valmaior-blog

[valmaior-blog]

Asymptotically tending...

Saturday 13/07/2019. A momentous day. I took a shower! Showering in itself is not that unusual, I shower every month, whether I need it or not;-) This was a momentous day because it was my first shower in my as yet incomplete new bathroom, and by new, I mean new. New concrete floor, new drains, new plumbing, rebuilt walls, new floor and wall tiles, new toilet-bidet-sink, new mirror, new electrics, new ceiling, new doorway, new window, and incomplete because the last 4 items are not yet installed.

Funny thing about the bathroom mirror, it is of the “blue touch” type. It has a permanently illuminated blue circle – very useful at night, which can be touched to turn the built in lights on, or off and cycle through the lighting options. Made in China. On the box, it proclaimed blue tooth – silly Chinese. Obviously never heard of Blue Touch, so I assume it was an error and had been helpfully corrected by the packaging printers for the manufacturer, except that after it was installed, I discovered that my phone can connect to it and play music. (apologies China) Also, when the lights are on, a heating element demists the central part of the mirror. Neither of these functions were on my list of essential features for a mirror.

The main problem has been the size of the house – 188 square meters – over 2000 square feet, and apart from the kitchen, (and now the main bathroom) the ceilings are over 3.5 meters (12 feet) high. Actually, the real problem has been underestimating the amount of work required, overestimating my skill and ability, and working around the lack of specialised tools.

So, it is now 2020. Time for an update. Progress has been slow. It is 1 year and 11 months since we bought the house. My initial estimate of 2 months to make it habitable is just a vague memory. The deeper I dig, the more I find that needs fixing. The termite damage that I though was confined to skirting boards proved to be more extensive. In places all the wood has been destroyed leaving just the paint! The schist stone construction is great for plants and small animals. It is like a dry stone wall, but the inside spaces are packed with soil. Where I replace termite terminated wood, I use concrete if possible.

In October, I visited the local health centre. I needed a medical to apply for a Portuguese driving license. I had been registered there for 3 years, but this was my first visit. While I was there, I was interrogated about my medical history, got measured, got a flu jab in one arm, and a tetanus jab in the other. Gluteus maximus, was untroubled. I have no idea if this is now the norm, or another Portuguese idiosyncrasy. Passed the driving test bit with no problems, amazingly, my eyesight was classed as perfect, but blood pressure was ridiculously high, looks like I will be on medication for a while. I was sent for chest X-rays, blood tests, I wore a heart monitor for 24 hours, and later, a blood pressure sampler for 24 hours. That machine squeezed my left bicep every 20 minute during the day, then allegedly every 30 minutes at night, but I don’t know for sure, because it didn’t wake me up. On my last visit to the Doc, I was told that heart and lungs were fine. My blood test results went missing somewhere, so I had to go to the lab and get them printed again. Steamed open the envelope that I have to deliver to the doctor, and checked. Cholesterol 188?? I should be dead. Checked the units – seems that EU and US have a different set of units to those in the UK, so divide by 40ish gives 4.7. He lives – again!  Seems weird that the US uses the same metric units as the EU, but UK doesn’t.

The flu jab seems to have been a waste of time though. I was stuck down with a severe case of man flu over Christmas and New Year.

Only those who have lived through man flu can appreciate the heroic efforts I must have made to cook a full Christmas dinner, including Christmas pud. I didn’t get round to making mince pies until New Years day though. That did give the mincemeat a little extra maturing time – 800% extra.  

Highlights of 2019?

1) Transporting a new double bed and mattress and wife to the house completely inside a Fiat Punto – just the normal hatchback version, with all widows and doors closed!

2) Successfully gluing 8 pieces of broken granite counter top (kitchen worktop)  back into 1 piece. (there was no way I would have been able to match the colour)

Spanish windlass in action.

So, we now have a basic but working bedroom, and have stayed over a few nights, we have a fully functioning kitchen and bathroom, but still lots of very dusty jobs to do before we can take up residence.

I received my Portuguese “Carta de Condução” a few days before Christmas. It took just under 2 months to arrive, which is very fast compared to times reported by the expats in the Algarve. It does involve Portuguese IMT communicating with UK DVLA to cancel my UK licence before a Portuguese version can be issued.

This was something I had to do, for two reasons.

1) To legally hold a UK licence, I must have a UK address.

2) To legally drive in Portugal for longer than 3 months, I need either an EU licence which has to be registered with the Portuguese Authorities every 2 years, or a Portuguese licence.

As it was looking increasingly as though my UK EU licence would cease to be an EU licence, I jumped before I was pushed. Exchanging a non-EU licence for a Portuguese licence generally involves retaking a driving test, which is only conducted in Portuguese.

I also renewed my passport online at the same time, which was processed very quickly. Perhaps because I waited 1 month to send my old passport back. However, DHL failed to deliver it on 3 occasions. I guess the driver just looked at the street name and thought “I know where that is” and went to the wrong street in the wrong town. I used the house address for the passport, because I had no idea how long it would take. I had to use the apartment address for the driving licence, because that is my registered address at IMT.

During the height of summer, we were surrounded by forest fires – not close enough to be scary, and we are far enough from the trees to satisfy our insurance company. There are, I think, about 12 water bombing planes in Portugal, and 4 of them were doing circuits and dumps (anyone?) loudly over our house for a few days.

There were some local road and expressway closures, and when reopened, evidence of major conflagrations on both sides, but as far as I am aware, locally, damage was restricted to vegetation.

Portugal is an odd country in many ways. Soon after we moved into the apartment, we found that there was a LIDL closer to us that the store that we had been visiting. So, we made that our local. Cheddar cheese from there is acceptable quality, and half the price of cheddar from the supermarkets. Man cannot live without cheese on toast! Also, IMHO, their croissants are superior to those purchased from E. LeClerk or Auchan. Anyway, I digress. Travelling to and from LIDL, we used to often pass a woman who appeared to be living in a Ford Transit (or similar) she seemed to spend most of her time sitting in a camping chair watching the traffic. I guessed this was the result of a breakup or a death. She was a fairly ordinary middle age specimen, somewhat overweight, and not well dressed.

When we drove to the beach though, we would sometimes pass aged grannies sitting on plastics stools, presumably abandoned by their families, who considered them too doddery to trudge through the pine forest collecting cones, firewood, mushrooms and stuff. This seemed to be common. It wasn’t until we traveled further afield, along roads more used by truckers, that the ladies sitting at the sides of the roads became younger, more provocatively dressed, and all seemed to have orange skin, like Donald Trump, or like original James T. Kirk Star Trek aliens. Then the Euro cent dropped. Not sure about the grannies, however, we often pass an orange skinned granny, though it seems that she is only there when there is no competition. Holidays, Sundays – bad weather etc.

Pet Peeves.

1)Expressways!

There is not much wrong with the expressways as such, but the sliproads (on/off ramps) seem to have been added as an afterthought, or without any thought at all.

As an example, here are two junctions I use frequently.

The north/south expressway is the A1, the main (and only practical) route to drive between Lisbon and Porto. The east/west A25 expressway heads across the border, towards Madrid.

I approach this junction from the top right on a sharpish right hand bend, which prevents me from reaching a safe joining speed. The trees on my left prevent me from seeing approaching traffic, and the slip road is only 65m long, and even that requires use of the shoulder.

What makes it worse, is that 80m further on is the exit slip to join the A1 in both directions, so vehicles intending to take that route are unwilling to move into the adjacent lane to give joining traffic some space.

The next example is in the centre of Porto. Again, I approach from the top right. A 2 lane slip road, which becomes 1 lane. This section is always busy, that is at the time I use it. The slip road is from the A28 expressway which runs north from Porto, and I am joining the A1 again, which here forms part of the Porto inner ring. I have usually queued on the A28 for 20 minutes to get here. With bad timing, that can be much longer.

I am trying to match the speed of the traffic on the A1, while watching for cars merging from the right. The evil designers plan here, was to make this entry slip road also function as an exit slip road. So some vehicles on the A1 are slowing down to try to move onto the slip road, and other vehicles on the slip road have no intention of joining the A1, but are heading for the exit.

The final example is just stupidity. Again the A1. This pic has been rotated 90 degrees, so north is on the right. So, heading south on a 3 lane expressway, you arrive at a junction. Conventional exit, 3 lanes continue. Just before the southbound traffic from the junction tries to join, the 3 lanes are reduced to 2, then the joining traffic has to squeeze onto an expressway which is suddenly 50% busier, and drivers who found themselves suddenly without a lane are trying to settle into their new spot and not worrying about joining traffic. Sometimes vehicles unable to find a gap are forced off the expressway and onto the slip road. The problem is not the reduction to two lanes, but where the reduction is located.

Finally, the cost. Almost all expressways have tolls. The quickest route from apartment to house (according to google) incurs a cost of €3.1 That is €31 per week if we go there and back on 5 days, and that is in the cheapest car class. When I rented a van to collect the kitchen, I racked up tolls of almost €200 over a weekend.

Pet Peeve 2 – Import duties.

Before we moved to Portugal, I bought a UK registered Left hand drive Freelander, thinking that I could just switch the registration to Portuguese when I arrived. Yes I could, but I would have to pay taxes of €12000. Used cars incur the same tax as new cars. Portugal has been told by the EU that this is illegal, but refuses to change. The cost of cars in Portugal is astronomical, so old cars are still valuable and are still kept running. If Portugal was forced to change, the price of used cars would collapse. Imports of goods from outside the EU have severe problems getting through Portuguese customs. They are frequently held up for months and incur significant charges, such that many people just refuse to pay.

I have just informed our landlord that we will leave in 2 months time, so that is how long we have to get everything ready. When we move in, there will still be a lot to do. I have a plan to fix the sagging wall (see blog). I found a problem with the river that runs through it (see blog) the stream exits the house though a tunnel in the wall. One day after heavy rain the previous day, the stream was insignificant, but the water was deep in the tunnel. I had no idea where the water goes when it flows out of the building, the exit is below ground level. I poked the hole with a sharp stick, and hit fairly solid stuff. Another job for the to do list. A few days later, heavy rain again, I wandered out to inspect it. Our tarmac driveway is on the other side of the wall, and there, a spring had sprung. Water was bubbling up through the tarmac driveway. I dug down to the stream where it exited the tunnel, and the was no indication of any other route that the water could take. There is no immediately obvious solution to this problem, so a bout of pondering is required. Sump and pump would probably be the easiest. If the water is raised by 1m I could pipe it to a drain, but I would much rather have a non-electromechanical solution if one can be found. I would never trust my boat to an automatic bilge pump. Though the house won’t sink, it could be damaged if a pumping system fails to operate.

The house has no heating yet, although we do have 3 portable electric heaters, and 2 portable gas heaters. I am flip flopping over systems – burning wood or pellets, oil, LPG, air conditioners, heat pump, …

Underfloor heating is not an option, the house has a mix of solid and wooden floors. I realise that in itself would not preclude underfloor heating, but it would complicate installation.

Wall insulation is not an option. The house is externally tiled, the walls are 60cm thick (that’s 2ft in old money), there is no cavity, and internal insulation would require drastic remodeling.

Double glazing is not an option, it would not suit the house. All the windows are 2m high, and 1m wide. Our internal shutters should achieve the same goal, if they can be made to seal effectively. However we did survive winter living on the boat in Preston with no effective heating – any attempt at heating resulted in torrents of condensation. However, the internal temperature never went below +3.

The last two years have been intense. I didn’t realise what the effect had been on me until I compared two virtually identical before and after photographs of myself.

Before...

And after.

I have similar pics showing the effects on Ping, but I doubt I would survive the consequences of including them here.

One theoretical benefit of the location of the house is the proximity of the only ski resort in Portugal – 2 hours drive.  At virtually 2000m above sea level, snow should be guaranteed.

This is what it should look like.

And this is a live webcam feed.

We have only ventured up the mountain once – about 3 years ago, in late spring, and there was still deep snow in places sheltered from the sun.

I had marmalade on toast for breakfast this morning – homemade organic marmalade, made from homegrown oranges :-). Organic, because we have ignored the garden, not because I have strong pro-organics sentiment. This was just a trial run – our oranges are not traditional sevilles, much smaller and sweeter, I had to tweak the recipe – drastically reduced sugar, so just one test jar. Not quite Golden Shred, but better than acceptable. Not bad for my first attempt.

We have a local railway station - 2.6km from the house, but I could not find a timetable for the trains, because there are none. The route is interesting, because it follows the ground contours, even in the hilliest parts of the route. No deep straight cuttings, viaducts, bridges or embankments, though there are a couple of tunnels. It seems that a few years ago, some bad weather damaged part of the track, causing the company to impose a 30km/h speed limit. More bad weather dropped the speed limit to 10km/h, then to 0. The middle third of the line is closed, and that section includes our local station.

The eagle eyed amongst  you might notice a red light on the right of the picture. We have on 3 occasions seen a train on the closed section of track. I guess there is only one maintenance depot. The exceptionally eagle eyed might notice that the track looks a little odd. That is because it is meter guage, 1.0m width. Normal tracks are 1.435m. Consequently, our line does not join with the national network. Our trains don’t fit on normal tracks, and normal trains don’t fit on our tracks. I believe that the railway company is unwilling to spend much money on repairs, and unfortunately the trains are not pretty - 2 car diesel electric, decorated in unimpressive graffiti, bought used for not much money from an East European country (Poland?) that had no further use for them.

As the Portuguese crow flies, it is 40km between the two extremities of the line, both coastal, but the track does head inland, and meanders from village to village, so the track length is much greater, almost 100km.

We tried the train once, from Aveiro to Sernada do Vouga, a little over 1 hour an 18 stations, followed by a stroll through the hills and forest to the house, a lot over 1 hour. We went back to Aveiro by bus.

It is January here - like everywhere else. We have bunches of narcissus and lilies in flower.

Grass hasn’t stopped growing, the oak trees still have leaves, the peach trees have new buds. No time to rest.

[valmaior-blog]

A River Runs Through It

Progress has been disappointingly slow. I have excuses of course….

Broken car

Unanticipated complications

Garden became impenetrable jungle

Delays in supply chain

Changes to plans

Portuguese red tape

Too much prevaricating about the bush

 (points awarded for knowing the source of that mangled idiom)

Sickness and injuries

etc.

So, the car. I drove to Lisbon, spent a few hours there and drove back. After about 100km on the expressway, the engine suddenly felt stiff as though it was about to seize. I pulled over and checked the gauges. Engine temperature was at maximum. Before I had come to a stop, the “check gauges” light came on, and the warning chime sounded. A little earlier would have been useful!

We waited for the engine to cool down, then removed the cap – no water, and no sign of a leak. Poured in all the bottled water we had and limped to the next service area. Let the engine cool again, filled up and set off. We had to stop and refill a few more times before we got home.

The next day, I started the engine and let it idle until it was warm. The water began bubbling, but not boiling. Exhaust gas in the coolant! - so either a cracked head or a blown head gasket. I decided to assume it was the head gasket, because that would be easiest to fix. Looked for an online car spares vendor in Portugal and ordered a new gasket set. It seems that there are no online car spares companies here. The web site I ordered from is just the Portuguese front end to a German supplier. I also ordered new head bolts. They have to be replaced every time the heads are removed. “Heads”, because it transpires that my engine has 5 separate heads. It seems that Chrysler didn’t have a suitable diesel engine so obtained engines from an Italian company, and these engines were designed for a static generator.

So, off to Europcar to rent again.

One week later, the German package arrived. The head bolts (two different sizes) are of a design I have not seen before, a 12 point star drive. The manual says that a special tool is required, I cannot find a supplier. I emailed VM Motori, and they eventually replied that they are Chrysler tools, but by this time I have established that these things are also known as Torque drive, and I order a set from ebay UK – no ebay in Portugal. There is ebay in Spain, which I have used before, but same stuff is more expensive, and takes just as long to arrive. I decide to move the car to the house, about 45km– I can work undercover there, and if I make an oily mess on the floor, it is my floor. So packed the car with bottles of water, and drove as gingerly as possible. Arrived without incident and didn’t need to stop to replenish the water.

I eventually get the heads off, but worryingly the old gasket looks fine.  I check the heads as thoroughly as possible, but there are no obvious problems. I replaced the gasket and put the engine back together. Reassembly is such fun. I guess that Chrysler assumed that any major work would be done with the engine on a bench. Access is extremely limited. Another fun job is tightening the 12 main head bolts, start in the middle, torque to 30 ft/lbs (can’t think in newton meters yet) continue in a zigzag pattern to the end, then opposite zigzag to the other end and back to the start. Execute the same pattern again, tightening each bolt by another 75°, then execute the same pattern again, tightening each bolt by another 75°! The second 75° needs a long lever. That does partly explain why the bolts have to be replaced every time – the bolt is actually being stretched.

Continuing, I discovered that several of the rocker assembly studs were iffy, so had to find a helicoiling kit supplier. Re-coiled 3 studs in situ, so I can now torque the nuts to the prescribed values.

Unfortunately, no change. Remove the heads again, and tried making blanking plates so that I could pressurise the heads and check for leaks in a bucket of water, but that didn’t show anything. It only seems significant when the engine is hot. Took all the valves out, checked the seats, didn’t see anything wrong. Replaced the seals at the top of the guides. Put everything back together, and ordered a compression tester, from ebay.

During this time, several weeks, I had been renewing my car rental on a weekly basis. I decided to buy a cheap car, and suspend leak hunting in favour of house fixing.

Came back to the car after a significant delay. I thought I could use it for local trips the builders merchants etc. Started the engine, and was running it to get it warm, when there came an horrific clattering noise from the top end. Stopped the engine and looked hopefully for an external cause didn’t see anything – started the engine again – same noise so switched off and gave up.

Next return to the car, I took off the rocker covers, expecting to see things bent and broken, but all looked fine. Removed all the glow plugs, and dug out the compression tester. Checked all the cylinders with the engine cold. I knew that wouldn’t diagnose my cracked head, but it would show a broken valve or piston.

Surprisingly all were fairly close. 420psi lowest, 440psi highest (can’t think in bars yet – but then that could be a family failing ;-) )

Ran the engine with the rocker cover off – no nasty noise. Hmm – could it have been a transient problem which resolved itself, perhaps an issue with one of the hydraulic tappets? or is it something lurking, and waiting to strike at a more inopportune moment….

Enough car stuff..

One day, we wandered into the garden to look at the fruit trees, and realised that the garden had gone wild. A waist high tangled mass of brambles and grass – genuinely impenetrable, so house fixing was suspended again to tackle the blackcurrant menace. After several days of vigorous hacking, we could finally access most of the garden, a few of the trees were seriously choked with ivy and brambles. (still an issue). Our big fig tree had blackcurrants at it’s crown.

I was thinking about ordering some turf to create a lawn on the upper level, but after a couple of days of rain, in October, we suddenly had a lush green lawn! Seems like Spring. - had to dig the lawn mower out.

Oh, and I found a 1 meter long snakeskin in the garden, on a patch of grass that I had mowed, so at most 2 days old. Not seen the snake, but seriously poisonous snakes are rare, so probably not a problem – probably... (another chance to earn points)

We have 3 peach trees, an orange tree, a fig tree and two fig saplings, A tree that I don’t recognise, no blossom of fruit that we noticed, but it is choked by ivy, and strangely, 4 small oak trees. Why oak? Acorns are not much use, Cork harvesting is not viable on a small scale. Some other harvest-able fruit trees would make more sense.

Some kind neighbour secretly harvested our figs for us. Understandable I guess. The peaches were not very good, we didn’t look after them, or protect them from pests, so the bugs had a feast. We salvaged a couple of edible peaches but didn’t bother picking the rest. I suspect that a neighbour noticed the peaches apparently going to waste, and chose to save the figs from the same fate.

We decided to tackle the rampant ivy that was invading the orange tree via  much larger tree that had fallen against it some years ago. Disassembling the broken tree was a major task. Oddly, our house does not have a fireplace or chimney, so now we have a lot of wood which could have kept the place warm in winter.

There is a chimney in the kitchen, but no fireplace.

So, The house.

We have a 220V supply limited to 3.4kw. To upgrade, we first have to get a technical certificate issued by a qualified Portuguese electrician stating that the home installation is able to handle the increased power, Ours isn’t. Some of the cables are fabric covered, with failed insulation (guess how I know).

All the existing cables are external. Lights and power socket are all on the same circuit, clipped to skirting boards and door frames. Regulations now require that all cables run in conduits buried in the walls. I got a few quotes for a complete rewire of a 4 bedroom house.

When I had recovered from the shock (pun intended), I crossed professional rewire off the options list. Current plan is to do the rewire myself – to Portuguese standards, and then get a qualified electrician to inspect it and issue a certificate. I still haven’t found the standards in English, and Portuguese translated by Google is too risky, so no progress there yet.

The final decision for home heating was air conditioners for the rooms, and an electric thermo-accumulator (insulated pressurised hot water tank with immersion heater) for the water.

All the plumbing has been replaced and the thermo-accumulator installed (though not yet tested). The laundry room/second bathroom is still using the old plumbing until we replace the toilet and washbasin, which won’t happen until the main bathroom is functional.

Kitchen.

Found a bargain online, so rented a van and drove down to the south coast to collect it. Three guys loaded the van in about 25 minutes. Me and Ping unloaded the van in about 4 hours. We managed not to break anything, even when my fingers failed and I dropped a granite worktop on my foot. I was hobbling for a while and it was still sore 4 weeks later. That is not as silly as managing to drop a heavy chisel on my head! I left it on the top step of a very tall step ladder, and forgot it was there when I moved the ladder.

Funny thing, there were 3 guys working on a new build house opposite when we went to get the longest section of worktop from the van (3 meters) – they disappeared when we started to unload it. Another odd thing is that our kitchen is not quite rectangular – it is a parallelogram with angles of 92.5 and 87.5. This only becomes apparent when trying to fit a kitchen.

It’s beginning to look kitcheny

Yet another odd thing is that the kitchen floor is vaguely dome shaped. It obviously wasn’t  always like this, because the kitchen floor tiles seem to have been laid on large rectangular (presumably concrete) rafts. At the doorways the kitchen floor is level with the external floor, but then slopes up toward the centre. Our rafts are flat but not level with noticeable gaps and height differences. The floor seems solid, so what could cause the floor to rise in the centre? The obvious first choice that the walls have subsided was quickly eliminated. Some of the walls are build directly on bedrock, so could not subside. If other walls did, there would be some significant and visible cracks. It seems unlikely that all the walls would subside at the same rate.

What could cause the floor to rise? Gas seems unlikely. Tree roots? No big trees close, and I doubt they could tunnel under walls without causing visible damage. The ground level outside the kitchen is lower then the kitchen floor by 1m on one side and 2m on the other. Hydraulic pressure? Possible, the well is right next to the kitchen, but the water level is much lower than the floor, and as the house is on a sloping site, that also seems unlikely.

The capped well next to the kitchen wall, and the water level is below ground level. The kitchen floor height is within a centimetre or so of the boundary between the brick shaped tiles, and the cement plastered  wall. It seems unlikely that water is accumulating  under the kitchen floor.

The bathroom has been the biggest job so far. The position of everything has been changed, so the old solid floor had to be destroyed to run new drains for the shower, toilet, bidet and washbasin. The walls had to be destroyed to remove the old steel pipes and fit new multilayer pipes.

I was originally intending to keep one tiled wall and stick new tiles on top, but decided against that. I later realised that the internal bathroom walls are actually slightly curved, and rectifying that was a major task.

A flat(ish) bathroom wall!!

The floor and walls are now fixed and flat except for the shower door area. The big delay is the shower door which is out of stock, and the delivery date is constantly being pushed back. I really need that to finish the walls, because the shower door is the full width of the bathroom. The distance between walls in the shower is 2cm less than outside. As things stand, I can adjust the position of the door. to whatever looks best. I would rather make the walls to fit the shower door rather that have to modify the door or walls later.

An issue that is more serious than I originally thought is a sloping floor in the main corridor. One side of the corridor is 5cm lower than the other at one point. This has been caused by the internal stone wall that has been built on a woefully inadequate sagging wooden beam. This has caused the internal wall to pull away from the main house wall.

In this pic you can see the gap increasing upwards up to the point where the gap was previously filled, and has continued pulling away, or rather tilting away.

The only solution is to build a supporting wall in the cellar, but to do that I would have to demolish the internal wall, and that wall supports the ceilings on both sides. The cellar has a concrete floor. I don’t know how thick the concrete is or what is beneath it, but I would replace the wall with a timber and plaster board (dry wall) construction which would be much lighter. I estimate current weight is about 3 tones. Or maybe not replace it at all if I can support the ceiling from above. I would rather not have a visible supporting beam.

While we are in the cellar, I should explain the title. We have an occasional stream in our cellar. The house is mainly built directly on the bedrock, When there is a prolonged period of rain – enough to saturate the soil, but unable to penetrate the underlying rock. a small stream flows ‘into’ the building (over the exposed rock in the cellar) and down a gully (last chance to earn points ;-)

OK, I give up. There is a little video of the stream, but I can’t put it in here, It seems to insist on being at the end of this post. So scroll down to watch now, or carry on reading and watch the vid at the end

The pic at the top was cut from this

..taken from the other side of the valley.

And this is from google earth, but is several years out of date

The trees shown in that pic don’t match what is there now.

This gives a good idea of the slope we are on, and though it looks like a cute little bungalow,

This is Ping opening the front door from the inside.

Update, the thermo-accumulator has been tested, and works better than expected. Water is still hot after 48 hours without power, and luke warm after 72 hours

Update 2, our single breaker tripped a few days ago when not under load. I needed to do some electrical stuff, so wanted the power off. I pressed a button marked “T”, which I assumed was test – nothing happened. I flipped the main breaker and completed the work. Switched it back on, and the fuse thing tripped a few minutes later. I reset it and no further problems, but looked at the box. It was marked 25A. Hmm, 25A * 220V = 5500W. I believed the electricity company when they informed me that I was limited to 3.4 kw, and was making sure that we didn’t exceed that, I have since proved that we can exceed 4.5kw without issues.

Stupid weather. Now just 1 week until December. Grass is still growing vigorously, small mosquitoes in the garden are still biting furiously, rain is falling continuously.  Still the same in January, except no rain, just brilliant sunshine.

The misplaced vid.

[valmaior-blog]

It Begins...

So, at the beginning of February, Ping and I, and our lawyer, and two real estate agents, two registration officials, 8 sellers and their lawyer, piled into a government registration office to sign contracts, and swap funds for keys. Couldn't all fit in, so we had to move to a bigger office in the next building.

It seems to be an excessively complex procedure, further confused by the question "what type of marriage do you have?"

In Portugal, it seems that there are 3 choices, 

1) Both parties are financially independent.

2) Everything is shared,

3) Everything is shared from the date of the marriage. 

I don't know which we got. Every page of the contract has to be signed by all concerned after being read aloud and corrected where errors were spotted  ID documents for  everyone recorded, financial numbers recorded. 

I handed over a large cheque, and received a bunch of keys. Next a registration fee to be paid, then another registration fee to be paid. Then we were done, Only took 90 minutes. We have a house in Portugal :-D, a compromise between my isolated mountain farmhouse within walking distance of nothing, and Ping’s downtown apartment within walking distance of a shopping mall.

Said goodbye to our lawyer, who is a classic. Short, tubby, elderly, bald, but the remaining hair on the side was partly covering his ears. As well as being a solicitor, he does legal stuff for the local town hall, and is also a barrister. A useful person to know. 

Then we went home though not to the new house, it would have been getting dark when we arrived, and there was no electricity or water. Next day we  went to our house, and noticed many problems which we had not spotted on our previous visits. This house has been empty for a long time, many years I guess. The house has internal shutters on the windows, and a few broken windows, broken long enough for the internal shutters to show significant weathering behind the broken panes. 

No heating, not even a fireplace. The kitchen seems to be a later addition, and does have a chimney, but no fireplace. 

The house is built on the side of a hill, which seems to be the norm in rural Portugal, so we have a half cellar. with walls 80 cm thick. The main house walls are only 60 cm, and the kitchen walls are 55 cm. 

A few days later, we were arranging to have water and electricity supplies reconnected. The water man arrived first, fitted a new meter. The water meter box in the garden wall had pipes but no meter, 

I was doing something elsewhere, when Ping came and told me the water was connected. I tried the taps - nothing, I checked stop taps, nothing. I went out to see the guy and he demonstrated. Turn water on at the meter, jet of water gushes out of his newly fitted pipe protruding from the other side of the wall. He went away with a "my job here is done" shrug. So, water available outside the house, how to get it inside. 

The idea of drilling holes through thick stone walls didn't appeal. 

The house has a bathroom, with shower, toilet, washbasin and bidet. (I later discovered that a bidet is a legal requirement in a Portuguese bathroom.) It has a kitchen, with sink and taps, Two more water taps and another toilet with sink and washing machine connection in a newer extension to the kitchen, 

There used to be a bottled gas water heater, but the heater has gone. The pipes and vent are in place, although the "chimney” just passes through the kitchen ceiling and vents into the kitchen attic (fortunately separate from the main house attic).

Obviously, water used to come into the house, but perhaps not from the mains.There is a well outside, and a box used to house an electric pump. There is also a header tank on the roof. 

The estate agent blurb said mains water - I took that to mean supplying the house. Maybe it meant available at the house, and the house had actually been using well water. The easiest solution seemed to be to connect our mains supply to the feed from the tank, and the easiest way to do that is to pipe our new supply up to the roof. So, off to the DIY shops, and returned with 25m of 25mm coiled plastic pipe, and a bunch of 25mm elbows. Tried to figure out the header tank plumbing, but there was nowhere to get a clear view from the ground.

 Discovered an old galvanised pipe protruding vertically from the ground close to the well. it seemed  remote from everything wet, so I had assumed it was just a bit of old pipe used as a plant stake, but it could have been an external tap, connected to house water - it was several meters above well water level, so couldn't be connected to that. The threaded end of the pipe was mangled. Whatever had been connect to it had been removed with a big hammer. If it was an external tap. Then connecting our water supply to it could well feed back into the house - worth a shot. Sawed off the mangled pipe end, Duct taped the 25 mm feed to the steel pipe, turned on the water. 

Duct tape is not as strong as it seems. it burst in a few seconds, resulting in a wet wife. I did notice some old rusty hooks in the wall where the supply arrived, which indicated that water had once traveled this route, later confirmed by Google.

This 2009 image clearly shows a water pipe running along the wall from the meter.

I "modified" one of my 25 mm plastic elbows to fit the galvanised pipe - somewhat leaky, but it stayed put. Checked in the house. Water - or rather black sludge was coming out of the taps, which slowly cleared to become rusty water, and eventually clear water. 

Still not had a date for electric connection so called the company, Finally got through to someone who could speak decent English. "Ah, there is a problem with your contract. you asked for a 5kw supply. the cables to your house can only take 3.4kw. I will email you a new contract to sign." Our electric kettle is 2kw!  but, anything is better that nothing - I need to run power tools etc. 

Annoyed that they didn't contact me to tell me. I had to put off the phone company, who were coming to install a landline which we don't need, but we do need internet and TV. and it was either this or a 4g dongle and satellite TV. I can't get a decent 4g signal on my phone when at the house, and they won't install internet and TV without a landline.

So Electric day arrived Installation anytime between 10:30, and 13:00. We planned to arrive at the house at 10:30 to be safe. Got a call at 9:55, "I am at the house"! We weren't. Got there at 10:30 - no electric company vehicle. Waited 4 hours, finally sent a text. The guy arrived 5 mins later. Shortly after, we had electricity.

The following day, the phone people arrived. I would not have been surprised if they had been unable to install TV and internet up to 24 Mbs over the existing ancient phone wires, but they strung a new coaxial cable from the pole to the house, so 150 channels and 12 Mbs internet installed. That's  what I checked it as. I was impressed, until I got back to to the apartment, and found we have 37 Mbs there. We now have a phone number too, just haven't got a phone to plug in yet ;-) 

Anyway, back to the water. The washing machine tap has a conventional threaded end. I needed a hose outside, so screwed a hoselock connection on and the tap broke - inside the tiled wall, Turned off the water - needed to get at the tap, so attacked the tiled wall with a very small hammer and a screw driver (the only tools available), I eventually managed to extract the tap. It was screwed into a brass? elbow, which had been screwed into a galvanised reducer, which was screwed into a galvanised T. The brass thing had just sheared off, Funny thing - all the plumbing is in imperial sizes. The T piece was on top of a vertical  galvanised pipe, so I had to smash a lot more tiles and wall to be able to lever the pipe out of the wall to get at the broken bits. Finally got that fixed, though not the wall or tiles yet, 

Next problem -water on the floor in the main bathroom. Can't find a leak. Water on the step out of the kitchen. on the other side of the bathroom. The kitchen appears to be a later addition to the house. Seems like we have a leaky pipe embedded in the main house wall. The sensible solution would seem to be to replace all the plumbing. Working on a plan for that. Need a full campaign plan, I need a Gantt chart Can't fix the kitchen until the plumbing is sorted, and probably should combine heating with plumbing. 

We are several kms from the nearest gas main, so options are burning wood (or pellets), oil tank in the garden, propane tank in the garden or air source heat pump.

Oil here is the same price as diesel at the pumps, (probably higher with delivery charges) propane is  cheaper, but the tank in much more expensive. Heat pump is favourite, but dependent on upgrading the electricity cables, or possible switching to a 3 phase 380v supply. I don't know much about 3 phase,. I thought I could get 3 380 to 220 transformers, use 1 phase for the heat pump the other 2 could supply household appliances, sockets and lights, but further research seems to indicate that this is a bad idea, as it would create an unbalanced load. The answer would seem to be buy a big 3 phase electric motor, and use this to drive a 220v generator. 

I need to find out if there is a device that can shift the phase backward and forward by 120 degrees, then I could have single phase 380v, which would be easier to handle. 

Another issue with the heat pump, is that the hot water coming out the back is 60 degrees max, much cooler than a conventional boiler, so it needs double sized radiators or underfloor heating to produce the same amount of heat. Can't really go solar, not enough sun in winter when we really need the heat, and the house is in a valley, so not very windy either. 

Delayed by the car again, the alternator diodes burned out. Luckily, I made it home, but not enough juice left in the battery to start the car again. Tried and failed to located a used alternator (they seem to sell quickly). Tried and failed to locate a new 8 diode rectifier/regulator assembly (8 diodes confused me for a while), so had to order a new alternator. The brushes and slip rings also seemed badly worn. Tried and failed to locate a supplier in Portugal, so had to get one shipped from the UK. 

I will have to measure up for new water pipes and fittings, - see what we need to replace, and try to assess how much house will be destroyed in the fitting.