Bedrock

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

After reading some time ago on the web that the average cost of electricity in Spain was something in the order of 14p per KW/H (I’ll explain later) I was shocked to say the LEAST to actually sit down with a real modern bill now that we have “proper” electricity – the basic cost per KW/H isn’t bad – but by the time you add in the standing bill (ie payment for nothing) and all sorts of other perks and then the dreaded VAT (which most of us have to pay and can’t claim back) – the TRUE cost of electricity at least around here is currently around 22.4p per KW/H. That’s a LOT.

To put that in perspective for those who don’t do maths – the little dial in the electricity meter is usually marked in KW/H – might be marked to 0.1 KHW or just to the nearest KW/W

How does this work? Simply – if you run a gadget that uses a Kilowatt (Microwave) – for an hour – you’ve spend 22.4p. If the gadget uses 2KW (maybe an oven) it’s costing you 44.8p an hour.

So why am I showing you my new lights (temporary setup) – because thanks to LED technology which most of these are, the display you’re looking at comes to around 50w all in a running cost of around 1.1p per hour – not too bad, all except for the distant green rope light which is going!! 

I can’t do much about hot water and washing machine etc.. until we get organised and get a solar heat panel – friends recently told us they’d used no electricity for hot water since May! I figure using that same feed for the dishwasher and washing machine would reduce their electricity use by a massive amount also – but that’s for the future. For now with Compact Fluorescent (and some LED) inside and solar outside we’ve made a start at a decent lighting setup without running up huge costs. The lights are all able to take on any colour.

If you’ve been following the blog you’ll know that some of the roads around here are not owned by the local authorities and so there’s no chance they’ll fix them – yesterday neighbours Dave, Tom and I made a start on a particularly bad section of the road where the centre had lifted up and was getting to the point of being dangerous for cars with low-profile wheels.

So yesterday we started to do some filling work with stones and sand. Easy enough, but for the heat.

We had great plans to finish off our road repairs with concrete last night until I heard Maureen shout up to the neighbours “are you coming down for a drink?” – that was the end of that.

We did get to test the new LED floodlights – or one of them – very good indeed – but that was about it for productivity for the night. I’ll try all three tonight.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a great night but 8.30am this morning I was dragged out of bed to be told that the boys were over to finish the road-works.

Feeling like death warmed up, I reluctantly got dressed and off we went – 2 hours later despite at least me feeling awful, the previously fractured and frankly dangerous section of the top road is now spot-on along with another minor pothole repair further down the hill – as long as no-one drives over the new cement for a day or so. See photo above – the right side of the road was sunk in with a dangerously raised edge along the middle. 4 bags of cement, lots of sand and stones later… perfect.

Plans to go to the lake today were put on hold so I finishing my emails and spent the morning soaking in the Jacuzzi to collect rays before heading off to the Galera hotel for a very nice Hamburgerisa Completa (hamburger with everything but the kitchen sink).The Jacuzzi is now out of bounds as it’s full of chlorine for a quick clean-up. Time to tackle the usual mountain of work and otherwise-related emails.

We had to take a short trip to Huescar today (just a few miles away from our town of Galera) before heading off to the pool… and decided to go to the park and have lunch. I have to say the food was good and they had a watering system spraying a very fine mist into the air – works a TREAT for cooling off.

Next time we’re at the garden centre I’m picking up some of the spray heads! While there we did a spot of shopping and spotted this strange little red car – note no number plate on the front and a tiny one on the back. Weird. I’ll be it’s efficient, though and great for bombing up and down the hills.

The park, incidentally if you’re in the area and have a little time – is great, a marvellous way to waste half an hour or so sheltered from the strong sun.

To describe yesterday as a “lazy” day would be an understatement. This morning Maureen and our friend Alison headed off in the early hours with our helpful neighbours to Granada to pick up a rental car.

Meanwhile I took the opportunity for a lie-in and then after catching up with the email mountain, to read all about telephone numbers in Spain. I thought I’d found a cheap provider who offered a Spanish number for under £3 a month – turns out the advert was a little misleading – they wanted £10 up front and then a fiver a month. I’ll keep looking. Currently investigating localphone.

Oh, the saga of the broken CAR! Well I contacted ANNA last night and she was to meet us at the dealers in Huescar today at 1pm.

We turned up at 12:55 and no sign of Anna outside? – no, indeed she was already in there interrogating the dealer. She seems to have good sense of humour and certainly speaks good English – the whole thing was wrapped up in minutes – turns out a pair of large retaining clips in the gearbox had broken – they had the whole thing on the ramp open to show us – they broken bits will be replaced tomorrow and we’re likely to get a bill for around £100 – not too bad really considering the alternatives.

After a successful chat with Anna and the mechanics, Maureen, Alison and I went off to El Parador for lunch – Menu Del Dia – very pleasant indeed – nice food, helpful waiter. Armed with our rental car, by tomorrow we should be a 2-car family for a while. And now to find out why I can’t read my cameras on the mobile phone. The perils of fitting a new router. Tonight I need a trip to the Chinese store to get some cable ties then I think we MIGHT just be up to a trip to La Posa.  No sign of my new spotlights.

Our thanks again to neighbours.

Peter Scargill.

The last couple of days have been interesting – Wednesday the three of us went off to the lake – and basically just floated about and took in the sun – I’m beginning to see why entire cultures became sun-worshippers – at it’s best the sun can turn the most drag surroundings into a work of art. On the other hand I supposed ancient civilisation didn’t have cameras so ignore that..

I get bored quite easily sitting around sunbathing even with magnificent water to soak in, so it didn’t take me long to go off the beaten track in a search for Kodak moments (though given the recent downward direction Kodak’s been heading in – perhaps the phrase should be “Nikon moments” as they’re just releasing an Android-based camera at long last – what took them so long?).

Finding magic spots for photos is child’s play in Andalucía hence I have far more photos than I have room for, as usual.  We spent Wednesday afternoon at the lake then had a quiet night in to finish off the day which saw peaks of maybe 41c?

Thursday we went off to Huescar, firstly for the Thursday market and the inevitable “cafe con leche” and Churos… and more importantly for me – to the BEEP store for a replacement modem. Between my rubbish Spanish and their less-than-ideal English I managed to select a suitable (quite reasonably priced) modem to do the job (I need to be able to connect to my gear from the UK including cameras so it’s not quite your kiddies USB jobber).

By lunchtime Thursday we were back here and I had the new modem wired up and running? No – not a sausage…. it turns out that Habland keep a track on your MAC number (each modem has a unique number) so that if someone nicks your antenna it does them no good – but thanks to the incredibly helpful Antonio at Habland who I’ve never met but who is always helpful by email, by mid-afternoon I’d scrapped the old modem and hooked up the new one.

Early evening and Tom from upstairs helped me get the wiring done to get my new broadband layout working – with 3 benefits – firstly we get faster wireless broadband up to the far end of the cave, we give a better signal to the neighbours who’ve kindly made a contribution and finally I’ve implemented a simple, dirt cheap PayPal offering for passers-by to save them a trip to the village when we’re not around (“WIFI for YOU” – log in – go to the browser and follow instructions)

The night, as it invariably does on a Thursday ended up with a trip down to La Posa – apparently the normal UK gang were not at the Galera hotel as people had airport pickup duties and all sorts of diversions – however we met up with friends and had a nice evening regardless –the air was wonderful, I’m guessing 25c at 10pm, quite dry air and so just the way to end a pleasant day.

Not heard anything from the guys at Cueva Cascada but I understand they had issues with the power cut we all had on Wednesday night. Today I’ve email duties, I had to hide the wiring abortion I’ve made and the girls are off to get supplies in for the weekend – if I remember to remind them, a hunt for Russian salad will be added to the list (potatoes, mayo, olives, peas, carrots… lovely).

We never did make it to the pool! After a good start – i.e. morning coffee down in the village, I spent most of the day indoors tackling the work email mountain and trying to solve a pesky broadband issue (the router dies occasionally for no good reason – my current guess is heat and sadly I don’t have a spare router to compare with). Early evening I had the silicon sealant out to make sure my latest electrical additions outside don’t give up at the first sight of rain (I know, don’t be daft) and then last night Maureen, Alison and I went down to the Galera Hotel wherein I was tackled for advice on tablets from one of the guys and then we all went off to La Posa.

FINALLY I got to grips with the WIFI passwords at both locations (not that it made too much difference as La Posa’s WIFI is down at the moment – maybe they have the same bug I have here).

As I’d anticipated I was approached by a gentleman who’d given me grief about the blog a couple of nights earlier – of course it had been the demon drink for which he gracefully apologised and we ended the night amicably. Thanks incidentally to everyone who was supportive at the time – really appreciated.

And so the night ended as it started – we all had a nice time – it’s comforting to know that temperatures back in the UK are back to abysmal summer norms. Today I’m up in the early hours for no reason. I can see a walk to the village coming on when the sun comes up and the plan is to go to the lake at some point before helping out a friend with Windows 7 issues this afternoon. Our neighbours are arriving today which will be nice and I’m waiting for a slight drop in the temperature to go drop a bag of cement in the increasingly large crack in the road up at the top of the hill!  Never thought I’d end up doing road maintenance! I also need to find something to use as a bracket for the new LED lighting I bought in San Javier.. I’m amazed just how much light the new 5w LEDs put out.