Idle Thoughts

… and I took possesion of the house. It was time to take stock of what I had got, what needed to be done and how to do it all.

The notes I had taken when looking at the house, combined with my thoughts as they matured during the buying process led me to a few not very startling conclusions. The first was that I didn’t really need the store-room that made up the first floor of the extension, but that it would be nice to have a room up there for all my toys (electronics, computers, astronomical gear etc.). This room was also separate from the rest of the house as it had no internal access, but had it’s own lockable external door.

The other thing I was absolutely convinced about was that the bathroom needed a complete overhaul. Apart from the bright orange tiles, the small size and the poor condition of the fittings the single overriding factor that drove me to needing a complete re-fit was the state of the wiring (The picture to the left shows the immersion heater plug inserted into a free-hanging socket. The whole mess is bound together with black tape). This is the plug from the immersion heater in the bathroom itself. The socket is just floating - not connected to the wall and with bare metal pins easily pokable. The wire itself is simply bell-wire: the cheapest, thinnest 2-conductor wire yo ucan get and only used (in the UK at least) for wiring your doorbell. Just out of shot is a place where one of the wires had burnt out and was reconnected just by wrapping the conductors together and sticking a piece of tape over the top.

This prime example of everything that is wrong, illegal and downright dangerous so far as electrical installations goes was compounded by my discovery that none of the power sockets were earthed. I found this in one of those “hmmm, that’s odd” moments when I touched the fridge as it was on and got a tingling feeling in my hand. Add a total rewire to the list of jobs to to.

There is a lot of debate on ex-pat forums about whether you should employ native spanish contractors or brits who have moved to Spain. The arguments are that spaniards are more likely to know the ins and outs of the system,whereas the brits are more likely to understand what you want done (given the customers’ lack of spanish language skills). The risk in using british builders is the cowboy element: a friend has noted that the budget airlines offer the best training courses in the world. You get on the EasyJet flight knowing absolutley nothing and get off in Spain as a master plumber (or builder, or electrician, or estate agent). From my point of view, I don’t care what nationality a contractor is, provided he or she does the work I ask for. The issue was decided for me by the practical matter of who turned up to quote for the work.

I got a recommendation for a local spanish builder who, I was assured, could handle all the disciplines: digging out more space to extend the bathroom, installing and plumbing in new bathroom appliances, rewiring the house and turning the store-room into a usable room (including replacing the asbestos roof). I also was put in touch with two british builders, both of whom had been in Spain for a while and therefore knew the subleties of the spanish way of doing things. Now I don’t know if I just failed to connect with the spanish guy, but he just didn’t turn up to quote for the work. One of the two brits just couldn’t be tied down to a price, or a timetable, or even to getting all the work done. The third and last one to turn up was a “can do” kind of guy. He had a team who could do all the heavy work, he had a sub-contractor electrician and other people that he would bring in during the job. Also his wife had lots of good ideas about the decor, so I was happy just to leave a lot of the decisions about what tiles to use, patterns and colours up to her. Needless to say they got the work.

The paperwork
Before you embark on any construction, modification, rebuilding or changes to your house in Spain, you are suppposed to get permission for the work from your local town hall. The strictness and scope that these rules are enforced with varies considerably from one town to another. In practice it is mostly a money-making exercise as you get charged 3% of the cost of the work for the license to undertake it. If the local police spot building work taking place without a licence (which you are supposed to have on public display at the site) thay might ignore it, or they might drag everyone off to the town hall and stop the work until a license is granted - again it depends on local policy. I asked Victorio (see buying the place) to do the paperwork, in conjuction with the builders. It took about 4 weeks to come through.

The work
All the arrangements above were made during my visit in January 2006. The builders took a key and the plans I had sketched out for the work. The first stage of the work was to enlarge the bathroom by digging out about 1.5m of the cave room to make it a squarer shape. Due to the bad weather during february, this was delayed by a few weeks - as was the other outside work: removing the corrugated roof from the extension, raising the ceiling height and putting in place a proper flat roof. By the time I made my next trip in late March, the office work was well under way and the bathroom had been extended - although only the toilet and bath were usable. A month later and the majority of the work was finished and the rewiring could start. This involved all new light fittings and over 50 power sockets, plus the all important earth connections. By the time I came over in May all the work was complete: the bathroom was completely refitted and tiled, the office was a revelation - tiled floor, rendered and painted walls and a proper water-tight, insulated flat roof.

In all, the building work cost €11,000 with the rewiring an extra €1250.