The plan was to spend a part of my month in Spain building a patio. In preparation, on my previous visit I had (well actually, Yolande at http://www.tierradeandalucia.com did the hard work. I just paid the tax) applied for a building license.
I caught the ferry to Santander and arrived at the house on March 30 with a van full of tools, equipment and some additional furniture - mainly workbenches for the office. I estimated it would take a couple of weeks to get the patio built. That would leave me with some free time for astronomy and also a chance to paint the outside of the house, which has been somewhat neglected in recent years. On the Saturday after I arrived, I went into Benamaurel to pick my my post and drop in at the agency to pick up my building licence. As it turns out, the shop was closed that day and I kept missing Yolande and Lynne for the next week. Eventually I found the shop open when I was back in Benamaurel on April 4. In practice the weather up to this point, and for the next week, was so bad that it was impossible to do any outside work (including painting the house), so nothing was lost.
Getting the licence involved Yolande giving me the “bill” from the Town Hall which required me to pay 3% of the estimated building costs at the local bank. The bank then gave me a receipt which I took to the town hall and picked up the licence. This describes the work to be carried out, the conditions that apply (such as legally disposing of waste materials) and a time limit of 2 months from the date of issue to start work and another 2 months to complete it. Here's the plan I had drawn up (superimposed on the surveyor's drawing of the house, from when I bought it)
Since the licence had been issued on Feb. 13, 3 weeks after it was applied for, I didn’t have much time to get things started. The same day I got the licence, I visited the local builder’s yard at Baicon the Baza road and ordered the materials I thought I’d need. Just out of interest, here’s what I bought:
- Arena capa (mixed aggregate. arena is sand) 4 cubic metres: €70
- Cemento Gris (35kg. bags of cement) 40 bags €160
- Mortero blanco (25kg bags of white coloured motar mixture) 10 bags €31.50
- suelos, external tiles 25 sq. metres €150
- building blocks, 40×20x20 cm (2 pallets containing 100 blocks) €34
- 4 pallets, €30 (deposit, repaid on return)
- steel reinforcing (rebar) 10m €8.80
- delivery costs. 1 delivery for agregate, 1 for everything else €80 total
total cost, including IVA was €654.
I also bought a cement mixer. 135litre capacity: €315. Which along with my standby generator has now(March, 2008) been stolen out of my locked garage.
During the work I discovered I had underestimated the amount of mortar I would need for rendering the walls of the patio, so I bought an extra 15 bags (at €4 euros each). I also forgot to get any tile adhesive. I needed 6 bags of this at 6.50 euros.The total cost of these extras, which included IVA brought the cost to €753 euros. Pretty close to the town hall’s estimated cost of €750. I did change my mind and decided to install outside lights, which added €47 euros to the cost, but since I only used 12 bags of cement I reckon I’ve come in under the cost estimate.
All these goodies were delivered just after easter. The aggregate arrived on the monday after easter and everything else early the next morning. Also worthy of a mention was the thunderstorm on the evening of Monday April 9. Apart from dropping huge amounts of rain, it also left me with an inch of ice everywhere after the thunderstorm turned into an extremely violent hail storm. Even the next day, after the second delivery, there were mounds of unmelted hail by the side of the road - and on the washing I had put out the previous day.
After the flurry of activity around the licence and materials, I eventually decided on April 14 that the ground had dried out enough to start work. The first job was to dig a foundation for the patio wall. To this end, I laid out my lines, made sure everything was nice and square and started to dig. Since the wall was only going to be 1m. high I decided that foundations didn’t have to be too deep. In practice I hit a layer of clay at about 15cm down and decided this was a sign to stop digging. After I had finished the trench for the far wall, I started on the one for the wall that would run away from the front door. I was being careful on this stretch as I knew that the main water pipe (a plastic pipe, 2 cm in diameter) would cross the trench at some point. I found and avoided this incoming pipe but was completely unprepared for the one I did slice into, which ran water to the tap in the garage. Luckily I only nicked the pipe, but it was enough to cause a fine spray of high pressure water to emit from the small hole I made. In california, this is known as outdoor air conditioning. Although it would be nice to have such a “feature” this wasn’t the time or the place for it. After I had investigated what this pipe was and where it went, I clamped off the water to this spur (leaving the supply to the house intact) with a G clamp. It did however, put paid to my digging exploits for the day. Not an auspicious start to the project.
The next day being sunday, meant that the shops were shut so I couldn’t get the parts I needed to fix my water pipe until the day after. So, on Monday 16th, I went into Baza to get a water pipe connector. I had decided during my enforced wait not to continue with the excavations in case there were any more surprises, plus the weather had turned rainy again, so I was happy for a reason not to be out in the mud. I had also decided that since the water pipe from the main stopcock to the house was going to be under the concrete slab of my patio, it would be a good idea to put in a brand new pipe, as I had no idea how long the old one had been there and without digging up the concrete, future maintenance would be impossible. After my trip into Baza, I was fully kitted out with 2 pipe-connectors (one for the cut and one for the new pipe) and 6m of “blue stripe” water pipe. This pipe had a thicker wall than the original pipe that fed the house. It was also the same spec. as the pipe the water company had fitted from their main to my stopcock. Before I did any more digging, I had also decided it would be handy to know exactly where all these pipes went, so after my trip into town, I traced the route of the pipes under the patio area. Just as well, it turned out, as the house supply alread had a connector on to (from a previous leak?) and had a pinhole leak that was just enough to dampen the earth. Since I know I didn’t cause this second leak, I’m assuming it was caused by a sharp stone, or maybe just old-age. Either way, I’m glad I decided to replace the pipe when I did.
Tuesday 17th saw the foundation trenches completed. Moved the incoming water pipe away so it would go around the patio rather that under it. By now I was heartily sick of water pipes and plumbing.
April 18. Poured concrete for the foundations
19 - 20 April. Levelled off the earth base inside the foundations, using them as my reference.
21st. Laid electrical conduit for the wall-lights I had decided on. Also built the first layer of the patio walls. The reason for putting down the first layer of blocks was that the drainage slope of the concrete base would put it above the level of the foundations at the house end. I also installed the new water pipe to the house.
Sunday April 22. Poured the concrete base for the patio. The plan was to do all the concrete work in one day.
That way I would be able to level it all off before it set. In practice, the stuff I laid in the first batch was far too stiff to adjust by the time I was halfway through the 20 or so mixer-loads I needed.Something went a little wrong here, and I ended up with a dip in the middle of the slab, despite my best efforts to lay out lines with a 1:50 slope away from the house. I think the problem was that the lines kept sagging whenever they got concrete on them and may even have stretched a little, too.
April 23. Dug a trench to re-bury the incoming water pipe
Tuesday 24th Rained off. By now I was seriously behind schedule. Apart from having no time to paint the house, I was beginning tho think I wouldn’t even get the patio finished before I leave for the UK on May 3. Forget any thoughts of doing anything else - even if the weather did improve.
25th. Built the rest of the patio walls. I wanted a nominal 1m high wall. Since the building blocks are 20cm. high. I had planned (and bought) 5 layers. The wall-building finished without incident. Though I did realise that I didn’t have enough mortar to render the walls.
April 26 Another trip to the builders for more mortar to reder the walls with . This was a necesary step as the blocks are porous and this was a good way to hide my rather inexpert block-laying.
27-29 Tiling. It was obvious that the concrete slab had a dip in it. This was graphically illustrated by the rain that pooled 2cm deep (see the photo above), when it should have run out of the entrance on the far side of the patio. I reduced the problem to some extent by veneering the slab with an in-fill of mortar. Once this had dried, I was able to tile the area covered by the dip.
The end of April 28 saw another thunderstorm. While I had covered the newly tiled area with a tarpaulin (the tiling cement said to protect from rain and frost until set) some water still got in and a couple of the tiles lifted away. Although the concrete slab looked reasonably level, when I got down to laying tiles, it quickly became apparent that even small irregularities look huge when there’s a tile on top of them. You really have to have your concrete base dead-flat before tiling.April 29 After I had finished the tiliing, I fitted the wall-lights.
Tuesday April 30 Grouting, finish rendering the ends of the wall
May 1 Patch the patio lights into the house outside light. This involved chasing out a trench through the (old) concrete path that runs around the house and up the wall to link into the outside light. In the process of running up the wall of the house, a lot of the old and cracked wall render came away. While this was not entirely unexpected, it did add more work to the day. I used the last of my mortero blanco to make this good.
Now as I sit here with the nearly full moon rising over Cuevas del Negro, I’ve got the patio as finished as it’ll get to be on this trip. There are still a few minor things that will have to wait, but everything is pretty much in place, tidied and as I envisioned it would be. Hopefully on my last day in spain I’ll be able to get some patio furniture.
Update: I was looking for a wooden table and some chairs. I drew a complete blank, possibly as there is only 1 “garden centre” in the area and they had none. One thing about being in rural Spain: you can’t buy things you want - you can only buy things the shops have. Next trip I’ll pop over to Granada and see if I can get what I want from the DIY sheds there.
I got a table and some chairs, see the article from March, 2008.
