Thank you @JolanWuyts for all your hard work on this… much appreciated!
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Reopening this thread to let @reef-building know that the data from the survey (as well as a summary document) are in this folder (internal link).
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@alberto: if you have access, can you please share it with somebody from Team Building? We need to start collecting data again, from the investors and from the new Reeflings.
@reef-building: I was looking at the calculation sheet again, and I noticed that “terrace” is counted in the total surface. Looking at the financial estimate, isn’t this a bit deceiving, given that the price of the terrace is significantly lower than that of the surface inside the units?
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Hey @Lee, thanks for looking into this - will pick this up at our next meeting (unless somebody else already knows the answer…).
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Hi @Lee
I think don’t understand you question about the terrace ? They are first count in in line 30 but then excluded in line 45. This is to count them in in the extra costs linked to studies, architects and VAT.
Is this clear for you ?
Further, do you think we should redo the survey of the programme to help the architects better estimate sites? Personnaly I think that as long the reef family is not complete (25 households) we should work with some mean surface per unit.
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I was also gonna post something on le program…
Personnaly I wonder if it would be helpful to do one again actually…
As Lie’s commented in the updated estimate post, the estimate is very sensitive to the size of the appartements. So I think it would be a good time to re-do a survey and get a more accurate picture of the financial estimate. Maybe after the lastest wave of reeflings has had a meeting with the confesseur and got a better idea of what size they could realisticly wish for?
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The original survey was on Google. The data are here. From them, you can also rebuild the survey itself.
If we are doing this often, it might be worth it to use the Forms functionality on NextCloud rather than defaulting to Google: Login – Nextcloud. It’s not as good as Google forms, but it works, and it is integrated with the rest of our system.
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I was referring to the size calculator file (which is linked in post no 3 above). There, in line 40 it counts the square meters for the terrace as part of the total square meters of the unit, which is deceiving, because the square meters of the terrace are significantly cheaper. I believe this is an error that needs to be fixed rather urgently, as it leads to an overestimation of people’s budget by +/- 20.000 euro.
I agree. I would do feasibility studies based on an estimate of 2700 m². Nevertheless I think it’s a good idea that everybody fills in that survey, as it is a good exercise to get more precise about your wishes for your unit.
I’m all for it, but I am not sure I understand what we would be trying to achieve by re-doing it?
I already passed on the link to the investors, so it would be great if we could just recover the ownership of that survey. No need to rebuild it. @Sophie_Beese could somebody in Team Building ask Jolan to pass on the ownership?
Line 40 is the calculation of full price including studies, registration and VAT as I said before.
Then options are excluded of this (first arrow of picture). line 47.
Then it is based on that new price that the price m² brut is fixed. Line 54.
Then in the example, starting line 57, you see the options are added back at initial price. This means the studies, registration and VAT on these are in reality carried by the whole group. We could discud if this is fair though.
Hope it’s clear. If not, we can do a videocall tomorrow 
Hi Julien,
The point I am making (please see my post above) is about the unit size calculator: https://c301.nl.tabdigital.eu/f/53545
This is the file that we use to calculate the surface of our units. The resulting number is then multiplied by 1.25 to get the gross number of square meters, and then by 4000 to estimate the cost of the unit (see The confesseur process).
In line 40 of the size calculator the terrace is included, which is set at 7 m² as a default (because it’s sort of mandatory). The price of the terrace is 1500 euro / m² however (and not 4000), so that means we are adding up square meters with a different price, which would mean that people would be overestimating the cost of their unit by roughly 20.000. This seems like an error to me, so I would be grateful if somebody in Team Building could look into that and correct it if needed.
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The owner of the form is Jolan. He added me as an editor, so I was in turn able to add you, Lie, as an editor. Can you check you have enough permissions to do what you want to do?
@alberto you shared the excel with me, but not the access to the survey. If you manage, can you please also add @Sophie_Beese?
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[quote=“Lee, post:26, topic:18575”] I’m all for it, but I am not sure I understand what we would be trying to achieve by re-doing it?
[/quote]
I was thinking that it would be good to have an overall idea of the mean size of the appartements to be able to calculate a more accurate estimate.
Which means doing the survey for the last intakes.
But also some people may have changed their apparment size since we did the last survey… Maybe not the majority though, so we could just re-do it for the people who did change…
I see what you mean. I think it’s just a matter of matching the size estimation and the new price estimate . I think that actually we should update the post that you made at some point about calculating the price of your apartment, it would be the easiest way to make things clear I think. And change the size estimator a bit.
I can look into it tomorrow.
Oki, thanks for that clarification.
Would it be ok for you to keep this for the next Team Coordination meeting?
I’m suggesting this because there is a link with Team Finance’s work. That is, my dad reports 1) that people struggle to estimate the precise size of their apartments (it’s very abstract), and 2) that he thinks that the suggested surfaces in the size calculator can be smaller.
Based on all this, I think the following needs to be done:
- Remove line 40 from the size calculator
- Update the post on how to calculate the cost of a unit (add x times 1500 for the terrace)
- Have another look at the size calculator and see whether surfaces can be smaller
- Make a suggestion for minimum surfaces for 1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments (a bit like the post on “What a small unit could look like”)
- When everything is corrected and fine-tuned, launch the survey again, for everybody who wants to?
So that’s a whole list of things, and it’s probably not complete and/or what we want to decide together, hence my suggestion to take it up at the Coordination meeting. Works?
Ok, I see your point.
It feels to me that a lot of it could be done online ( at least the research part). But you have a better oversight, so happy to go with your plan, no problem!
In any case, here are a few things to note:
As reported in the “small units” post, there are some elements about this issue in the règlement régional d’urbanisme > normes d’habitabilité :
So I guess the only thing that is left to research is the “douche + toilettes”
I asked this to the architects a while ago, and I think they said it could be calculated from the RRU, but a rough estimation of the minimum surface would be :
- 35m2 for a studio
- 55m2 for a 1 bed room appartment
- 70-75m2 for a 2 bedrooms appartment
- 90m2 for a 3 bedrooms appartment
- 110m2 for a 4 bedrooms appartment
It’s not 100% clear in my notes, but I think this is for the Casco (brut) surface, which would make sense as in the post about small units, you report a min size of 28m2 net (so 35m2 brut) for a studio. Maybe something to check.
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Thanks a lot @Sarah!
Here’s a couple of replies:
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Organisation: I’m totally fine with whatever works. On second reflection we may indeed not need the entire Coordination Group, so if you want to go ahead, please don’t hesitate.
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Net or brut: I am almost 100% sure it’s net
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Toilets and shower: my guess is that there are no minima, because:
- Otherwise it would have been mentioned in the RRU
- During one of the visits, I remember the architects saying something like “of course you can have a toilet of 1 m², but then you’ve got to be prepared to be with your knees against the door”. Did somebody back then not even make a joke about the fact that this is often the case in Belgium?
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Toilets: I am almost sure though that for apartments there is a requirement that there is a door between the living room and the door of the toilet (otherwise it is considered as a studio)
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Minimum surface areas that you suggest: shall I make an edit to the “small units” post?
@Lee is correct.
It is net (surface des planchers)
Toilets need to have a door between the living room and the door of the toilets
Probably me 
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Ok, I can look at it! I think you have summarized it already above, so I’ll do that but I’ll check if there are other details to change or not, and will check in before changing everything 
No, I agree, there are no official minima. But I was wondering what is the “physical” minimum for each of them. So that we can put that in the size estimation…
From what I can see, the minimum minimum is probably 1,5 - 2m2 for shower and toilets (see this site), and probably 1,5 for just shower (see photo 2 of the diaporama) and 1 for toilets (see joke!).
It might be a good idea, and maybe also an edit in the “how to calculate” the price of your appartment post, as people might need to refer to that to calculate how much square meters they need.
Looking at the numbers again though, I am wondering if they really are the minimum minimum?
For example for a 2 bed-rooms, based on the RRU, the minimum would be 51m2 for kitchen+living+ bed rooms, then add 4m2 for the ‘local technique’, it goes up to 55m2. Then you have to add bathroom so let’s say 57m2. Then there is only corridors left, but I don’t think it does add up to 13m2, does it?
I couldn"t find info online on what is the minimum size for an appartment, and the corridor question is a bit tricky…
So could it be an idea to check with the architects?? We could ask them how much do we have to account for for corridors, and/or whether the numbers that I have are for “standard” appartments, but could be reduced for the “minimum” size.
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@alberto: jolan told me he made you an owner of the survey, could you please make me and Sophie owners as well? Thanks!