Moving to Aargh 15 - riego valvula regulador

The garden and terrace have lots of plants that are watered with micro-drip irrigation. However, that is all plastic, 20 years old, and broken, clogged, or wide open. Some plants were totally soaked, others were.. not so much.

Sorry.

Others not so sorry. I mean geraniums. We're still too young for genaniums.

So, that needed replacement. I still had about 100 Gardena microdrippers.  Mostly the 4l/h versions:

Bought 400m 16mm tube from Atecnagua, for about 60€. Not bad. You punch a hole in the tube with a drill, insert the dripper, and done.

The below garden has now been hooked up to water. There are two watertimers in the little water shed outside. And a pressure regulator with a manometer. Nice. 

 Or, not so nice:

The pressure varies between 2 and 2.5, Gardena drippers want about 1.5. Unfortunately the regulator is not adjustable. It used to be, there's a rod in there that had a key in the past, now missing. Not reachable with pliers or anything engineer Jansen had available. He also mentioned corrosion.

Replace. 

Nice and shiny heavy brass, made in Italy, tap, regulator and manometer for 27€, Aquaconfort in Antas (good shop!) 

But, despite the amout of teflon tape engineer Jansen used: leaks. The interwebs say: 3 threads of teflon. Well, no. Leaks. 10 threads? No. Leaks.

Engineer Jansen remembered they used flax in the past to seal threads. Comercial Vera has flax: €20 for a container to seal 1000 threads. Hm. Pipe dope? Ah, there is is sealant stuff. He thought for 10€, but it was €20 on the bill. Hm.  So he spent 27€ on actual hardware and €20 for a bit of goo? Dang! 

You'd think at that price they'd make readable instructions on the label, and explain the packaging.  It's a complicated squeeze bottle, with a clever seal ring that you can pull up or push down to open and close. I was about to cut off the tip to open the bottle. Not necessary. Not great for €20 Herr Henkel!

Also, the goo is not purple but yellow. (Don’t eat yellow goo.)

Re-assembled, with goo applied, waited overnight to cure. Open the main valve.. and saw another drop fall off! Grrr! It's not 100% watertight, but no drops fall off any more. If you wipe a finger under one of the connections it's a bit damp. Unsatisfactory for perfectionists. Well, maybe it will seal itself, the water contains quite a bit of sediment. The water filter turns brown in a few weeks..

Wet spots on the wall

 A few years ago we had all our walls replastered inside and out because the plaster was bad, and painted with non breathing latex wallpaint. The inside walls were done with a special breathing plaster (MuroSeco by Kerakoll). That worked very well. Still, we have some weird damp spots on the inside of the walls, below ground level. 

Like the stairs to the cellar:

And in the lavatory downstairs that is below ground level, too:

Those spots don't really change, and they don't disappear either. 

Inspected the lower side of the walls outside: especially where the toilet is located there is a jostle stone (click link), and there were seams between plaster of the wall and the pavement, and the jostle stone.  Gaps quite big enough to let rain water that comes down the walls enter between wall and pavement, down the wall!

Same for the wall outside the cellar stairs. Gaps up to 1 - 2 mm!

Engineer Jansen still has a full bag of 15 kg Sikalastic 127 that he used 6 bags of on the roof. He now has 14 kg left. 

A 2 cm band of waterproofing was applied along the bottom of all walls and onto the pavement and terrace:

Front of the house

Side, the cellar stairs are here

Arrow points at the jostle stone (link), with quite big gaps, the toilet is behind there!

Back and side

It will take time to know if this has fixed it. Years probably.

Covid + gripe + water leak

Tuesday November 21 we had an appointment for a vaccination for covid and flu at the Centro Salud. Leaving the gate we saw:

Yes, that is a wet spot. Two wet spots actually, each at a side of the road. 

Then we remembered, our Galasa water tube is crossing the road, but it has a tube around it, for protection. That seemed like a really Great Engineer Jansen Idea™ at the time.  But, it has caused trouble once before, when the water tube was accidentally dug up, causing the tube to be pulled from a connector under our then just that day finished terrace, causing a leak. Thing is, if you use a single unprotected tube the tube will break when dug up, but with protection it does not, and will tear somewhere else. Like, under a new concrete and tile terrace.

So, two leaks.  Noo, just one leak, but seeping from the two ends of an outer tube. 

The local water tech guy still had a digger standing here, that he had used a few weeks ago for work on the water line of our neighbours, so we contacted him. He intended to come that same day, but didn't. Mañana. Mañana arrived, but no plumber. Let's do some digging ourselves then.

This is one end:

Repaired that with two connectors and a bit of tubing:

It is exactly where our water tube crosses Endesa's electric line (pink). 

However, with the water on again, water spouted from the top tube, so there is more leakage, and we need to replace all of the length that is under the road. Not an easy task, as the soil there is compacted by passing cars and very very hard. 

Progress was slow. Wetting the soil and hacking at it, we were about ti give up, and try the fontatero gain. Messaged him,  but hours later the whatsapp remained unread. Lunch time..

More wetting and hacking, and all of our tube was open to the air, with both leaking ends exposed.

The arrow here points at the junction. This time Engineer Jansen™ and Engineer de Waal™ devised a triple water conduit. Outer tube 6 cm, middle tube ehh. 4? inner tube 2.5 cm. 

All done.

Then Engineer Jansen(™) thought to protect the water conduit by digging in a series of flat stones where car wheels go. So there. 20 cm above the tubes a protective layer of flat stones.

No water is not great!

And all this the day after the covid vaccination, which is especially sad for Engineer Jansen(™), who always suffers from a covid jab.  Next time he will tell all about the repeating feverish dreams he had experienced all that night, then having to co-dig a trench in concretish soil. 

Overflow (23 March 2022)

Engineer Jansen’s Triumphs: this water used to flood our land, up to, and into the garage. No more!

And this is only a medium rainfall, if it really downpours it floods.. So the concrete channel will be doubled.

This is when it rains hard and or long, and the land behind us gets waterlogged, and builds up behind the water tunnel. Before that water just drained into the tunnel, flowing towards our house. Even though the tunnel is blocked up some water seeped through into the garage.

So, engineer Jansen built another wall in the tunnel, invisible in the photo, but it's on the right of the overflow channel inside the tunnel. Secondly, the water now overflows via these channels, so most of it does not enter the tunnel any more, and is directed towards a newly dug canal in our land, flowing onto the land of the neighbour.

Water tunnel overflow

The upper field is full of water, and drains to our land via the water tunnel, because te channel overflowed. And flooded the garage, but only slightly. Flooded the terrace too, but luckily *just* not into the swimming pool.

Engineer Jansen blocked the channel, and dug trenches to drain away the water. And built a wall of stone blocks. Proving his proud Dutch heritage.

Can still see the water flow. This is later in the day, when it quieted down a lot already. Before it simply overflowed.

Three concrete blocks and a plastic bag, to force the water to overflow there, and not nearer the garage. The field is still under water.

Draining trench.

A water retaining wall.

Opened the gate to the other channels to drain away water that comes our way.

Only slightly muddy. The water is already gone here.

Who's got muddy paws then?

Stopverf

The windows. Again. The windows themselves are made of wood, and with an interesting idea in mind. They are sort-of double glazed. Not manufactured double glazing with a special insulating gas and coatings, but simply two single panes of regular glass, spaced at 2,5 cm in a wooden frame:

So what is the problem THIS TIME?! I hear you ask.

Well, the problem is:
a) the glass is mounted with rounded triangular wooden slats, and nothing in between the slats and the glass, or between the slats and the wooden frame, so when there is a lot of rain they leak water to the space in between the glass panes.
b) the glass is set into the frame using blobs of silicone, which has dried and hardened. That makes it impossible to remove the glass without breaking the glass. The wood between the panes is not treated, and when it is damp the windows do fog up a bit. Also, there's a bit of tarnish on the inside of the glass, that is impossible to access for wiping away.

See where is has been wet?

Here's ample use of silicone to mount the glass.


So, what engineer Jansen has been up to the past three days is:
1. remove all wooden slats
2a. repair broken slats with PU glue
2b. sand and oil the slats
3. apply a layer of stopverf ("putty") in between the slats and the glass, and between the slats and the wooden frame
4. mount the lats with 2x16 mm screws, in sunken holes in the wood.

Stopverf/putty is unknown in Spain. They try to sell you silicone instead.
"Does it harden?"
"Oh yes, very hard!"
"Then I don't want this."

Stopverf is actually a very nice product. It's simply made of linseed-oil and chalk, and will last 100 years. It very slowly hardens, but never gets so hard you cannot remove it to replace the glass. And it's all natural, you can knead it with your hands, and won't harm you. It smells nice too, if you like linseed oil. Ordered it online from Germany. The chalk is from Garmisch Partenkirchen! (Finest chalk in the whole world!)

Awaiting rain!

And no, b) has not been addressed.

Gutters, garage, cave room and terrace - finished!

In "gutters-or-no-gutters" we discussed that we opted for ground floor gutters. This is how it turned out:

This should prove one of the most important measures: there's a slab of concrete under these tiles, where there was sand and gravel before, allowing water to reach the back wall, which indeed was damp on the inside, too.

Any water splashing down ends up in these canals. The new andaluz tiles on the walls protect the walls. The staircase has turned out quite nice too. We think. Oh, the hand railings need to be put back still.

The terrace is now tiled:

Still some wet spots in the garage when it rains heavily:

That is caused by water running off against the wall, where a little bit still seeps into the wall and below. We'll put row of small tiles on the wall there, or use that terrace-rubber-paint.

The garage floor was painted with spcial paint for garage floors:

The cave has it's new Kerakoll breathing plaster. And you can see where the walls are still damp, a few weeks later:

This will slowly dry out in time. Moisture that until now was trapped under "plastico wallpaint".

This is now the front of the house:

Not strictly necessary for protection, but for appearance.