In Another Place, someone recently asked for advice about buying an above-ground swimming pool. I suggested that, if he'd never owned a pool before, he might get a better idea of the work involved in maintaining a swimming pool as well as the posi
Capo, we've been thinking now and then of getting a PV setup. One of the main questions we have is how certain we'd be to get the income from ENEL to pay for the loan we'd need to get to install the system. Therefore, I was interested by your comment that, '...to me the real risk of pv installations is that the 20 year "guaranteed" feed in tariff is not really guaranteed...' Do you mean the payments from ENEL are not guaranteed in the sense that when one builds a PV array, ENEL does not sign a contract promising to pay for the electricity generated at a set rate for a certain period? Or do you mean that the payments are not guaranteed in the same sense that there's no guarantee that ENEL will still be in business or that there will even be a functional national electricity network in Italy in 20 year's time? If you do have a contract with the Italian national electricity network, then it seems to me a pretty good bet that you'll get the payments promised. If the politico-legal landscape should ever change so radically that ENEL can simply renege on its contracts with its suppliers, then I'd suspect that making payments for loans of any sort would be the least of our concerns. Al
So Italian shops keep more than a year's supply of carrier bags in their store-rooms? I wonder if this change might not have more to do with the people who make the bags. Does Mr B's empire include a plastic carrier bag factory? Al
My wife is Dutch, so we've driven between The Netherlands and Italy several times via Austria and Germany. My preferred route from Italy to the UK used to be via France. I've used the route Monica gives a couple of times, but settled on heading further towards Grenoble and crossing into Italy via the Frejus tunnel. However, that was in the days when I had a caravan behind the car. It makes some sense to cover as much distance as possible in France if you're towing, since the speed limits are higher than they are on the alternative routes. I still think the French motorways are great, but the tolls can be a bit ridiculous compared to what we're now used to paying in Italy. I understand that it is possible to travel on non-toll roads, but I've never bothered to try to figure out that route. German Autobahns are, generally speaking, wonderful and much better designed than the Italian Autostrada: sightlines are generally very long, there are decent hard shoulders and guardrails are not 10cm away from the edge of the left lane. Further, German drivers are, as a rule, very competent and disciplined. However, you need to be very alert and focused when on the Autobahns. Some traffic moves incredibly fast and cars that are in the far distance in your rearview mirror one moment can be on your tail the next. Proper lane-discipline is expected and the locals will let you know if you tarry too long in an overtaking lane. I understand it's also a criminal offence to unnecessarily obstruct the overtaking lane. One unfortunate fact about this route is that they are in the process (and have been for years) of doing major widening work on the Autobahn. Expect delays, as they say. However, we have discovered that if you have a GPS which has a traffic information system, it does actually work well in Germany. The information ours gets in Italy is totally rubbish and useless nonsense, but if your GPS tells you while in Germany that there's a delay ahead and offers to reroute, we've learned that it's a good idea to accept the suggestion. We've stopped in a number of different places in Germany, once in a hotel in the Black Forest not far from Freiburg. Nice enough place, but can't recall name of it and not so fantastic that I think it might be worthwhile me trying to locate it. Currently, our normal routine is to stop at a hotel/rest stop on the Autobahn just north of Munich at a place called Holledau. It's not quite in the middle of our route, but close enough. The hotel (which calls itself a "B&B" these days, for some reason) has some parking in the basement and garages in front of the building. The rooms are comfortable, clean and quiet, even if you should get the side facing the Autobahn. Prices are not ridiculous. As far as we're concerned, the two big positives are that the place is right on the Autobahn and the very nice breakfast you can get in the restaurant across a covered pedestrian walkway. However, I have to mention that my wife speaks German, so the English of the staff has never had to be tested. I never enjoy driving the Austrian part of this route. Although the motorway speed limit is the same as in Italy (130 kph) and the roads very good, it seems the Austrian authorities take every half-plausible opportunity to lower the speed limit. What's more, there are average speed systems on all the Austrian Autobahns and you have to assume that they will track you down, no matter where your car is registered. Further, you need to buy a windscreen sticker in order to have the dubious pleasure of using the Austrian Autobahns. It has only happened to us a couple of times, but it's wise to assume that there will be police checking your windscreen as you leave the Autobahn before getting on the section leading to the Brenner Pass. About the only positive things I can say about the Austrian section of this route is that it crosses the narrowest bit of Austria in the quickest manner possible and the scenery is nice for passengers. Drivers are far too busy looking out for reduced speed limit signs. The Brenner Pass is spectacular and it has been one of my favourite routes into Italy ever since the time we got totally fed up with a chilly, rain-soaked camping holiday in Bavaria one September and decided to head south to see if things were any better. It was quite wonderful to come over the crest of the Pass and literally see the clouds fade away and feel the air grow warmer as we rolled down the hills into Italy. Al
I agree with both Sebastiano and Sablanico. Anyone interested in moving to Italy without a certain income from pension, property rental or whatever, must give absolute priority to locating work. At the moment, it's difficult enough for Italians with all their advantages of networks, fluency in Italian and knowledge about how Italy operates to find well-paid employment. It's therefore good that you seem to be very aware of the need to find employment. It seems to me that the most sensible way for you to approach the question of where you want to live in Italy would be to choose from the various work options open to you - if there are indeed options. It would be pretty pointless for me to tell you how wonderful Abruzzo is, when I know it's very difficult for even locals to find work here. I think it's possible that a single person or a couple could manage to live very cheaply in rural Abruzzo if they were happy to accept a much more old-fashioned style of life that of the typical modern suburb-dwelling Brit, if they were willing to work hard raising and preserving virtually all their own food, if they were the sort who were willing to take on any sort of work for a few Euros and were able to go out and find it and, most importantly, if they could afford to buy a property outright so they had no mortgage or other financial commitments. However, children make all this much more complicated and risky. For example, running a car can be very expensive in Italy, but I would not be happy living here with a child without a car available in order to deal with any possible medical emergencies. While schools are free, the books parents need to buy for their children are not. Nor, I understand, are the yellow school buses one sees around. And, of course, the speed at which young children outgrow clothing and shoes adds to the expense. It seems to me that rural Italy can be a wonderful place to be a child - at least it's the sort of place I would have loved to have grown up in - but it's possibly not the best place in Italy to be the parent of a child! Bottom line: I suggest you forget about all the wonderful places you might move your family to in Italy for the moment and concentrate only on finding out if there's work for you somewhere here. Al
I agree with what others have said: if you can see that some skin was torn away rather than the mark of a puncture, then it will have been a biting fly of some sort. Horseflies and their nefarious ilk are much nastier than stinging insects, since bees, wasps and hornets only sting out of self defence. Sometimes late in the year, wasps and hornets get a bit aggressive about obtaining a sugar fix and you're more likely to get stung than earlier in the year when they're hunting insects to feed their young, but it's still primarily a defensive thing. On the other hand, female Horseflies, Deerflies and their like are actually out hunting for a blood meal and humans are an excellent target as far as they're concerned. Even worse, they don't even bother to slip a needle stealthily in to take a drink, but rather just rip a chunk of flesh away. Antihistamine tablets would probably help with the reaction, but I would seek a doctor's advice if the symptoms got worse or didn't clear up in a week. We've seen lots of the nasty blighters around here this year. No idea why. Perhaps something to do with the damp weather earlier in the year. Al
The Nuos description says the unit is intended to be installed in a bathroom or kitchen. It's a heat-pump, extracting heat from the air in the room and using it to heat the water. So the unit requires the owner to heat up the air in the bathroom. This heat is then extracted from the air and used to heat water. Then the heated water goes down the drain. Maybe I'm missing something blindingly obvious here, but this seems very daft. In fact it seems idiotic for Britain and Italy during the winter, but just marginally stupid for Italy during the summer. Al
We have an air conditioning system which is a reverseable air-source heat-pump, and so can be used as a space heater when it's cold. So essentially it's doing the same thing the Nuos is doing, but heating up air rather than water. We've been very pleased with how it works, although I understand that the efficiency of air-source heat-pumps falls off as the outside air gets colder, and we do get some very cold weather here at times. Still, I do wonder if the savings achieved by using a stand-alone heat-pump hot water heater will ever justify its cost. Our experience is that the amount of propane we use to heat water is trivial compared to how rapidly the tank drains when we use the gas boiler to heat the house. Al
Like Ram, I have experience of Giambrone and I would not recommend them. I'll not go into all the details here, but I will say that, although I didn't suffer major disasters with my Italian house purchase in 2006, there were niggling problems that left me feeling that they didn't do as much as they might have on by behalf. The other point you should consider is that, while the property itself may be within your resources, you need to consider all the associated costs which add a lot to the final bill. I can understand you balking at paying lawyers £5,000, but there will be many other fees and charges you'll have to pay as well and they'll make the lawyers' fees seem not all that huge. I'm not up to date with what's a reasonable amount to budget for these additional costs currently, but you should look into this point. What I do know is that you should not give in to pressure to sign contacts and hand over money if you're not absolutely certain about what you're doing and what you're commiting yourself to. That's blindingly obvious, really, but a lot of people do end up falling in love with a house and begin to believe that their lives will be desolate if they don't move into that one perfect house as soon as possible. It's not unknown for properties to sell rapidly in Italy, but it's far more common for houses to remain on the market for years. For example, some of the places I viewed in early 2006 had been for sale for some time before I saw them and are still on the market today. I therefore view the "send us money now to get the house off the market" ploy with some suspicion. The villa in Sicily may seem to be everything you've been dreaming of, but this is certain: it's not the only house in Italy that you'd enjoy living in. Don't let the estate agents take advantage of any niggling fears you may have that it is the one and only Perfect House for you. Al
We have a no-brand dehumidifier made in China (of course) which has worked well for about three years now. You can pay more to get a machine with one of the big air conditioning brand names on the front, but it's likely that the functional bits were also made in a Chinese factory. These things are not highly complicated devices; essentially, they're little refrigerators with a ventilation fan and a bucket to collect condensation. The only thing that will be worth investigating if you plan on leaving the machine running in a locked-up house is if the one you're thinking of buying has a way of by-passing the internal bucket. On ours, moving a little rubber plug from one point to another blocks off the drain to the bucket and allows you to connect a 10mm diameter hose which can then be placed somewhere that the condensed water can drain away (sink, shower, etc). Obviously, leaving a dehumidifier running in a house that has been locked up for the season will be of little use if it switches itself off as soon as the internal bucket is full. As for power rating, I'm certain that the cheaper units would be enough to cope with a 55 sq metre flat if you're thinking of leaving it running when no one is living there. On the other hand, even the most powerful one you can buy would have difficulties keeping the humidity down if all the windows in the flat are kept shut at all times and it's occupied by four people who each take two showers a day and eat porridge for breakfast, pasta for lunch and rice for dinner. In short, how well a dehumidifer works will depend on how much moisture is in the air as well as how powerful the machine is, so it's difficult to say how well one of the little units would work in your flat when it's occupied. One thing that's certain is that it would reduce the humidity to some extent. Al
Atessa, our friends have a solar water heating system that was installed about 10 years ago. They also have a massive heat store and under-floor heating, so the solar water heating makes a contribution to their house-heating, although most of the heat for the central heating system comes from a log fire. This sort of system requires a very large investment up-front and it's debatable if it will every really pay for itself. In the case of our friends, they had built a new house with such a system in mind from the start and they had a lump sum to invest, so they decided to spend it on things which would reduce their routine living expenses to a minimum during their later years. For most people and most Italian houses, the first priority should be making sure the place is well-insulated and draught-proofed (although also with good ventilation for the winter). I've never heard of any sort of special arrangement with banks to get a solar water heating system here. I don't see how that might work, since solar water heating doesn't generate any income, while photovoltaic panels produce electricity which ENEL pays for. Solar water heating is 'free' only in the sense that it doesn't cost you anything to run the system from day to day and it constantly produces hot water. (Well, that's not completely true, since most solar water systems have at least one central heating-type pump, but their electricty consumption is minimal.) However, the cost of getting your first litre of hot water out of the system is quite significant. Even though we bought our components from a place that prides itself on its keen prices (Navitron), and even though I installed the system myself, the total cost of the system was close to £2,000. Al
Comments posted
Capo, we've been thinking now and then of getting a PV setup. One of the main questions we have is how certain we'd be to get the income from ENEL to pay for the loan we'd need to get to install the system. Therefore, I was interested by your comment that, '...to me the real risk of pv installations is that the 20 year "guaranteed" feed in tariff is not really guaranteed...' Do you mean the payments from ENEL are not guaranteed in the sense that when one builds a PV array, ENEL does not sign a contract promising to pay for the electricity generated at a set rate for a certain period? Or do you mean that the payments are not guaranteed in the same sense that there's no guarantee that ENEL will still be in business or that there will even be a functional national electricity network in Italy in 20 year's time? If you do have a contract with the Italian national electricity network, then it seems to me a pretty good bet that you'll get the payments promised. If the politico-legal landscape should ever change so radically that ENEL can simply renege on its contracts with its suppliers, then I'd suspect that making payments for loans of any sort would be the least of our concerns. Al
So Italian shops keep more than a year's supply of carrier bags in their store-rooms? I wonder if this change might not have more to do with the people who make the bags. Does Mr B's empire include a plastic carrier bag factory? Al
My wife is Dutch, so we've driven between The Netherlands and Italy several times via Austria and Germany. My preferred route from Italy to the UK used to be via France. I've used the route Monica gives a couple of times, but settled on heading further towards Grenoble and crossing into Italy via the Frejus tunnel. However, that was in the days when I had a caravan behind the car. It makes some sense to cover as much distance as possible in France if you're towing, since the speed limits are higher than they are on the alternative routes. I still think the French motorways are great, but the tolls can be a bit ridiculous compared to what we're now used to paying in Italy. I understand that it is possible to travel on non-toll roads, but I've never bothered to try to figure out that route. German Autobahns are, generally speaking, wonderful and much better designed than the Italian Autostrada: sightlines are generally very long, there are decent hard shoulders and guardrails are not 10cm away from the edge of the left lane. Further, German drivers are, as a rule, very competent and disciplined. However, you need to be very alert and focused when on the Autobahns. Some traffic moves incredibly fast and cars that are in the far distance in your rearview mirror one moment can be on your tail the next. Proper lane-discipline is expected and the locals will let you know if you tarry too long in an overtaking lane. I understand it's also a criminal offence to unnecessarily obstruct the overtaking lane. One unfortunate fact about this route is that they are in the process (and have been for years) of doing major widening work on the Autobahn. Expect delays, as they say. However, we have discovered that if you have a GPS which has a traffic information system, it does actually work well in Germany. The information ours gets in Italy is totally rubbish and useless nonsense, but if your GPS tells you while in Germany that there's a delay ahead and offers to reroute, we've learned that it's a good idea to accept the suggestion. We've stopped in a number of different places in Germany, once in a hotel in the Black Forest not far from Freiburg. Nice enough place, but can't recall name of it and not so fantastic that I think it might be worthwhile me trying to locate it. Currently, our normal routine is to stop at a hotel/rest stop on the Autobahn just north of Munich at a place called Holledau. It's not quite in the middle of our route, but close enough. The hotel (which calls itself a "B&B" these days, for some reason) has some parking in the basement and garages in front of the building. The rooms are comfortable, clean and quiet, even if you should get the side facing the Autobahn. Prices are not ridiculous. As far as we're concerned, the two big positives are that the place is right on the Autobahn and the very nice breakfast you can get in the restaurant across a covered pedestrian walkway. However, I have to mention that my wife speaks German, so the English of the staff has never had to be tested. I never enjoy driving the Austrian part of this route. Although the motorway speed limit is the same as in Italy (130 kph) and the roads very good, it seems the Austrian authorities take every half-plausible opportunity to lower the speed limit. What's more, there are average speed systems on all the Austrian Autobahns and you have to assume that they will track you down, no matter where your car is registered. Further, you need to buy a windscreen sticker in order to have the dubious pleasure of using the Austrian Autobahns. It has only happened to us a couple of times, but it's wise to assume that there will be police checking your windscreen as you leave the Autobahn before getting on the section leading to the Brenner Pass. About the only positive things I can say about the Austrian section of this route is that it crosses the narrowest bit of Austria in the quickest manner possible and the scenery is nice for passengers. Drivers are far too busy looking out for reduced speed limit signs. The Brenner Pass is spectacular and it has been one of my favourite routes into Italy ever since the time we got totally fed up with a chilly, rain-soaked camping holiday in Bavaria one September and decided to head south to see if things were any better. It was quite wonderful to come over the crest of the Pass and literally see the clouds fade away and feel the air grow warmer as we rolled down the hills into Italy. Al
I agree with both Sebastiano and Sablanico. Anyone interested in moving to Italy without a certain income from pension, property rental or whatever, must give absolute priority to locating work. At the moment, it's difficult enough for Italians with all their advantages of networks, fluency in Italian and knowledge about how Italy operates to find well-paid employment. It's therefore good that you seem to be very aware of the need to find employment. It seems to me that the most sensible way for you to approach the question of where you want to live in Italy would be to choose from the various work options open to you - if there are indeed options. It would be pretty pointless for me to tell you how wonderful Abruzzo is, when I know it's very difficult for even locals to find work here. I think it's possible that a single person or a couple could manage to live very cheaply in rural Abruzzo if they were happy to accept a much more old-fashioned style of life that of the typical modern suburb-dwelling Brit, if they were willing to work hard raising and preserving virtually all their own food, if they were the sort who were willing to take on any sort of work for a few Euros and were able to go out and find it and, most importantly, if they could afford to buy a property outright so they had no mortgage or other financial commitments. However, children make all this much more complicated and risky. For example, running a car can be very expensive in Italy, but I would not be happy living here with a child without a car available in order to deal with any possible medical emergencies. While schools are free, the books parents need to buy for their children are not. Nor, I understand, are the yellow school buses one sees around. And, of course, the speed at which young children outgrow clothing and shoes adds to the expense. It seems to me that rural Italy can be a wonderful place to be a child - at least it's the sort of place I would have loved to have grown up in - but it's possibly not the best place in Italy to be the parent of a child! Bottom line: I suggest you forget about all the wonderful places you might move your family to in Italy for the moment and concentrate only on finding out if there's work for you somewhere here. Al
I agree with what others have said: if you can see that some skin was torn away rather than the mark of a puncture, then it will have been a biting fly of some sort. Horseflies and their nefarious ilk are much nastier than stinging insects, since bees, wasps and hornets only sting out of self defence. Sometimes late in the year, wasps and hornets get a bit aggressive about obtaining a sugar fix and you're more likely to get stung than earlier in the year when they're hunting insects to feed their young, but it's still primarily a defensive thing. On the other hand, female Horseflies, Deerflies and their like are actually out hunting for a blood meal and humans are an excellent target as far as they're concerned. Even worse, they don't even bother to slip a needle stealthily in to take a drink, but rather just rip a chunk of flesh away. Antihistamine tablets would probably help with the reaction, but I would seek a doctor's advice if the symptoms got worse or didn't clear up in a week. We've seen lots of the nasty blighters around here this year. No idea why. Perhaps something to do with the damp weather earlier in the year. Al
The Nuos description says the unit is intended to be installed in a bathroom or kitchen. It's a heat-pump, extracting heat from the air in the room and using it to heat the water. So the unit requires the owner to heat up the air in the bathroom. This heat is then extracted from the air and used to heat water. Then the heated water goes down the drain. Maybe I'm missing something blindingly obvious here, but this seems very daft. In fact it seems idiotic for Britain and Italy during the winter, but just marginally stupid for Italy during the summer. Al
We have an air conditioning system which is a reverseable air-source heat-pump, and so can be used as a space heater when it's cold. So essentially it's doing the same thing the Nuos is doing, but heating up air rather than water. We've been very pleased with how it works, although I understand that the efficiency of air-source heat-pumps falls off as the outside air gets colder, and we do get some very cold weather here at times. Still, I do wonder if the savings achieved by using a stand-alone heat-pump hot water heater will ever justify its cost. Our experience is that the amount of propane we use to heat water is trivial compared to how rapidly the tank drains when we use the gas boiler to heat the house. Al
Like Ram, I have experience of Giambrone and I would not recommend them. I'll not go into all the details here, but I will say that, although I didn't suffer major disasters with my Italian house purchase in 2006, there were niggling problems that left me feeling that they didn't do as much as they might have on by behalf. The other point you should consider is that, while the property itself may be within your resources, you need to consider all the associated costs which add a lot to the final bill. I can understand you balking at paying lawyers £5,000, but there will be many other fees and charges you'll have to pay as well and they'll make the lawyers' fees seem not all that huge. I'm not up to date with what's a reasonable amount to budget for these additional costs currently, but you should look into this point. What I do know is that you should not give in to pressure to sign contacts and hand over money if you're not absolutely certain about what you're doing and what you're commiting yourself to. That's blindingly obvious, really, but a lot of people do end up falling in love with a house and begin to believe that their lives will be desolate if they don't move into that one perfect house as soon as possible. It's not unknown for properties to sell rapidly in Italy, but it's far more common for houses to remain on the market for years. For example, some of the places I viewed in early 2006 had been for sale for some time before I saw them and are still on the market today. I therefore view the "send us money now to get the house off the market" ploy with some suspicion. The villa in Sicily may seem to be everything you've been dreaming of, but this is certain: it's not the only house in Italy that you'd enjoy living in. Don't let the estate agents take advantage of any niggling fears you may have that it is the one and only Perfect House for you. Al
We have a no-brand dehumidifier made in China (of course) which has worked well for about three years now. You can pay more to get a machine with one of the big air conditioning brand names on the front, but it's likely that the functional bits were also made in a Chinese factory. These things are not highly complicated devices; essentially, they're little refrigerators with a ventilation fan and a bucket to collect condensation. The only thing that will be worth investigating if you plan on leaving the machine running in a locked-up house is if the one you're thinking of buying has a way of by-passing the internal bucket. On ours, moving a little rubber plug from one point to another blocks off the drain to the bucket and allows you to connect a 10mm diameter hose which can then be placed somewhere that the condensed water can drain away (sink, shower, etc). Obviously, leaving a dehumidifier running in a house that has been locked up for the season will be of little use if it switches itself off as soon as the internal bucket is full. As for power rating, I'm certain that the cheaper units would be enough to cope with a 55 sq metre flat if you're thinking of leaving it running when no one is living there. On the other hand, even the most powerful one you can buy would have difficulties keeping the humidity down if all the windows in the flat are kept shut at all times and it's occupied by four people who each take two showers a day and eat porridge for breakfast, pasta for lunch and rice for dinner. In short, how well a dehumidifer works will depend on how much moisture is in the air as well as how powerful the machine is, so it's difficult to say how well one of the little units would work in your flat when it's occupied. One thing that's certain is that it would reduce the humidity to some extent. Al
Atessa, our friends have a solar water heating system that was installed about 10 years ago. They also have a massive heat store and under-floor heating, so the solar water heating makes a contribution to their house-heating, although most of the heat for the central heating system comes from a log fire. This sort of system requires a very large investment up-front and it's debatable if it will every really pay for itself. In the case of our friends, they had built a new house with such a system in mind from the start and they had a lump sum to invest, so they decided to spend it on things which would reduce their routine living expenses to a minimum during their later years. For most people and most Italian houses, the first priority should be making sure the place is well-insulated and draught-proofed (although also with good ventilation for the winter). I've never heard of any sort of special arrangement with banks to get a solar water heating system here. I don't see how that might work, since solar water heating doesn't generate any income, while photovoltaic panels produce electricity which ENEL pays for. Solar water heating is 'free' only in the sense that it doesn't cost you anything to run the system from day to day and it constantly produces hot water. (Well, that's not completely true, since most solar water systems have at least one central heating-type pump, but their electricty consumption is minimal.) However, the cost of getting your first litre of hot water out of the system is quite significant. Even though we bought our components from a place that prides itself on its keen prices (Navitron), and even though I installed the system myself, the total cost of the system was close to £2,000. Al