Category: Blog

Fibre update…

This morning, Riccardo sent this picture:

Apparently, they were expecting to find the existing TIM trunking right next to the house. Instead, they discovered it is in the middle of the road.

They spent the rest of the day digging up the road from our house all the way up to the road to Ruota (right past Riccardo’s house).

Fibre broadband is coming…

On Wednesday afternoon I received a call from our neighbour Riccardo. Apparently, some telecomms contractor has a crew in the village laying fibre for TIM (Telecom Italia). As we already have a junction box for the regular phone from which a number of neighbours receive their lines, TIM wants to install a PET junction box for the fibre connections in the same place.

You can see the current setup in these pictures. The thicker cable is coming from the telegraph pole across the street and the three or four more lightweight cables are running off to neighbouring houses. There is also some cable coming up from the ground in old metal trunking. It looks a bit of a mess to me.

The reason Riccardo has called me is because TIM needs our permission to install the new PET junction box on my house. He explained that he wants fibre at his house and is trying to persuade the contractor to continue the cable run up the street as far as his place. The contractor has agreed to do that provided Riccardo helps them to get our permission for the PET box.

So they want to install the PET junction box next to the existing one and need to dig a trench across our front garden to do that. They are trying to reach the existing pipe that is carrying their cable on the side of our house.

Do we have to agree?
No.

What happens if we choose not to?
They will terminate the cable further down the village and:
a) our neighbours will not have the option to get fibre broadband.
b) we will not have the option to get fibre broadband.
c) Riccardo will not be able to get the fibre extended to his house.

Most of our close neighbours are rather old and probably not that bothered about fibre broadband. In fact, Riccardo informed me that Mariagrazia has told the contractors she’s not even prepared to allow them to put their ladders on her property to do the work on ours. So the main person (apart from us) that would suffer would be Riccardo himself. He works from home a lot and really wants to get a fibre connection. He’s also becoming a friend and has been extremely helpful to us when we have needed it. Of course I agreed that he could send the consent form through and that I would discuss it with Fenella.

The following morning, he sent this picture he had received from the contractor’s manager to illustrate the work they intended to carry out.

My response?
“I’m not impressed with the quality of their work”
You can see the cable running untidily next to the existing trunking.

So I suggested:
“If it’s completely independent they could stick it on this pole”.
This is the telegraph pole across the street from us.

So Riccardo went back to them and said the quality of the work was unacceptable. They responded with this picture of what they “really” intended to do (to replace the existing metal pipe with new plastic trunking and to run both cables through it).

We spoke in the evening and I said we were prepared to agree provided the work was like this second picture and that they didn’t damage the roots of our Myrtle tree. I changed the text of the consent form to include the following conditions in English and Italian:

  • The new and existing cables are contained within a single pipe where attached to my house.
  • The route of the underground cable follows the line marked A in the attached diagram and this is done without damaging the roots of the Myrtle tree. If this can’t be done, the underground cable can follow an alternative line marked B

I sent it first to Riccardo for a sanity check and then to the contractor’s email address.

I’m a bit nervous that the work will be carried out without us being there to monitor it, but I guess that’s something we’ll have to get used to. Riccardo will monitor for us and we’ll have to opportunity to get a fibre to the home connection ourselves (potentially better than the fibre to the cabinet connection that we have in London).

Packing up already

We’re heading home tomorrow so we are already packing up.

It’s been a good trip. The house is in reasonable shape. We had a good meeting with the geometra. We’ve tidied up the front garden to show the locals we’re caring for the place. We also placed a pot strategically to prevent people parking with their tyres on our grass.

We think it has been a good thing to show our neighbours that we haven’t bought the place just for summer trips. We’ve even used our improving Italian language skills to communicate with Laura and also Enrico and Paula to an extent.

There’s been a bit of a faff around the return trip as the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has hit while we’ve been here. As a result, we’ve had to cancel the lateral flow tests we’d already bought and schedule day 2 PCR tests instead.

This afternoon we went in to Lucca for a bit of Christmas shopping and a walk round the walls. We also went along to a bar where a bunch of English speeking expats meet for a drink on Monday afternoons. We finished the evening off in a rather odd restaurant galled Ubaldos that was suggested by one of the guys we met there.

Tomorrow we will close up the house, have lunch at La Cecca and head to Pisa to catch our flight home.

Geometra meeting

We had a good meeting with Gino and Andrea today at their office. They have received and checked all the documentation from the comune and are happy that there is a good match between the records and the house. They seemed pleasantly surprised so I guess discrepancies are quite common. They were also happy with the seismic interventions that are in place and with the permissions and sign off for those – which is reassuring.

Things of note with the plans are:

  • The door of the second floor bathroom is not shown in the correct position. That gives us the option to move that door back to the position shown in the plan or to regularise the current position according to what works best.
  • The rooms on the second floor are classified as attic and storage space. This means they will receive less scrutiny when we want to change things on that floor. It also helps to reduce the IMU property tax we have to pay anually.
  • The fireplace that we want to remove from the kitchen is not shown in the plans, so we won’t need to get permission to remove it.

We showed them the technical drawings from Domenico which have more detail than the plans at the comune (e.g. room dimensions). They asked us to see if we could get the DWG file for those plans from Domenico as that will save a lot of time creating new ones. We have already received them from Domenico this evening and forwarded them to Gino. So that puts us in the position where they can start to work on the plans for the changes we want to make.

We discussed the priority work we want to focus on first and as much of it is internal, we should be able to make a start while permissions are sought for the project works.

  • Electricity
    We raised concerns about the frequency with which the electricity cuts out, the age and safety of the wiring in parts of the house, the lack of sockets in some rooms. We discussed moving the ancient fuse boxes into the services room. We also discussed moving the main inlet and meter. They said that would need to move outside, which seems dumb given that it’s a smart meter. They will arrange for electricians to inspect and quote, but first we need to document the number and location of new sockets etc. As we will not be able to replace the kitchen until the permission for the new door is granted, we will not be able to finalise our electric requirements until then.
  • Heating and cooling
    We discussed a few options including solar panels, wood pellet burners, heat exchangers and combinations thereof. They will need to arrange for an inspection by a termotecnico (heating engineer) who can make recommendations and give options. We expressed concerns about the polluting properties of wood pellet burners which they attempted to allay.
  • Bathrooms
    As we want to move the first floor bathroom, that work will need permission. We can, however, get going with the second floor bathroom. We briefly discused what we would like to do with the second floor bathroom.
  • Utility room
    As this will be in the current location of the first floor bathroom, we will need to wait for permission.
  • Swimming pool
    We discussed our plan to replace the existing wreck with a slightly larger above ground pool. We told them that we had received a quote from Systems-Pool, but that they require instructions from our geometra in relation to the non-pool works. Gino explained that we would need to get an assessment as to whether the ground is stable enough to support a larger pool and that they would seek multiple quotes.
  • Windows and shutters
    We briefly discussed replacing the windows and shutters. We are happy to keep the six pane window style (which we probably have to do in any case) but replace with double or tripple glazed equivalents. We told them we want to have internal shutters as is the case now. We did not discuss materials (wood, PVC, metal).
  • Doors
    We briefly discussed replacing the internal doors.

We discussed the use of the bonuses and made it clear that we wish to use them and plan to trade them with a bank. They were not really familiar with non-residents using the bonuses in this way, but we assured them we had spoken to people who have successfully done that. We explained that we were interested in using the renovation, facades and ecobonus schemes, but not the superbonus. We will have to get help elsewhere with trading the bonuses.

We briefly discussed a few of the projects which will be the major contributors to the permissions we will need to apply for. As our work will include heating and cooling, we will apparently need to get approval from some kind of energy commission. Gino’s suggestion was that we submit all our plans there first and that any approval granted by them will help expedite approval at the comune. Approvals take 3 to 6 months after submission apparently. Once granted, we will have three years to execute the plans.

We discussed IMU (council tax) for the house. You need to pay IMU each half year and our first payment is due in December. The council doesn’t give you a bill, but expects you to calculate your own liability. I tried to understand the calculation, but it was a bit beyond me. When I enquired from the comune, they just said ask your geometra. Gino asked us to try and get hold of Domenico’s last invoice for comparison with their own calculation. Domenico is not able to provide that as he has multiple properties and gets an accountant to do the lot together.

We agreed that the document we have started is a good mechanism for sharing our requirements and that we would flesh it out further and then share it again with Gino. They can let us know by email what further information they need and will also provide information for us to add to the document.

It was a really good meeting and we came away feeling that things may start moving soon.

Quick autumn trip

We decided to make a short trip to Italy after our Italian lessons finished for the term. This nine day trip just about uses up our current Schengen allotment for this year.

We flew into Pisa, hired a car and headed straight to IKEA to buy duvets. A couple of oil filled heaters and some food shopping later and we headed to the house. It was a lovely feeling driving along familiar roads and up through the village to our home. The vines and the trees are losing their leaves so the area looks rather different, but it also feels much the same.

We opened up the house, unloaded the car and switched the heaters on. The house was freezing and the heaters made very little difference. What a waste of money they were. Not only that, the electricity kept tripping (not individual trip switches, the whole bloody thing at the meter). Since then, we’ve bought three cheap convection heaters (much better) and disconnected Martin’s wiring for the security cameras (in case that was causing the trips).

Apart from the cold, the house is in good shape and little sign of damp penetration. Thankfully, the walls of the house are slowly warming up making it easier to keep warm. Cold walls like this remind me of childhood holidays in our house in Winton, Cumbria. The tripping of the electricty reminds me of holidays in Benabbio (where you had to turn off the water heater if you needed to boil a kettle).

While we’re here we will meet our geometra to try and get things moving in terms of improvements to the house. Heating will certainly be on the agenda. We’ll do a bit of gardening (tidy the front at least) and have a bit of a holiday too.

Final jobs and packing up

Insurance

I finally got round to sorting out insurance for the house. Got two quotes and went for the more expensive as they seemed much more switched on and took more care to understand the house and our use of it.

Security cameras

Given we will be leaving the house empty for extended periods, we wanted to have some kind of security cameras to help monitor the house in our absence. The front and side of the house are in plain sight so we feel happy that our neighbours will spot any problems. The back of the house, however, is more secluded and we already know that local kids have been known to roam around in the garden when the house was left empty by Domenico and his family. So I bought two security cameras from Amazon and installed them in the eaves of the roof over the outside seating.

The cameras run off 12v so the grey junction box actually contains a 3 way socket (spur from existing external socket) with the two power adapters for the cameras plugged into it. One points across the back of the house, the other points into the garden. They both connect to the WiFi and send movement alerts to our phones.

As a result, we won’t be able to switch off all the power to the house when we go home. We will, therefore, need to take care not to leave anything unnecessary plugged in / powered up.

Another visit from the Mercatino

Following the major clear out, we decided to replace Martin’s bed (a double constructed from two single beds). A bit of a shame as it matches all the other furniture in the room. However, we just couldn’t find a way to make it work so it had to go.

We called up the mercatino and offered it to them for free if they would come and collect. One of the chaps we’d seen before turned up and carted it off along with its mattress and its useless camp bed type bases. Result.

Wisteria pruning

Done properly, wisteria pruning is a two stage process. Summer pruning of new growth back to 5 buds followed by winter pruning back to 3 buds. The aim is to get the wisteria to put its energy into flowers rather than new growth.

I did my best, but the plant was seriously overgrown (not much gardening the last few years) so there was some hacking and some pruning to 4 or 5 buds. It’s much neater now, but not a perfect job I fear. We’ll have to see if we can get it under control and flowering nicely over the next few years.

Recycling centre

Plenty of trips to the recycling centre with:

  • Metal fencing, corrugated iron and old pipes cleared from the hen house and rabbit hutch.
  • Grass cut from the field
  • Prunings from the wisteria and oleander
  • Miscellaneous textiles and rubbish

Stocking up

Shopping for stuff to take back to the UK. Food, wine, lemon soda….

Cleaning up

We want to leave the house as clean and tidy as possible. Plenty of sweeping, mopping, laundry, storing sheets in plastic bags….

Closing up

We’ve been working for a while now on a closing up check list. This is its first execution. Hopefully everything will be safe and sound over the winter….

Swimming pool site visit

Today we were visited by Serena and her colleague from Systems-Pool (a recommended local swimming pool company of 30+ years experience).

We are looking to replace this wreck of an over ground pool with something slightly larger in the same location. It’s a fairly simple over ground pool that sits on one terrace in the garden and butts up against the terrace above allowing entry without having to climb up and over the side. The current dimensions are 7m x 4.5m. As you can see, it was planted on the other sides with a hedge to hide the panels – we have already had these cut down.

The location is sensible with a relatively short walk from the house. The lower terraces that are closer to the house are considerably smaller and the higher terraces are too far from the house. You could, of course, create a massive in-ground pool on the football pitch, but that is way above our budget and far too grand for our rustic farm house.

We discussed various options with the people from Systems-Pool and settled on a pool of similar construction to the existing one (which is too far gone to be renovated with a new liner). A prefabricated pool was considered, but that would need to be helicoptered in.

The proposed new pool will be 10.5m x 4.6m with a depth of 1.5m – similar to one of these.

The terrace above will be paved and provide plenty of room for loungers, a shower etc. The two widths will be decked, but you will not be able to walk all the way round as the terrace will not support decking on the lower length. The panels for that length will be hidden by wooden cladding. The housing for the filter etc will be under one of the decks.

It won’t be the fabulous pool of our dreams, but it should not require additional permissions and is in keeping with the house and our budget. They think they can do the work in the spring, so hopefully by next summer we’ll have a swimming pool.

More gardening

Andrea and his crew came again. They trimmed the overgrown laurel between us and our neighbours Francesco and Mariagrazia.

It leaves that border a bit lacking in privacy, but we can attach green netting (very common out here) to the chain link fence and the laurel will fill back out in no time.

They also cut the dying fig tree back to a stump – leaving enough for us to continue tying the washing line to it.

The laurel hedge above the pool area is now under control.

Last but not least, most of the tangle of metal fencing and ivy around and over the hen house and rabbit hutch has been cleared.

Looks like they could be quite attractive if we remove the concrete to reveal the bricks behind and replace the rotting doors. A bit low for use as sheds, but you never know we may choose to keep chickens if we move here permanently.

Geometra first meeting

Today we met with Gino Orsi, the geometra recommended to us by our neighbour Riccardo. He came with an English speaking employee of his (another Andrea) and his son (Alex). They saw the house and garden and we discussed what we are thinking of doing.

We liked them and will feel a lot more comfortable with a geometra of our choosing rather than one suggested by a building contractor.

They will help us to assess the building properly, make a plan of works, apply for the permissions and tax credits and project manage the work in phases.