and the girls had to fetch water for their household needs from the river, which is a few metres away from the stands. This was a daily chore they had to do everyday in the morning with buckets and ferrying with the lorry. The only escape from the pain of starting the day like this was to install a water tank or dig or borehole. We opted for  the earlier.

My young brother Milly from Miltech Engineering applied his skills in sizing and designing the stand, which he managed to pull together with the help of a few of his colleagues. We bought the 5000 litres tank from MEGA, who essentially were selling good quality tanks at the time for about USD 250. A  number of water delivery companies had sprouted in Harare as a result of this situation with all developers. 5000 litre tank can be refilled for 50 USD dollars. Common players in the Crowhill area were iMvura and iWater.

The residential stand was now habitable. Clean running water, neat space to live in and a fence giving a sense of security. This was all done by July 2014.

A new life thus began, with my sister and family giving the so needed life to the place as we pulled up resources