Category Archives: Maintenance

Summer turns to winter on Mallorca

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Filed under Countryside, Maintenance, Weather/Climate

It feels like ages since I wrote a post on this blog. In the meantime both the weather and clocks have changed – and I’ve added a year to my age.  I’ve been super-busy, and have just completed a major writing job that has seen me up at the crack of dawn at the laptop and sometimes working until bedtime. After filing the last piece of copy for the job, an hour ago, I ran out onto the terrace and shouted an ecstatic “Yippee!”. My apologies to any sheep I might have frightened . . .

 

"What the Dickens was that noise?"

“What the Dickens was that noise?”

Last Saturday was my birthday and the weather for the whole weekend was sunny and warm. On Monday, during a brief coffee break on the terrace, The Boss and I agreed it was almost warm enough to wear shorts. It’s been confirmed by the boffins in the Spanish Met Office that the average temperature in October was the warmest on record for that month. We even managed a swim in the sea, something we’ve not done in that month previously.

Winter comes a-knocking

How things changed on Tuesday this week, when a cold front sliced across Spain and the Balearics. We were lucky in our area and didn’t suffer the hailstorms, thunder, and lightning that affected other parts of the island. But we had heavy rain and it has turned colder. I’ve resorted to wearing a cardigan for the first time in months, and plan to spend the weekend retrieving my winter clothes from their summer storage and laundering them.

The Boss, meanwhile, has been doing that man-thing: preparing the log burner for the next drop in temperature. Cleaning the flue and the stove itself, and renewing the rope-like stuff that prevents the escape of smoke around the door and the junction of the stove and flue, has occupied a few hours of his time – and left him looking a bit sooty. I can tell he’s itching to get the thing blazing again. But I’ve just checked the weather forecast and it looks as though our high could be 21 degrees Celsius again tomorrow . . .

Next time I’ll give you an update on the progress of Pip, the latest kitten to join our feline family.

 

Why Thunderstorms and Solar Power are not a Good Combination

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Filed under Animals/Wildlife, Maintenance, Tools and machines, Weather/Climate

Until this week, we were having a rather unsettled spell of weather on Mallorca, with some much-needed (unless you were holidaying here) rain and some thunderstorms. The Boss and I quite enjoy watching a dramatic storm – and we do get a few – but we are always  wary about the damage that an electrical storm can do to solar power equipment. We have bitter experience, having suffered an invertor failure a few years ago during a particularly bad storm. The invertor was only three weeks old – and had cost a huge amount of money – so we were relieved to learn that the (expensive) repair was covered by our household insurance. And that our solar power system engineer would lend us an invertor until the repair could be done.

When he came back with our fixed original invertor,  he recommended that we switch off all our system equipment during future storms. So we now keep a weather eye open (pardon the pun) for any thunderhead clouds on the horizon or distant rumbling, and switch everything off if the storm arrives.

A Rude Awakening

This is fine during the day but, at night, it means somebody (and it’s always The Boss, because he’s gentlemanly like that) has to get up, go outside and dash down the field to the dependencia, where all the equipment is housed, to switch everything off. So thunderclaps at night don’t only wake us up, they can get us up too.

Four of our adoptees huddled in the window recess. Underneath three of them is little Peanut!

Four of our adoptees huddled in the window recess. Underneath three of them is little Peanut!

Hopefully last week’s overnight storm will be the last for a while. This week we’ve had temperatures in the low 30s (Celsius) and plenty of sunshine. Our cats disappear after breakfast to hide themselves from the heat – whereas, in stormy weather, they often like to gather together in the outside recess of our dining room window. As you can see, from a photo I took during last week’s bad weather, the pale ginger Peanut – the youngest of our adoptees – has been accepted by the rest of the family . . . even if it is only as a willing pillow!

Jan Edwards Copyright 2014 

Things you don’t expect to see in a Mallorcan country lane

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Filed under Countryside, Garden and gardening, Maintenance, Tools and machines

We have been busy at our finca in rural Mallorca lately. The Boss cleaned our terraces with his new  Kärcher pressure washer, and they’ve never looked so clean. As with many tasks done around the finca, there’s a consequence job: the powerful machine blasted away not only a load of winter grime, but also some of the grouting between the tiles. Ho hum.

When I haven’t been working on writing jobs, I’ve also been outdoors doing jobs – including painting one of the small walls blasted clean (of its former paint!) by the mean machine. Most of my time outside though has been spent on the relentless Battle of the Weeds. It was while doing a spot of weeding yesterday morning that I saw something very unusual in the lane that runs alongside our property.

There have been other strange sightings here over the years. We once saw two donkeys walking down the lane like a couple of people out for a country stroll. That experience turned into an inadvertent case of donkey-napping – and one of the early posts on this blog.

And a little faster . . .

On another occasion – while our dear friends Duncan and Kristina were visiting from the UK – we saw something even more unusual: a team of speed skaters, dressed in tight bright Lycra, speed skating up the lane – having been driven to the bottom of the valley in the team’s minibus. We were exhausted watching them whizz up the hill. They appeared to take it all in their glide.

And even racier . . .

Yesterday, Good Friday, I saw something else memorable in the lane, while out in the battlefield (garden). To be honest, seeing three walkers isn’t unusual, as people do drive out to our valley to walk along the peaceful lanes. I could hear that they were German: two young men and a woman – probably in their late 20s or early 30s. The guys were dressed in the sort of clothes you’d wear for a walk in the country; the woman wore . . . a white bikini (and presumably shoes, although I couldn’t see her feet).

I’m far from a prude, but somehow a bikini didn’t seem like the most appropriate apparel for someone miles from the sea or a public swimming pool – and walking around countryside that’s largely inhabited by Mallorcan farmers (some of them on the elderly side and likely to have crashed their tractors at the shock of seeing so much flesh exposed in public).

We were once reprimanded by one of our Mallorcan neighbours for working in the garden on a Sunday – God’s day. Goodness knows what they would have thought of Miss White Bikini on a Good Friday!

If you were hoping to see a photo of her, I’m afraid I didn’t take one. I’m sure the woman felt embarrassed enough when she realized that the outing her friends had planned was a walk in the country – and not a trip to the beach . . .

 

 

 

 

Cleaning the terraces – the easy way

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Filed under DIY & Maintenance, Garden and gardening, Maintenance, Tools and machines

At about this time every year we start the process of getting the terraces of our rural Mallorca finca ready for the warmer months, and our usual alfresco lifestyle. We have three terracotta-tiled terrace areas and, before the outdoor furniture is brought out from its winter storage in our annexe bedroom, these areas have to be cleaned of the muck that accumulates over the winter.

It’s The Boss’s job. He’s the one with a pair of wellies. He’s always tackled this task with vigour,  using a large scrubbing brush and hose. I think he’s motivated by the prospect of long balmy evenings on the terrace with a bottle of good Mallorcan red (there are many of them – both wines and long balmy evenings) and something sizzling on the BBQ.

Another ‘boy’s toy’ for the collection

In previous years there have been murmurings about hiring a pressure washer for the job, but it’s never happened. This year he’ll be using one: The Boss is now the owner of a new ‘boy’s toy’ (although as he has pointed out to me, this is not a toy, but a serious tool).

While musing over the possibility of bringing some motorized muscle to this annual spring chore, we found a bargain on promotion at the Hiper DIY store in Manacor: last year’s model with all the spec tech of this year’s – for 150 euros less than the latest model. Who cares if it’s not the latest design? Ker-ching! Sold to The Boss.

Soon the sound of our pressure washer will echo around the valley. Let’s hope it doesn’t frighten the sheep . . .

Clean terraces? No pressure, with one of these.

Clean terraces? No pressure, with one of these.

Trailer Tales

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Filed under Animals/Wildlife, Countryside, Legal and official matters, Maintenance, Tools and machines

When The Boss announced – prior to our move to rural Mallorca – that we’d need a trailer when we were living on the island, I did wonder whether this wasn’t a case of a desire for a new Man Toy. We certainly hadn’t needed one living in Oxfordshire. However, The Boss’s convincing case for owning a trailer once we were living in the Mallorcan countryside meant that we bought one before we moved, in case we couldn’t find a suitable one on the island. If only we’d known . . .

The Manacor area – in which we live – is largely agricultural and it seems that most country dwellers here have a trailer of some sort; we even regularly see one that has clearly been home-made: an old wooden fruit box that’s been mounted on a set of redundant pram wheels and is towed by an ancient moped ridden by an equally ancient man. There are plenty of more robust ones like ours too, and several places in the area where we could have bought one, as it happens.

Our trailer – manufactured in the Netherlands and bought in Oxfordshire – did, however, serve a useful purpose before we’d moved here. About a month before the Big Move, we drove our car and trailer down through France and Spain to Barcelona, where we caught the ferry to Mallorca. It was an opportunity to do some work on the finca and to bring some of our possessions with us in the trailer, in advance of the removal men bringing everything over. We shared the driving and I was surprised to find that towing the trailer didn’t present any particular problems (although I’m not sure I could have parallel parked the car/trailer combo, had I needed to!).

Bureaucracy Rules . . .

But if you’re moving to Mallorca – or indeed the Spanish mainland – I’d recommend buying a trailer when you arrive, to save all the bureaucratic processes involved in importing a vehicle. Yes, although our trailer has no engine, it went through the same processes as our car in order to be registered in Spain, and the task took almost as long as it did for the car to be legalized. Our problem was that we had no ficha técnica, the official document detailing the full technical specifications of the vehicle.  We had all the paperwork provided by the retailer of the trailer – which included a brochure containing all the technical details required. But it wasn’t an official Spanish ficha técnica, and therefore didn’t cut any mustard with officialdom.

Long (and oh-so-boring) story short, we had to contact the trailer manufacturer in the Netherlands to obtain additional details to enable us to meet the legal requirements here. We then had to have our trailer measured and inspected by a local official who, having confirmed that the details provided by the manufacturer were correct, produced the necessary ficha técnica. But this was only one of some nine documents required to complete the registration of the trailer in Spain. With the benefit of hindsight, we would have bought the trailer on Mallorca.

But, despite my initial reservations about the need for a metal box on wheels, our trailer has been very useful. It’s an easy way to transport large unwanted items to the local Ecoparc (where we do our recycling); bring construction materials home with us (saving a delivery charge) and, several times during the winter, to collect logs for our stove from a wood yard. And the cats have found a use for it too . . .

Shorty, Beamer and, almost hidden, Sweetie - enjoying the trailer life

Shorty, Beamer and, almost hidden, Sweetie – enjoying the trailer life

Jan Edwards Copyright 2013

Rain stops play . . . and work

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Filed under Countryside, DIY & Maintenance, Maintenance, Nature, Weather/Climate

The Boss is a list-maker. And The Big List is the one detailing all the jobs (large and small) that need to be done at our finca in rural Mallorca. I think he started it before we even moved to Mallorca, and it’s been ongoing ever since.  While recovering from his recent surgery, he sat down to do a full review and update of the list, adding lots of new jobs. If I had a list of my own outstanding jobs I’d be completely overwhelmed, but The Boss seems to thrive on having this list to spur him on. Must be the Virgo in him.

Rain, rain, go away . . . 

Since being ‘fit for purpose'(!) again, he’s worked very hard, striking through completed jobs on his handwritten list with pleasure and satisfaction. But progress has recently ground to a halt: unusually, it’s been raining almost solidly here on Mallorca for the past week and all the outdoor jobs on the list (some of which I was going to be helping with) have been out of the question.  Our plans to paint the persianas (our wooden shutters) on the north-facing side of the house have been scuppered by the wet weather. It’ll probably be spring before they dry out enough to re-paint.

Illuminating experience

The weather’s been so bad that we have barely been outside and that’s sharply brought into focus what we love about living in rural Mallorca: being outdoors and surrounded by nature. And, although we could dress ourselves appropriately for the weather and go out, the indoor jobs are looking much more appealing. Currently, it’s an audit of the light bulbs in the house . . .

Read about a gift from the Mediterranean – harvested here on Mallorca – on my other blog: http://www.eatdrinksleepmallorca.com

Learning to Mend a Stone Wall

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Filed under Building works, Countryside, Maintenance, Tools and machines

There are not many Saturday mornings when I leave home with an axe in my bag, but this was no ordinary Saturday . . .

It happened before we moved to live in rural Mallorca. At the time, we had bought our rustic finca as a holiday home; not that the times we used to spend here were what most people would envisage as a holiday: painting and decorating, making repairs, searching for essential services (such as plumbing) etc.

One of the jobs we arranged to be done was some work to our property’s old stone wall. Mallorca is criss-crossed with these ancient walls – which came about originally because people needed to clear stones from the soil so they could plant crops. We needed to create a gap in our own wall for gate posts and a gate, to provide access to our back field, where one day we would have an outbuilding to house a generator (which would need deliveries of diesel).

We used the services of an English stone wall craftsman, who’d escaped the dampness of the UK’s Lake District for the warmer climate of Mallorca. He was good. But such expertise doesn’t come without an appropriate price, and it was one we couldn’t afford for any future repairs that could become necessary.

A Crafty Day Out

Which is how The Boss and I came to sign up for a one-day course on the craft of dry stone walling, taking place on a farm in our home county of Oxfordshire. And why I was carrying an axe – and some sturdy gardening gloves – in my bag.

There were 10 budding wall-builders (only three of whom were men!) on the course, which began  with a safety briefing and introduction to the art of shaping stone. How hard could it be? Very. I chopped ’til I dropped . . . the axe. Not an auspicious start – and one which made The Boss move a few paces further away from my chop zone.

But eventually the group was let loose on one of the farm’s tumbledown walls and, by the end of the day (and fortified by lunch in the local village pub), we’d managed to turn a heap of stones into something resembling a wall. Stone-shaping aside, it was a strangely satisfying day, even if it did mean saying goodbye to a few fingernails . . .

The Boss has, on occasions, used the skills he learnt on that day to make small repairs to our old stone walls. I’d have helped, but he chose the safer option and gave my offer the chop.

A typical Mallorcan dry stone wall

A typical Mallorcan dry stone wall

Jan Edwards Copyright 2013

A key issue . . .

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Filed under Maintenance

We had a small problem recently involving the disappearance of the key to our dependencia – the small building in our field which houses our generator, solar batteries, and the invertor.

Every Monday The Boss carries out what he calls his “weekly checks”: he measures the level of water in our cisterna (we don’t have mains water, and need to organize a delivery by tanker when we’re running low). He also looks at the various components of our solar-powered electricity system to make sure all is as it should be. After he’s locked up the outbuilding, he always returns the key to its hook in a key cupboard we have in the house. He’s a Virgo – it’s what they do.

But when he came to do his Monday checks a couple of weeks ago, the hook was empty. This small discovery set off a massive search of the pockets of every pair of trousers and shorts he possesses (well, except the suit – he never wears that around the finca). We turned out drawers and cupboards, looked in the most ridiculous of places – you never know – and finally concluded that the darned thing was well and truly lost. We’d have to get a new key.

Looking for a locksmith

We do try and use local companies and shops whenever possible and, although we knew that there were companies in Palma that could help us – 24 hours a day, it seems – we wanted to support a local business. So The Boss set about finding a locksmith in our nearest town, Manacor, aware that replacing a lock that’s part of a reinforced metal door was going to cost rather a lot of money.  But it had to be done – and quickly. If there’s a thunderstorm, we need to be able to disable the whole system, to avoid damage to the invertor  (once was enough of that!).

There seemed to be several potential local companies in the phone book and, rather than try and negotiate over the phone, we set off to town with map in hand to deal face-to-face with one of these craftsmen.

We drew a blank at each of the advertised companies. The addresses we visited were either for completely unrelated businesses or were old abandoned premises. But when we later rang one of the numbers to see if they’d moved to a new address, we discovered it was a company in Palma. Not local at all then. Subsequent visits to ironmongers in town confirmed our growing fears: there don’t seem to be any locksmiths operating on an individual basis anymore.

At this point I remembered our house insurance; we read the policy small print, and called the company. The new lock would be covered by insurance, and they’d arrange for an emergency locksmith (from Palma, of course) to do the job within 24 hours.

We didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or relieved to have to phone the company back a few hours later. The Boss had found the key . . . which had somehow found its way under a thick rug in our bedroom. One of those ridiculous places we hadn’t checked earlier!

The Boss has since had duplicate keys cut for ever single lock around the property: a job we’d been meaning to do ever since we bought the place! What jobs do you have that you’ve been putting off, or have slipped your mind?

A better type of insurance against future key loss . . .

A better type of insurance against future key loss . . .

The Boss is Beaming

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Filed under Maintenance

The sun is out for the first time in more than a week in our part of Mallorca – a very good reason to smile but, in fact, The Boss isn’t grinning from ear to ear, but up a ladder and painting beams. Now that’s what I call beaming.

After our finca was re-roofed last October we decided to start the long-term project of filling in the gaps between the terracotta tiles that make up our ceilings. So far, the kitchen and dining room have been completed. But, having done this, it was necessary to paint over the filler. Unfortunately, the paint we’d used originally was a slightly different shade to the new paint we bought to complete the job (due to a computer problem with the paint-mixing machine in our local decorating shop) so the whole ceiling has had to be done again.

Stepping Up to the Job

The weather’s been so bad for the past week that outside jobs have been impossible. On Sunday, we decided to tackle the ceiling job, which also included painting the beams. We had lovely wooden beams in our old cottage in Oxfordshire, but the ones here are cast concrete – not in the same league looks-wise, but they do keep the ceiling and roof above our heads! Wooden ones are more authentic, of course, but are at risk from woodworm and the dreaded formiga blanca – the white ant which, if it finds its way in, will eat away at wooden beams from the inside out.

When we moved here we didn’t like the appearance of the concrete beams, so we painted them brown. At a quick glance – or after a few of The Boss’s renowned G&Ts – any visitors who didn’t know otherwise, might just think they were made from wood. But rainwater and mould-cleaning products – as a result of the former leaky roof – had taken their toll on the paintwork.

Taking a break from the ladder . . .

Taking a break from the ladder 

Decorating is a team job in this house. Usually I paint the walls and The Boss paints the bits I can’t reach from our wobbly ladder – and that includes most of the sloping ceilings and beams. So, while I’m writing this, and working on some articles for the next issue of the magazine for which I write, The Boss is reaching new heights . . . and beaming.

Jan Edwards Copyright 2013

The Barefoot Brusher

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Filed under Building works, Food and drink, Maintenance

Good news. Our leaky cisterna has been fixed and we now have water again. It’s not the first time we’ve had to live for a period of time without water on tap, and it may not be the last. But I’m not one to worry too much about what might happen in the future (The Boss does enough for both of us).

Before our builder could assess the exact nature of the problem, the level of the water in the concrete storage tank needed to be substantially reduced, so we were playing a waiting game. As the level went down, the pressure reduced, which meant that the flow of the leak began to slow. We wanted to be sure that we could get through the long Easter holiday before we ran out of water, so we became remarkably stingy with the stuff.

When the builder came to do a thorough inspection of the plastic lining of the tank, he discovered two small tears in the food-grade material. Thankfully, the situation could be sorted with a couple of repairs, rather than a whole new lining.

Wet Socks and Kidney Stones

First, The Boss decided to give the inside – of what’s effectively a large concrete box – a good clean, after disconnecting the pump.  He invested the princely sum of a couple of euros on a soft-bristled broom (so as not to cause further damage to the lining) and, having climbed up a ladder to the top of the cisterna, dropped down into the murky depths – clad in a shirt, summer shorts, and some thick socks. (The latter were ostensibly to keep his feet warm while he bailed out the last few inches of water. Nice theory). Anyway, three days later, I went to see how he was getting on. Only joking, of course, although The Boss did say he felt as though he’d been in there for days.

Mallorca’s water is very hard, and limescale – or cal – is the cause of problems ranging from crusty kettles to kidney stones. The Boss managed to accumulate and remove quite a mound of the stuff, hopefully reducing the potential for any such problems at our finca.

It Takes Two

The actual repair was unbelievably quick, when two men came to do it the next day: the one who’d drawn the short straw was inside the claustrophobic tank, doing the repair; the other, seemingly, was to keep The Boss engaged in idle conversation. Job done.

Mallorca is a small island. By coincidence, our builder’s brother is the man who owns the water delivery business we use. Not that it did us any good as far as getting a next-day-delivery was concerned. Jaume was fully booked with deliveries. We went to buy some more 8 litre containers of water from the supermarket . . .

STOP PRESS: In the spring issue of Living Spain magazine – now out – you can read my article about our finca life, on the ‘Last Word’ page.

Jan Edwards Copyright 2013