Cave - hole in the wall

The cave, despite a lot of ventilation (see past blog entries), remains damp-ish, though it has improved a lot.

In the past various layers of plaster, cement and stuff were smeared on the cave walls in efforts to keep damp out. But, that simply doesn't work. Damp enters an underground room because it is sort of an underground "vacuum". There is pressure from the surrounding soil and water, even if there's very little water. Normally there's very little water here, but there are days... Anyway, an underground cave will attract moisture. Smearing the walls on the inside will not help, the walls will get damp. Especially if they are made of permeable lime mortar and (worse) gypsum, and stones.

If you want moisture not to enter a cave you need to waterproof the outside of those walls. Well, we're 200 years too late for that.

So, we had a cave with wet layers of rubbish that were gradually powdering, and covering everything inside with a layer of powdered gypsum. Our constructor offered to take the pasters off and out. Yes, please!

And so it happened.

A few surprises, which is not surprising of course.

1. There is a level row of flat stones in all walls at about 1 meter height. Probably the walls were built up to that level first, then a wooden construction was put on top of that to build the arches of the cave ceiling, in parts.

2a. There's a large hole up in the ceiling to the kitchen floor. I always wondered how and where they transferred the energy generated up to the mill stones that were on the ground floor. Well, probably here. One vertical wheel in this cellar, another one upstairs, with a drive belt in between.

2b. Extra surprising is that they covered it up, Anstey style, with some wooden slats, some chicken mesh, cement bags (the paper bags, not the cement), plastic bags, and plaster. Though, knowing the style of the previous owner(s), not a very big surprise after all. Under the ground floor some iron reinforcement was placed, covered with plastic, and concrete poured on top, which is now the floor under two kitchen cabinets. The reinforcement bars themselves were not covered with cement. Why would you?

3. At the back, there's a wooden beam in the wall above the rectangular hole in the back wall. No idea. The beam looks fine. (Another surprise!)

Anyway, with the plaster now off, and ventilation not yet on, the air quality has improved a lot already. For the first time the cellar smells fresh!

Argh!

Piso del garaje

Look! The rarest of sights! An empty garage.

We're going to have a layer of concrete on the terrace above the garage, but also on the garage floor. It's very bad cement, irregular, and letting loose stones and sand.

The garage has separate electrics, and grounding. Engineer Jansen prefers not to have all that embedded in concrete, so he tied the incoming wire up with some rope, and encased the earth pin in a plastic tube.

The earth pin had two wires, hardly connected to it, as the screw was loose. One wire goes to the copper water pipe (good), the other went into the wall. Not far though, I could pull it out just like that (bad). Properly tinned the proper ground wire, cleaned the screw, and put back in place. I guess the same guy as always is responsible for this "ground", too.

Tomorrow the concrete will be poured.

Electrickery A****y style

A previous owner should be forbidden to touch any electrics. This lamp was playing up. Can you guess why?

And no, engineer Jansen did not unscrew the wires. This is how it came off of the wall.

How did they manage to tighten those screws in the first place, with wires this short?? Ah, they didn't, probably. See the burnt wires.

Hm, I now think they wired the socket first, and then put cement around it. Sounds like him.

Gutters or no gutters?

This house has no gutters, as old houses don't. The rooftiles on the side are extra long, so the water is simply dropping off at the sides of the house. That has a very bad side effect: the water splashes on the ground, and back up, wetting the walls at the base. You can try countering it by putting nice tiles on the walls, but water will still splash on windows and doors, and thus enter houses. That is why you'll see boards and plastic in front of many doors here when it rains.

We thought about gutters, too. You can buy them made of plastic, galvanized iron, aluminium, copper, ... Being an aluminium fan I asked two suppliers for information. Sizes, prices, availability, explaining about the roof, and that the long rooftiles are 28 cm from the house, we need them in 1-2 weeks, and that our constructor would mount them on the walls. And that I'd prefer mail, as complicated discussions by telephone in Spanish are not my forté, yet.

Well, the manufacturers of these gutters here are not very bright. One wanted the telephone number to discuss the offers, the other wanted to drop by to see the house, and possibly do the work himself. He's from Malaga, 3 hours driving away. Sigh.

No gutters, then. But, we need to get rid of the rain water. Another idea: why not have those canals along the house. Sort of a ground floor gutter.

The canals were laid down on a bed of cement. On top of the existing gravel. Which sits on top of geotextile. Which is laid onto a layer of sand. Which is on top of asphalt, which covers a concrete rim around the house. Meaning that water that arrives at the house can still get at the house through that layer of gravel and sand. That's why you see an almost identical picture 2 and 3, but 3 has the sand and gravel removed. It will be filled with concrete, and thus keep the water out. (Hopefully.)

Which needs a drain pipe, too. Which engineer Jansen constructed and dug into the ground, supervised by Zoomba. Digging trenches and moving gravel is not my favourite job, but if it keeps the water away from the house I'm happy.

I hope the capacity is sufficient, it's a 9 cm pipe, at a nice angle down. But, it needs to catch the water from about 100m², being half the roof, and the terrace...

Cave room plaster

The plaster was replaced in the kitchen, last year, because it fell off of the wall, because they used incompatible products.

The room next to the kitchen had the same problem: old lime mortar and yeso walls, with modern non breathing plaster an wallpaint. Old houses are smart, and imply get rid of that.

The gray stuff is Kerakoll Muroseco, as very breathable plaster, that will easily evaporate any humidity that is in the walls. We'll see if we leave it gray, or wether we paint it white with a (special) paint.

Postes electricas quitado

Finally. The ugly electricity posts that were attached to the house in the past, some 50 years ago, are finally gone. They were simply screwed onto the walls, breaking the side roof tiles in a bad way.

Also, the holes under the tiles at the side of the house are neatly filled with white mortar again. No more use for the plastic bottle in the middle picture to keep the birds out. (Second tile left off the post in the middle picture.)

Techo reparado

Techo reparado - Roof repaired. With heavy rain we still had some leaks. They cleaned the canals between te rows of tiles, and applied a nice flexible waterproof cement layer. Now the water should run off the roof quickly, and not cause leaks any more.

Pergola - trusses - blocks (new!)

Our pergola is made with aluminium trusses, and basically not attached to anything. It's not light in total, but with stiff winds we've seen the whole structure being lifted up a bit, and banging down again. We did not like that much. We prefer not to have a totally fixed permanent structure. Both because we don't know exactly how and where, and want to be flexible. But also because they tax fixed structures like pergolas.

So, ingenieur Jansen went to work and made concrete blocks with a threaded M14 rod inside the concrete. Holes in the bottom plates of trusses, rings, bolts, and ready.

Tubos de riego - El Canal Funciona

You may remember (2018/11/rain-back-to-drawing-board.html) that we had some problems with rain and water.

Well, early February 2019 the farmer next door needed to replace an irrigation water pipe, that needed to be dug in our land. As you can see there are a few there already. And no, they don't know exactly where they all go either.

Anyway, it ended up in the middle of our road, which was expressly not our intention, as they will dig a deep trench, while the road is about 20 cm of sand and gravel on top of the soil. So you then end up mixing everything, and with the first rain we'll have a washed away road again. So therey were as kind as to apply a new layer of that gravel on top of their work.

As a compensation for their digging around in our land I asked them to dig a small canal, so the water will exit the land quicker through the overflow opening in the wall around the land. Just a few minutes work for Antonio and his digger, but very useful for us.

But, no rain since. I was just thinking last week that it would be nice to have some rain to wet the soil where the canal was dug, and to test it. Well, this morning I saw water there. A pipe had burst. Probably because the digger has broken it by riding across it. Anyway. The soil is now wetted, and the canal works perfectly!

Acheaeology

Acheaeology! Found the bottom of an old glass. Old, because it has this iridescent shine. With an inscription: "ELSA E300". Well, Google is your friend!

Want to buy one? For 3€: https://en.todocoleccion.net/antiques/dos-antiguos-vasos-decorados~x34692152#sobre_el_lote

Breva and pomegranate cuttings

Breva propagation. (You can never have enough.)

English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breba
Español: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breva

And don’t believe the nonsense of the first crop not being good. They’re delicious.

This tree is my favorite tree, a real bonus to the house.