Routine

Despite knowing that there are a bunch of men knocking things down and building things up outside our living room window it's amazing how many times we've gone to open the door to a building that no longer exists to get the vacuum cleaner! We're a bit unsettled and, probably because of that, things seem to be coming in clumps.

The demolition denied us hot water and laundry facilities but, thanks to the generosity of a couple of friends, we can now shower and launder. We also had a problem with Maggie's car and it's off the road. There again, someone stepped up and loaned us a motor for a bit.

In amongst the general upheaval the heating in our house packed up. It turned out to be a blocked chimney starving the burner of air which is what Maggie had suggested it might be right from the get go! Once the fitter had the burner working again we needed to get a chimney sweep. The bloke who came didn't sound like Dick Van Dyke nor did he have any small boys to send up the chimney. He did have big vacuum cleaners and brushes that were turned by an electric drill. He also had very sooty hands so I presume I can expect nothing but good luck after shaking one of them. He was English. I thought it was an intelligent choice of self employment in an area where there are still lots of open fires, wood burners and pellet stoves.

A couple of hours before the sweep we had a tanker truck come to suck out the liquids and solids from our cesspit. The builders had complained that they were paddling in fetid pools as they dug foundations. The tanker driver made me feel very inadequate. "Your cesspit is tiny, made from concrete," he said, "only two thousand litres." It sounded like a personal failing. He also suggested that instead of calling him so often we should get a small pump and pump out the nutrient rich liquid ourselves to spread around the garden. That way we'd have to call him only when the tank was more slurry than liquid. We will take it under advisement.

A bit later, the same afternoon, the carpenter who is making a glass panelled sliding door for us popped around to pick up some bits and bats. Apparently the door is nearly ready and, when it is, the building work will move inside.

This morning the builders arrived surprisingly early. I needed to get dressed in double quick time to move the cars from the drive as they get in their way. As I was doing that a big cement mixer truck appeared and threaded its way up the very narrow track alongside our house.

I like to believe that I'm still quite active but the truth is that I will be pleased when I can go back to getting up, having a shower, eating breakfast and doing a bit of reading before a routine day kicks off. We old people, at least this old person, like stability and routine.

Eat my dust

When I came home that May afternoon back in May 2008 a bit of the roof had fallen in. The immediate cause was a combination of heavy rain and the heavy boots of Iberdrola workmen walking on our roof. The underlying, and uninsured, cause was rotten cedar wood beams. The roof couldn't be patched and, at one point, the house was no more than four scarred and unsteady walls with the floor piled high with debris.

When we first moved in to the Culebrón house back in 2005 we had some serious work done. The sort that knocks down walls, digs trenches in the floor and leaves bundles of electrical cables sprouting flower like from the gouged walls. 

On the other side of an interior patio we have a bedroom separate from the main part of the house. Two or three years ago we had the roof on that replaced and we had a serious remodelling of the interior space done at the same time.

Paying for work and living in dust seems to have been one of the hallmarks of our time in Culebrón.

I've complained repeatedly and vigorously about the horrible Spanish winters in Alicante. It's been warmer this winter but it is still chilly. Fortunately we are currently well enough off to turn on heating whenever we want it. It's not sophisticated heating. Our power supply is so pathetic that we can't really heat with electric. Instead we use gas heaters. They use butane cylinders which are a pain to haul around and relatively expensive. The heaters can smell of gas, they produce a lot of water and Maggie is a bit scared of them. Oh, and she can't carry the bottles easily or fit them to the valves. When I am no longer able to lift and cart the bottles she could get very cold.

So Maggie decided that she wanted a pellet burner. It's a modern type of burner or stove that burns pellets which seem to be reconstituted wood fragments. I presumee the pellets are produced from trees grown specifically for the purpose. The heaters were probably designed to run central heating systems but they can be used independently too. I was against the pellet burner for a number of reasons, and I still am,  but Maggie went ahead and bought one anyway. Let's just hope that I'm proved wrong and it's a resounding success.

Maggie rang the builder we've used the last couple of times to ask if he could fit the stove before she bought it. He came to have a look and gave us some advice about the type of burner to buy. We also gave him a list of other little jobs that we wanted him to do whilst he was here. It ws a longish list but none of the jobs were particularly big. Cut a bigger space in the paving for the palm tree here, replaster that bit of wall there, reposition this bit of guttering etc.

It took the builder a while to get to us. Meanwhile we have had an 88kg pellet burner parked in our kitchen for the last fortnight. He and his brother finally started work a couple of days ago. All the jobs have got bigger. The stove needs power so the wall had to be channeled so why not have a couple of extra sockets in the kitchen at the same time? Whilst the chimney for the old burner was being removed they noticed holes in our last remaining original roof. The colour of monocapa, something a bit like pebbledash, is no longer available so the cracks in it can't be patched which means the whole wall needs skimming. And so it goes on.

The builder is a very mild mannered man and our experince with him has been very positive. Sometimes he comments directly on the shoddy or botched work he is repairing or replacing and sometime you can just see what he thinks. I saw him sadly shaking his head as he stared at the guttering that we'd asked him to sort. The gutter has never collected water because there is too much space between roof tiles and channelling so the rainwater splashes onto the floor or onto the head of anyone using the door beneath it.

I sometimes wonder if this house ownership malarkey is all it's cracked up to be. I lost money on the first house I ever owned. This one is presumably worth a lot less than when we bought it and the spending on it over the years would be enough to buy a house outright at the moment. Alternatively the money spent on repairs would have paid a €400 a month rent for twelve or thirteen years. Taking into account that we have rented an additional flat for around seven years of the time that we have been here anyway this house must be one of the worst decisions I've ever been involved in even though it's a nice enough place.

Fear stalks the land

The stories of huge water bills in Spain are legion. Not for the cost of the water, which is usually very reasonable, but for undiscovered leaks.

Everyone in Spain has a water meter. Leaks on the supply side, before the water meter, are the problem of the supplier but, once past the meter, the problem is yours.

The water supply to our house is not sophiticated. A plastic tube is buried in a shallow trench under the dirt road that passes the house and a spur brings water to our meter. Our supply is no more than a thick plastic hose buried only inches under the garden. When it gets cold we often lose water for a while until the pipes unfreeze. Because of this I check the water meter regularly to make sure that the consumption seems reasonable and normal. The past couple of times the reading has been a bit high. Six or seven cubic metres instead of the usual three or four. I didn't worry too much. We've run the irrigation system on the garden a couple of times and there is a more general use of the hosepipe to water plants here and there. We also use an aljibe, a big rainwater tank, to water the garden but even then a few hundred gallons from the piped supply seemed explicable.

Maggie said to me the other day though that she could hear the sound of water running in the tubes. Sure enough, with an ear pressed to the wall, it was obvious. I checked the meter carefully and it was confirmed; the smallest needle was creeping inexorably round.

All of our pipework is buried under concrete floors and behind ceramic tiles. Unless it was a simple problem with the taps we were going to be smashing tiles and digging up floors. Yesterday the plumber confirmed the worst. It wasn't the tap. We needed to reveal the pipework and the plumber suggested a builder who came and smashed the marble in the shower cubicle, cutting his hand in the process. The leak wasn't in the uncovered pipes.

This was bad. Sleepless night bad. Something else would have to be dug up, maybe the floor of the shower, maybe the tiled floor. The plumber came back today with a man who had a listening device to find the source of the leak. He found it and the plumber has now dug up the floor of our bedroom to reveal the dodgy pipework. He's still in the middle of doing it as I type. He's gone to get specialist soldering kit.

The good news is that he's found it. Even better he found it underneath the first tile he lifted and he's only had to dig up two tiles to gain access. The bad news is that we have no spares for the tiles dug up and whilst it's a common design the chance of getting an exact match are slight. In the walk in shower the destroyed marble is going to be hard to replace too.

Well, said the plumber, at least you won't need a boat now but maybe you'll need a new rug.