11667 Cotto and other questions in the Perugia area

Hi everyone,
We're two newbies around here, (from South Africa...anybody else here from SA?), but need really need your experience to guide us thru' the local minefields.
We bought an unfinished structure near Deruta in a historical village, Castelleone.
I've designed buildings in about twenty countries around the globe, but this is our first in Italy.
We need advise on a few items:
I see there are some older posts re cotto, but nothing recent. Does anybody know a cotto manufacturer in the greater Perugia/ Spoletto area and what do they charge? We are quoted 48 Euro per sq.m for a 30x30cm tile, which is 50% more than what the best quality imported marble in South Africa costs! (Ok..I know the Rand is 13 to the Euro, but that marble originally came from here!) I see prices on the older posts of 13-25 Euro?

The next item that I have never seen in my nearly 40 years in the building industry is the charge to smear mortar over the chases for pipes....Normally a plasterer just plaster straight across these, but here they want 7500 Euro to do this before plastering? (The house is 300sq.m.) I can buy a nice little car for that !

Then there is the metal frames which need to be installed before they install timber windows, which with installation costs as much as the very expensive, double glazed, timber windows, installed. Is this normal?

A further question: I'm told that we are not allowed to install solar panels in a historical town (it sort of makes sense), but is it true?

Has anybody tried to have three phase power installed? We seem to need this if we want to use heat pumps, otherwise all our heating is going to be gas, and I have not even started looking at air conditioning. (Where do you hide it in a historical village?)

Hoping for lots of juicy stories and good advise!
Nico & Santa.

Category
Building/Renovation

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/12/2009 - 14:11

I'm not going to attempt to answer even one of your questions - there are many here qualified to do that - I'm not one of them, but I just wanted to say hello and welcome.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/12/2009 - 14:36

The cotto. Assuming you want to use 'the real thing', locally made, pure clay, 30mm thick (approx), you should be able to source this at about €20 per sq m (maybe less if you haggle and want a decent quantity.) I'm sure there will be places nearer to Deruta, perhaps in Marsciano, but there is a place at Ponticelli (not far from Chiusi) [url=http://www.maestridelcotto.com/]cotto fatto a mano, pavimenti cotto antico, terracotta per arredamento, pianelle, tavelle[/url] (but the website doesn't really work), and another place in Tavernelle (between Perugia and Citta della Pieve) - it is next door to a big builders' merchant named Edilizia Calzoni, which is signposted. The 'conventional' format is approx 16x32cm - for 30x30cm you'll probably have to pay a bit more. You might find these flooring bricks more cheaply in a builders' merchant - these will be Romanian imports, and they are fine for internal use but not absolutely frost hardy.

Regarding the infilling of trenches made for pipes. I assume you have a stone-built house. Have you ever seen the vast chasms opened up in a stone built wall to insert a 10mm diam tube? Frequently half a mixer load of mortar will be needed per metre run of tube....not quite a polyfilla job!

These metal formers for windows. They are not absolutely essential, and I agree are always priced insanely. If I'm right, and you are in stone possibly with brick dressings to the window openings, their only virtue would be in keeping a bit of internal plastering off the show-wood of the windows, and if you are on site you could do this with masking tape. (As you can imagine, with a rendered building, the formers make life much easier and cleaner.)

I'll pass on the three phase and heat pumps - there are genuine experts here who will help you with these queries!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/12/2009 - 15:02

Hi Charles, Thanks a lot for the advise, I'm passing the info on to the geometra and project managers.
My building is not stone, the original collapsed during an earthquake in the eighties, and this was re-built in a concrete frame construction with hollow brick infills. The exterior is built with antique bricks, but inside is brand new, clay blocks/ bricks, some being built right now!
The house was built and the roof installed some twenty years ago, but never completed, so we have a brand new house in a village dating from the middle ages.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 02/17/2009 - 10:34

Hi.
Cotto: I agree with what Charles Phillips said, you can buy good cotto for about €0,90 per tile (size 15x30 is the classic format) which means roughly € 20 per sq m. Some Romanian (or even Albanian) tiles are not bad, only 25 mm thick and not guaranteed for exterior use - but ok for interior. There are so many "fornaci" (brick factory) in our area that would be impossible to list, but if you are interested in comparing prices and quality, I can give you the details.

Infilling of trenches: again I subscribe what has been said by CP, although the 7,500 quoted seems really excessive. There are machines now that cut through the wall and produce a much smaller trench to be filled. Your builder should know these.

Metal subframes for windows: I think they are necessary if you want to have a clean result. From my experience I know they are not expensive and they can be made of metal or wood. They help with the order of the work on site as they let you plaster neatly inside, before the windows are installed. They shouldn't cost more than 50€ each, installation included.

Solar panels: nowadays even in a historical town it would be impossible to forbid such installation. The general pressure to go "green" is so high that reasons to block panels will be hard to support. So my advise is: go for it!

Three phase: good choise the heat pump. It shouldn't be difficult to apply for 3phase. Call ENEL 800 900 800 and they will tell you if there is any technical impediment.

Hope this helps.
Marco

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 02/21/2009 - 14:49

Hi Nico and Santa,
I've sent you a PM re windows, tiles and electricians estimates, but would just add here that we've not found hand made cotto at the prices mentioned above. Are Charles and Marco referring to hand made cotto, or machine made I wonder. I'm assuming hand made?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 02/23/2009 - 03:07

Yes, hand-made cotto, not reclaimed, new but hand-made. Obviously at that price, is not an Italian product and not the best quality either.
Marco