Keys Corner

Antonio sent us pictures from his site-visit yesterday. We were pleased, after the on-going delays caused by the unseasonable amount of rain that there has been in Xàtiva in April and May, that this time (despite it having rained again – the pool is about half full now) there has been quite a bit of visible progress. Just as well, as the roof is due to be delivered in about 3 weeks time. We are having a custom-built Sapisol roof made by Simonin in France. We don’t want it hanging around on the site, with the attendant risk of damage, waiting for the walls to be finished!

I finally got some pictures (dated 17th May in the album) of the state of play at our plot, and spoke to Antonio today. It seems the problem with the septic tank is that it is located on the lowest part of the plot, so when we had the 160 liters of water per square meter a couple of weeks ago, you can guess where the surface water on the plot collected. On the covers for the septic tanks, which promptly filled up completely, then the remaining surface water drained onto the neighbouring plot below us. Obviously we don’t want that to happen when the tanks contain sewage, so Antonio proposes to lower the floor of the tanks by about a meter, so that they are lower than the level of the next plot, and to add a pipe which which will collect the excess surface water and carry it under the surface of the neighbour’s plot to the road below him. I understand that the first part – lowering the tanks – is also to ensure that the contents of the tanks don’t leak onto the surface of the neighbour’s plot during normal operation, but I need to check that with Antonio next time I am in Valencia.

Otherwise progress has been limited by the continuing rainy weather in Valencia. The first stones from the quarry have been delivered to the site in the hope that the rainy season MUST be finished by now (it normally finishes in April), so the stones shouldn’t sink into mud on site. The day after they were delivered, it promptly rained again! However, since then the weather has got better and dryer, so we hope the stones won’t get filthy from mud before they are used in the dry stone walls.

When we bought the plot for our house in Spain, we were surprised (and pleased) to see that a septic tank was already installed on the far side from the road. As I mentioned here, the rain a couple of weeks ago caused a problem with the septic tank. To begin with, we didn’t know what the problem was.

Now we know that the problem seems to be that the tank worked in the reverse direction to the way it is supposed to. The sides are made of very porous brick, which allowed the tank to fill with the water from the sodden ground. When it was full, it overflowed onto the neighbouring plot behind ours. We still haven’t seen any pictures from Antonio, so we don’t know how bad it was, but I bet the neighbour is glad the tank wasn’t already in use, otherwise he’d have had been flooded with sewage, instead of water!

It seems the tank might need to be rebuilt 3 meters deeper into the ground, so that even if it fills in a similar manner again, it will be below the level of the plot behind us. We’re still waiting to hear what exactly the necessary changes will be, but at least at this stage in the project the work shouldn’t be too difficult, as the garden hasn’t been laid out and planted yet. As all the plots on our level presumably have their septic tanks constructed in a similar manner, I imagine there could be similar problems for the other owners in future.

Last weekend Xàtiva had 160 litres of rain per square meter. About a fifth of the annual rainfall. It has rained quite heavily for the last 2-3 weeks now, so the ground is completely sodden and Pepe, our builder, has had to hold off starting on the outer walls’ dry-stone cladding. If he had the stones delivered to the site, they would just sink into the mud and get filthy.

As I said in the previous post, we were in Valencia (and Xàtiva) at the beginning of the week to visit the site and more importantly, to meet with Pepe. The financial crisis is making life difficult for many people in Spain at the moment, including Pepe. Suppliers generally are insisting on payment in advance, and this is slowing down the project as Pepe has a tight cash-flow at the moment. At the meeting, which our lawyer and our architect also took part in, we agreed that Fernando, our lawyer, would set up an escrow account for us. When Pepe needs to buy supplies from a supplier who is insisting on up-front payment, we will transfer the payment to that account, and our lawyer will issue a cheque to Pepe, who can pay for the goods with it, when he collects them. Complicated, and with a small residual risk for us, but it will ensure that the project doesn’t grind to a halt waiting for advance payments to the suppliers.

The site visit was on the Tuesday morning, and the meeting about the suppliers in the afternoon. On the Wednesday we met Pepe again to go to a massive store near the airport which sells bathroom fittings, to choose the shower trays for our bathroom and the guest bathroom. When we met up, Pepe said “we have a slight problem”. Although we were all on the building site the day before, no-one had noticed that the septic tank at the far end of the plot had been damaged by the torrential rain. Pepe said that it had “exploded”. (The septic tank, which consists of 4 chambers made of brick, was already built and installed on the plot when we bought it.) At the moment, we’re not quite sure what exactly has happened, as we haven’t heard any more since, and haven’t seen any photos yet either. But if there is a problem with the tank, it is much better to discover it now, while the experts are on tap and before it is full of sewage, than to have problems after it has been in use for a year or two!

At the moment we are waiting to hear from Pepe and Antonio (our architect), what corrective action needs to be taken to permanently fix the problem. Watch this space!