Blog - Casa in Colle

Electricity matters

We’ve had issues with the electricty tripping since we bought the house. We had similar issues when staying in Martin’s parents place in Benabbio way back when, so we just assumed it went with the territory.

Things got worse in the autumn as we bought a bunch of electric heaters to warm the house up. As the walls are solid, they act as a heat sink and it takes a long time to get the house up to a comfortable temperature. With heaters on, the leccy was tripping regularly.

When Fenella got here this spring, the situation was even worse and she was on her own. She battled on until Martin arrived and then, with some investigation, we came to the conclusion that the main culprit was the old (and tiny) washing machine rather than the wiring. So when we took Fenella’s hire car back to Pisa on Wednesday, we went to Comet and picked out a decent size washing machine and dryer and arranged delivery for Friday afternoon.

Martin remembered reading something online about how a limit on the total power is applied to Italian electric accounts and how the limit could potentially be raised. He went onto the Enel website and sure enough, there was a facility to find out your limit (ours was 4.5kW) and to request an increase. It looked as though it would take a week or more to implement the request, so we decided to wait until after the electrician had been to inspect the wiring (scheduled for the next day).

On Thursday, Gino turned up to take measurements of the house and brought along the electrician who assessed the wiring with a view to preparing a quote for adding sockets and potentially rewiring all or part of the house. He agreed that the washing machine was the likely cause of our problems. He also recommended increasing the power to 6kW (apparently the maximum unless you upgrade to three phase).

On Friday evening, the washer and dryer eventually arrived at about 9pm. The delivery guys installed them in the current laundry dungeon and took away the old washing machine. We were able to do laundry again and doing so did not constantly trip the electricity!

The same day Martin went online to order the electricity power upgrade. Within half an hour it was done (presumably by smart meter).

We are still getting the odd trip, but this is generally on a single circuit when we overload it with too many heaters – rather than the main trip that was giving us so much jip before. Hallelujah!

Termotechnico visit

Needless to say, the termotechnico did not come the next day as Gino promised. Thankfully, he did come on Friday accompanied by Andrea (Gino’s English speaking geometra colleague).

We explained to the termotechnico that we were looking for both heating and cooling and that, if possible, we would like to locate the plant in the room that currently houses the washing machine. We let him know that we’d like to be able to control the heating remotely so that we can keep the temperature above 10C during the winter and fire up the heating a few days before arrival to ensure a comfortable house when we get there. We told him we were happy to go with his recommendations, but would like him to consider alternatives to pellet burners such as heat pump. He conducted his assessment of the house and the exisitng heating / cooling. There will obviously be an element of interdependence between the heating and cooling work and the work of the electrician. This is for the geometra to coordinate as a project.

Andrea is a very chatty and enthusiastic geometra. I think he’s hoping to manage the work on our house. This would be fine as he has good English, but I’ll be happy if he has the more steady Gino overseeing what he does. We think we can get going with some work that does not need permissions. The work that does require permissions, seems to fall into two categories: simple changes where the permissions are pretty much just a formality (e.g. moving the bathroom internally) and those where the comune will take a closer interest (e.g. moving the back door).

Surprisingly, Andrea thought that building a small wall at the front of the house would be problematic as may paving the front garden. We want the wall to make it less easy for people to park directly outside the house and especially to stop them parking with their wheels on our grass (which they seem to do when we’re away). We are now considering getting large rectangular planters to erect a non-permanent barrier instead.

There was no discussion of the garden as the geologo has not yet been.

Andrea suggested we could have a meeting to kick things off as early as Monday and he would discuss with Gino when he got back to the office….

Progress (at last)

Finally, Gino came to start the inspections. He brought with him a junior geometra and his son who seems to work for him and has some English. He also brought an electricista (electrician) along, but no termotechnico (heating engineer) or geologo (geologist). While Gino’s junior got on with taking measurements of all the rooms, we reiterated what our priorities were.

We also discussed our electical problems with the electricista. He agreed that the major cause of our problems was likely to be the old washing machine (for which we had already ordered a replacement). He also agreed that raising the power rating of the house would help reduce the tripping. We gave him a copy of our map of existing and new sockets and indicated that we wanted all wiring to be buried in the walls (as often people just add ugly trunking attached to the walls). He conducted his assessment of the existing wiring and kindly reconnected the power to our cameras.

Gino left with the electricista and told us the termotechnico would come the next day. He left his junior and son behind to complete tbe measurements.

The measurements the geometra took were pretty impressive. Dimensions of every room (length, width, diagonals, height) and the precise location and sizes of doors and windows. Everything was also photographed.

Finally got there

The last day of driving started with a stunning drive across Switzerland from Zurich in the north to Lugano on the Italian border. Only stopped for photos once, but the scenery was spectacular pretty much the whole way.

From Lugano to Colle di Compito on the Italian motorways which always seems to have roadworks going on every few miles. I got to try out my new Telepass / Telepeage device which works a treat – no more scrabbling for loose change at the toll barriers for us!

Finally arrived in Colle di Compito in time to quickly unload the car and enjoy a proper home cooked meal after all those sandwiches. Well, I have to admit that I did have a pretty good schnitzel in Aachen and rosti with speck, käse überbacken and a spiegelei in Winterthur. Still, not a patch on Fenella’s bolognese.

Straight to bed after supper. Three days driving just after COVID-19 really took it out of me.

Arrival of the furniture

Martin took the tunnel (no P&O obviously) and drove to Aachen where he stayed in the now customary Brunnenhof hotel on Saturday night. Fenella, meanwhile, was in Colle di Compito but stuck in the house as she had tested positive for COVID-19.

On Sunday morning, Tim and Darren arrived in Colle di Compito and proceeded to unload the furniture and reconstruct a couple of tables that had been dismantled for ease of packing. They were done by 11:30 and headed off to the beach (not to swim presumably).

Meanwhile, Martin drove from Aachen to Winterthur in Switzerland where he spent a lovely evening with Dale (an old colleague from the Zurich office) and got to meet his fiancee Abigail and her teenage child Matilda.

Delayed departure

On Friday morning (one week later than planned), Tim turned up in his van along with his rather hung over son Darren. We loaded everything we’d put on the packing list and then a fair bit more. They headed off to the tunnel at about lunchtime and expected to deliver everything to Fenella in Italy on Sunday morning.

Early on Saturday morning, Martin loaded up the car with this lot (and then some) and headed off on his three day drive to Colle di Compito.

Thankfully, Saturday was also the first day Martin tested negative for COVID-19 a full 12 days after first testing positive.

Italy trip spring 2022

With the sale of our home and the purchase of our new flat in the hands of the solicitors, we decided to get a trip to Italy in before we had to get serious about moving.

We went through our London home from top to bottom classifying all furniture into three categories:

Take to our new flat
Ship to Italy
Rehome

We identified a van’s worth of stuff to take to Italy and got quotes from a bunch of companies. We settled on a courier recommended by others who had shipped stuff from the UK to Italy. They were cheaper than some of the larger companies with the added benefit that all our stuff would stay on a single van throughout the entire process (rather than loading and unloading as a part container shipment).

We arranged for a pickup on Friday 18 March after which Martin would drive the car (with more stuff) to Colle di Compito in order to be there to receive the shipment and help with unloading it. Fenella would follow by plane on Wednesday 23 March as she had a family funeral to attend.

Then Martin caught COVID-19 having dodged it for two years. We rearranged the van for a week later and spent a week avoiding each other and wearing masks in the house to hopefully make sure that Fenella didn’t catch it too.

Today Martin dropped Fenella at Golders Green where she caught the bus to Stanstead and then the plane to Pisa. There are a couple more days to get stuff ready for loading into van and car. On Friday the van comes and on Saturday Martin heads off to the Channel Tunnel (no P&O this year).

Progress (or lack thereof)

It’s been very frustrating so far this year dealing with Gino. I’ve been enquiring regularly about the progress with arranging the various inspections. Each time he indicates that it is all in hand and will be done in the next few days.

Now that he’s finally worked out that our arrival is imminent, he has at last attended at our house only to find that Paola has lost our spare keys. Does he let me know? Get real!

At 8pm last night, I received a WhatsApp message from a very stressed and embarrassed Paola informing me that she has misplaced our keys and cannot find them anywhere. I told her not to worry and that we would be out soon. Paola is obviously mortified and sent a succession of very apologetic messages. I eventually managed to put her mind at rest. I’m really hoping she’s still prepared to hold spares for us in the future.

So I contacted Gino this morning who agreed to reschedule as soon as we are out. Fingers crossed. We are dead keen to get going on some of the jobs that are not dependent on permissions (wiring, bathrooms, etc).

Downsizing

This spring, we put our house on the market and have been seriously looking for a smaller cheaper place to move to. The intention is to free up cash to help Rowan and Jesse get started on the housing ladder and to give us some funds to spend on making our Italian house into the home we envisage. We want to move now while we are still young enough to have the energy and we want to find a home we could imagine spending the rest of our lives in.

The sale has gone pretty well. We did a massive declutter and got the house looking pretty good for photos and viewings. We were lucky enough to get a few people seriously interested which helped push the offer we finally accepted a bit above the asking price.

On the purchase side, we came to the conclusion that our budget was not really enough to find a suitable forever home. We found a couple of interesting places in Belsize Park: a lovely bright flat in a mansion block and a very attractive mews house right next to Belsize Village. We put in an offer on the flat and it was accepted. It would leave us rather short of money for the Italian work, but would allow us to fulfil our commitments to the kids.

We had one final booked viewing remaining which we decided to go to anyway. This was primarily because it was potentially the Brewer’s old flat which I have fond memories of visiting often in my childhood. I contacted Jamie to find out if it was, in fact, their flat and it turned out to be the case. We had to go and see it and we arranged to take Jamie with us. We met Jamie in the Woodman for lunch and went for a rather emotionally charged viewing. The current owners had bought it from the Brewers about 25 years before and knew Christian.

The flat was lovely and really threw the cat amongst the pigeons. While the Belsize Park flat had lots of light in most rooms and a lovely bright double aspect living room, one of the bedrooms looked out onto a light well. It was a compromise we were prepared to make, but this flat in Southwood Mansions has no such issue. Every room has proper windows that look out on something. It also has a delightful kitchen that’s large enough for three or four to eat in and a west facing balcony to catch the evening sun.

So the Southwood Mansions flat is really nice, much closer to friends and family and considerably cheaper. What’s not to like. We went back for a second viewing next day and put in an offer there and then. Happily, it was accepted and we are all set for a much more local move that will give us the funds we want for Italy and then some.

Everything is in the hands of solicitors, the survey is booked and we are planning a trip to Italy before we have to get serious about actually packing up and moving.

Back on the market

On the afternoon of Monday 10 January, Riccardo got in touch with this message:

A Lucca estate agent (LuccAbita) had posted our house for sale on idealista (Italian equivalent of RightMove). The pictures were presumably from an earlier listing before we purchased and included the misleading pictures of the swimming pool we had seen at that time. My guess was that they were re-posting our house to get enquiries from people who they could then tell that the property was no longer available and go on to suggest alternatives that they actually had on their books. Apparently, this is a marketing technique known as Bait & Switch.

My response to Riccardo was:

For fun, I did use the iealista web site to request a viewing. LuccAbita responded the following day by email asking me to call them (as I had withheld my number from the request). I explained that I was in the UK and asked them to let me know how long the property had been on the market and to confirm it was available for viewing now. Their response to that was to apololgise and inform me that they had checked with the vendor who told them it had been sold.

Seeing as how the vendor is a friend, I contacted Domenico to ask whether they had, in fact, been in touch. It turned out he had been contacted, but not by LuccAbita. One of their competitors (Immobiliare Il Baluardo – that he had used previously) had spotted the listing and contacted him to ask if the house was for sale again. When Domenico replied that the house had been sold, this agent suggested that maybe the new owners had put it up for sale. In Domenico’s email, he said “For a moment I became sad, but now your message has reassured me”.

The listing was taken down on Wednesday so everything is back to normal. Not good practice by LuccAbita, however, who listed a property they did not have for sale and then misled me about contactacting Domenico.

Interestingly, the blurb posted with the listing contained this text:
evocative building of 1870 formerly “La Pace” inn

Domenico has previously told us that the house was a kind of restaurant run by his family and this tidbit of information from the listing reminded me that he had agreed to write us a brief history of the house and his family’s association with it. I reminded him of this and hope to receive it next time we see him and Paola.