Keys Corner

Yesterday Iberfone came – the measurements showed I can get a good signal (their aerial is on top of the castle which we can see from our garden, so that wasn’t really a surprise). And after they completed the measurements, they installed the necessary equipment. At the moment I only have internet, there is a technical problem that needs fixing in their main switch before the phone will work, but that should be fixed tomorrow.

I am very pleased. I have measured 10 Mb/s download speed and 4 Mb/s upload speed. The upload speed in particular is really good as normally with an ADSL connection (using a landline), the upload speed is only about 15% of the download speed.

(Now I just have to persuade Vodafone to accept a cancellation of my landline order, which I made before I found out about Iberfone. That could be fun. Still, they originally said they would deliver the connection within 15 days, and that was in October – they still haven’t made an appointment to install it!)

I haven’t posted for a bit. The house in Xàtiva has been keeping me fully occupied. Although it was supposed to be ready for handover towards the end of October (when our furniture arrived), it wasn’t. In fact, on the day we first visited the site, a couple of days before our furniture arrived, they had only just started painting the walls. Inside. (Outside there is still quite a bit to do).

Over the last 3 weeks, things have gradually progressed and I thought I might actually be able to start assembling our furniture and unpacking the nearly 150 packing cases, both of which have been sitting in the garage.

Then on Saturday, I asked the electrician who was tidying up the ethernet cables and marking them in the rack in the server room, a question about the installation. In his answer it became clear that we didn’t have RJ45 ethernet sockets installed anywhere except the office. A big problem, as ever since we had the first meeting with Antonio, it had been clear that I wanted an electrical installation with an attached house, and not a house with some electrics in it! After I had recovered, on the Sunday, I did an inventory of the installed electrical equipment and found we were missing 28 power sockets (and had several present in wrong locations) and 8 network sockets; and had 3 TV points and 3 phone points too many. (I must admit, given that we had 16 power points too few in the lounge alone, that I should have noticed earlier, but we had ordered a lot of sockets, and it wasn’t immediately obvious that some were missing! And phone sockets and network sockets are very similar in appearance but phones are usually wired with different cable).

I called Enrique, who is the project manager, straight away on the Saturday. And several more calls, e-mails and meetings occurred over the weekend and on Monday morning.

We have now sorted out what happened, and what we are going to do about it. Its down to different cultures in Spain and Germany.

In Spain, it seems that the power points and phone locations are usually estimated for the project budget for private houses, but the final quantities and locations are decided on-site near completion through discussion between the purchaser and the electrician. The electrical plans are “pro-forma” and generally ignored. We had had a meeting with the electrician, which we thought was to discuss the height of sockets in the office (we wanted them above the desk tops) and to discuss any extras we wanted. There were five large plans showing the data network, power points, lights and so on, which we had checked in detail after Antonio had produced them. We thought these were a given. In total over 120 sockets for power and data were specified in the plans.

What then happened is that the electrician thought he had his requirements (“standard” numbers of power sockets distributed roughly equally around the rooms, 5 or 6 ethernet sockets in the office, and a few TV and phone points where they might be useful. In Germany, while the client might have change requests near the end of the project, the plans are the basis for the installation if there are no changes requested. Quite a difference!

When I saw that he had completely ignored the plans form Antonio and that over 50% of the data sockets and 30% of the power points were missing, and that a large number of the ones that were present were in locations where we didn’t want them, I nearly had a heart attack! Even in Spain a change of that magnitude should have been discussed and agreed through the architect.

After the various discussions over the weekend, we have agreed to have an on-site meeting when I return and go through the house with the original plans. We will try to add the missing infrastructure using the existing cable runs as far as possible: making single power sockets into double or triple sockets, changing phone connections to data or adding extra data cables in the conduit that is already present, and re-using the superfluous TV cable runs for the network (double TV sockets in two positions in the lounge (giving 4 connections to the satellite dish in total) have been installed). I guess we don’t watch as much TV as the Spanish! The electrician will pay for the stuff (like phone and TV cable / sockets) that he shouldn’t have installed and for the cost of refinishing the walls after the changes have been made, and we will, of course, pay for what is actually installed at the end of the day.

So I still can’t start unpacking, but I have been promised that the changes will be done as soon as I am back in Spain. In the mean time, I have to try and stay “tranquilo” (calm) as the Spanish say! So no photos at the moment, because there haven’t been any really significant changes recently. But I will post some after I return to Xàtiva.