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Post by lagatta on Aug 17, 2020 19:34:38 GMT
Are you retiring in Spain or the UK?
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 17, 2020 20:15:37 GMT
Neither, for a long while. Sort of. Whilst Mrs M is working in different countries I'll be there with her so Spain is our holiday home and I don't expect to be going back to the UK at all, or infrequently. Mrs M will not retire for at least 15 - 17 years as she is quite younger than me so when she does we have plans to spend part of the year depending on season in different countries, initially Germany and Spain with possible long trips in other places.
Bear in mind my 'retirement', if the definition is retiring from a career or full time employment, happened in my early forties way back in the early two thousands. I was then a 'house husband' until the kids flew the nest and now I am classed as a 'travelling spouse' following Mrs M from country to country every few years. Her salary is/was far in excess that I could achieve due to her education and qualifications (and in reality, my lack of), so it made no sense for me to work and her look after the kids and then try to start off/restart her career years later when they left.
In hated working anyway. I've been very lucky that she tolerated me. I think my good looks, humour and charm played a factor though. And modesty.
Mostly modesty.
Final update for now - a sensor has been replaced at the panels and we have a working hot water system. After a few hours the water was 51 degrees. We'll see how long the good news lasts.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 18, 2020 8:51:21 GMT
Thank you Mark, we are getting the "installer" to come and have a look. Will fill you in.
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 18, 2020 9:45:18 GMT
Good.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Aug 19, 2020 2:33:06 GMT
Gosh. Just caught up on this thread. Spectacular sunset on page 14 I bet that your skies are pretty dark there too. Have you got a telescope? It is one of our fantasies to have an eco-house, built to be cool in summer, warm in winter...with solar and wind power, preferably a good water collection system (a spring on site would be good too). Nice big greenhouse with a heat sink to grow our veggies. Is the ability to collect and store energy in batteries a new innovation? I didn't know that you could do that...but then I don't know a lot of things
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 19, 2020 6:29:10 GMT
Cheery, I have a telescope I use from time to time to look at he moon but mainly it's for looking during the day across the valley and/or looking what is happening in the olive groves and our closest neighbours over a kilometre away - though I've never spotted anyone there yet. Wind power - noisy, unreliable and you always get less power from it than you thought.
Is the ability to collect and store energy in batteries a new innovation? I'm not sure how to reply to that. Obviously batteries have been around for donkey's years and solar panels since the early fifties. I've never known anything other than having solar with batteries to use the power at night or, and I expect this might be what you know of - panels connected to the mains supply whereby the panels feed into the mains back through your meter so you are 'giving back' and it makes your bills less. The electric you then use is always from the mains and not from any batteries you might have. Then there is the hybrid system that has both, such that you don't feed back into the mains until your batteries are full.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Aug 19, 2020 8:04:38 GMT
Thank you Mark. As you can tell my ignorance knows no bounds Maybe a water wheel would be better in soggy UK. I love windmills but maybe we will just have one for grinding our wheat as opposed to one for dicing birds. It IS a fantasy house after all...
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Post by onlyMark on Aug 19, 2020 13:09:43 GMT
Certainly hydro power is more reliable than wind power if you have a steady stream - but you need to differentiate between an overshot and an undershot wheel for efficiency, especially when the flow is not so much. If you have the drop, I'd go for an overshot every time due to it being able to attain 90% efficiency.
See, even your fantasy house isn't so easy in practical terms.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 25, 2021 7:53:33 GMT
Final update for now - a sensor has been replaced at the panels and we have a working hot water system. After a few hours the water was 51 degrees. We'll see how long the good news lasts. As usual, not very long. Every time I come to the house (been here nearly a week) the bloody thing is faulty. I'm still waiting for the technician to come and sort it out. In other news, I never mentioned about two months ago the house was broken in to. So much for having grills - but a determined burglar will break into anywhere. I think they've brought with them a battery hand grinder and cut through the bottom of the grills, bent it back and broken the window to get in. A bit weird in that nothing has been taken - mind you, there's nothing of value in there anyway unless you include the furniture. We were told by our builder who we pay to come every so often and check around. No idea how long before he checked had it been done. Now I'm here I can see various things have been moved around but not sure if it was burglars who did so or the builder's men. Bless the builder though. He waited at he house, called his son who organised a couple of his men with a welding machine and a glazier from the door/window company and got it sorted straight away. He also liaised with the insurance company and sorted out the claim. Apart from our excess on the policy it's all been paid back now. They did mention to the builder that without the grills, they wouldn't have paid out at all.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 25, 2021 10:35:52 GMT
Ouch! That has always been my fear of living in any sort of isolated area. There can be break-ins everywhere, as has been proven in my building more than half a dozen times since I moved here, but generally it is very amateur simple stuff. Cutting bars like that takes more determination and less fear of making any noise.
I'm glad you have a good insurance policy. Have you considered putting in an alarm?
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Post by htmb on Jun 25, 2021 10:42:18 GMT
Loyal helpers such as your builder are worth their weight in gold. Sounds like you’re fortunate to have him around. Too bad about the break-in though.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 25, 2021 12:17:00 GMT
My preliminary detective work tells me that the visitor was not obese.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 25, 2021 12:52:59 GMT
The theory is teenagers/early twenties just wanting to create some havoc, that's what the police say. Not sure myself. Have you considered putting in an alarm? No phone line, no internet, no neighbour for one and a half kilometres so ends up being just a loud noise and nobody would come. Possibility is getting an alarm with a built in SIM card that phones up someone, if there is such a thing. But that would mean having a stable electric supply, which we haven't. We are working on ideas though. I've said we could leave a dog inside, leave it a load of food and water and someone come every couple of weeks to top it up. Mrs M says it would die. I said dogs are cheap, we'd just get another one.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 25, 2021 12:56:55 GMT
Loyal helpers such as your builder are worth their weight in gold. Sounds like you’re fortunate to have him around. He is good, that's for sure. But we do pay him enough to make him go the extra mile for us. We both benefit.
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Post by bjd on Jun 25, 2021 13:16:12 GMT
About an alarm: we knew some people who lived in an rather empty part of a small village. They were robbed once by some young kids who took stuff like sports bags from the States, some music playing equipment, etc. The police said an alarm would not bring any help quickly but at least it might scare off the burglars if they think someone will arrive.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 25, 2021 13:41:42 GMT
I've said we could leave a dog inside, leave it a load of food and water and someone come every couple of weeks to top it up. Mrs M says it would die. I said dogs are cheap, we'd just get another one. You have got to be kidding!!!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 25, 2021 14:04:55 GMT
Ha! I knew someone would take the bait.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 25, 2021 16:40:30 GMT
You have got to be kidding!!! I am. Dogs aren't cheap.
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Post by casimira on Jun 25, 2021 17:00:23 GMT
Sorry this happened to you Mark. Having had several burglaries in my lifetime, I knw that feeling of being violated.
Currently, our old house is very accessible to some one to come in and take some things. That being said, it's not that there is anything that valuable to steal. It's more the feeling of someone taking advantage of what is obviously a traumatic situation, and piling on added stress and anxiety.
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Post by mich64 on Jun 25, 2021 17:24:16 GMT
Sorry that your home was broken into Mark, thankfully they did not damage anything more than the grate. When I hear of places being broken into here the story usually always follows with the amount of criminal damage that was done.
When we go on holiday, even trips longer than 4 nights, our insurance policy states we must have evidence of someone checking on the property either by a management company or even just a family member. My brother-in-law usually does this for us and emails us from our home providing a date and time he was there. On our last holiday it was a good thing he did as a tree had fallen, missing the deck on the house, but damaged the electrical box for our septic pump that then needed to be covered until we got home to have it repaired.
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Post by mickthecactus on Jun 25, 2021 18:07:57 GMT
You have got to be kidding!!! I am. Dogs aren't cheap. Canaries are going cheep.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 25, 2021 21:33:55 GMT
, Mick! Don't make me have to hunt you down like a dog! Having had several burglaries in my lifetime, I knw that feeling of being violated. Absolutely! Several people on this forum questioned my decision to have security grates installed in the one unsecured portion of my house. I did not question my own decision, but what happened at Mark's house in Spain sure vindicates that decision. Thank goodness for your builder and his kind practicality in going the extra mile for you. My suggestion is to rig up special nets over all the points of entry so that the nets will fall and envelop the would-be intruders while simultaneously dialing the cops to come collect them. Failing that, it would be great to somehow electrify the house the next time you leave it so that messing with the grates will shock the sh*t out of any prospective thieves.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 26, 2021 5:39:05 GMT
I only wish your suggestions are legal. They'd be ideal. I did think of spreading some Novichok at convenient locations so they died a painful death.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 26, 2021 10:11:08 GMT
Canaries are going cheep. Plenty in the UK with the demise of the coal industry.
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Post by questa on Jun 30, 2021 4:00:24 GMT
S'pose you could try about 2-3 geese to guard the place. An irate gander, head lowered and wings high behind his back is a terrifying prospect, and they only need water and a bit of grain as they forage during the day.
And if that doesn't work, you have Christmas dinner sorted for the next couple of years.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 30, 2021 6:16:39 GMT
I think a minefield, barbed wire and sniper towers would do.
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Post by onlyMark on Jun 30, 2021 6:50:51 GMT
We've always had problems with the pool tiles. But only the top at the lip. They are easy to pull off as even though they come as a 'mat', they are easy to separate. Plus, and the main problem, whenever I put the cover on for the winter, I can be sure that the next spring when I take it off, the natural sag of the cover has pulled off the top two layers or so. It's just something we never thought of when we decided how we wanted it. The idea was to have an infinity type pool where there is no lip or change of tile at the top edge. I've been sticking the tiles back on for the last six or seven years and I thought I'm fed up of it and wanted something done. We decided the solution "may" be to have a larger tile at the top. So we are trying that. The workers came, had just over half a day ripping of the top layer and sticking on some new ones. We now have a defined border and we'll have to live with it - but as it was not often we filled the pool right up to the very top anyway, I think it'll be fine. Only us will know the difference anyway. I've just started filling it back up after a clean and I'll take some more photos when it is to the level I want. For now though, this is how it was before - And this is the start of how it will be -
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 30, 2021 16:18:09 GMT
Your pool is beautiful, both before and after. Is it possible that the original top tiles simply weren't appropriate for that placement? Are the tile guys who installed the new set the same people who installed the originals? It will be interesting to see if the darker new tiles will be discernible after the pool is filled. I'm kind of guessing that they might wind up being even more invisible -- giving more of the infinity illusion -- than the originals. Good luck!
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Post by htmb on Jun 30, 2021 16:21:31 GMT
I’ll bet a lovely Spanish pool to cool off in comes in very handy this time of year.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 30, 2021 16:44:33 GMT
Pictures from The Sims! I have identical ones of my kitchen.
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