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#got a bigger tank and a heater and real plants etc after finding out like everything i was told was wrong
evfryder · 3 years
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what should i name my betta
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valmaior-blog · 6 years
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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.
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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.
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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.
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