One of our neighbors has asked us if he could buy one of our large false Acacia trees that we have on our land - since it makes very good fire wood. By us it is ok, but I do not know how much money we should ask for it.
Being new to the forum, I thought it was time to write my introduction. Me and my husband have just bought a house north of Lucca, to use as a holiday home - at least until we retire...
We have a large, 20 000 litre, above ground Intex pool in which we have salt water. We have been running it for 2 years now and it works like charm. One must now that it is not enough to just put salt in the water - that will never keep it clean! One must install a salt water clorinator, a machine that produces clorine from the salt. The clorine produced by this machine is less agressive to human skin and eyes than the normal clorine used in pools and I cannot even feel any smell of it. The water is crystal clear and very pleasant to the skin and the eyes. The only problem that I have had is that I have to clean the clorinator from calcium regurlarly, but that is because our water is very hard. The salt I just by in the supermarket €0,13/kg, and I need 55 kg to start up the pool from scratch. So though the installation cost is higher, the running costs are much lower.
We have a house near you and spent several days of our vacation looking for good looking canopies. We went to Leroy Merlin, where most of them were made of plastic, and the ones made in metal were very modern. We looked at Brico, but all of their models were made of plastic and more cheap looking than the ones at Leroy Merlin. Papeschi in Gallicano had a couple of models which seemed to be of good quality - still plastic, and still a bit modern. On the plus side was that they had them in a number of differnt sizes. We have an old house and would really like to find something made of black iron. We are thinking of asking our lokal blacksmith to make one and then order the plastic roof separately. Since I have ssen a number of good looking ones on other houses I thought that finding a nice one would be easy. I was wrong!
I have a house nearby, close to Diecimo, and I tried out the different reception qualities with my mobile phone and found that the best for us is Wind. I bought the sim ricaricabile at the Wind shop at Carrefour in Lucca and put it in my mobile router which also have an extra antenna. It works excellently, and gives us wifi in most parts of our (stone) house. I load the card using an italian Paypal account via their website wind.it - very easy! It is €9 a month for 50 hours. For me unlimited download for a certain time period was better than the fixed maximum Gb deals. That way I can manage my work remotely and not need to worry about running out of bytes :-) I can pause and restart (costs €5) the card anytime I want, or just let the money run out on the account, then when we come back again in the spring I just load it with money again and it starts up automatically. To get the current remaning hours and "saldo" I just send a free sms and get an sms respons directly.
I have an italian Saeco machine which I have used extensively for more than 10 years. It has never failed me and still makes excellent coffee. It lookes almost like the model Royal, except for the milk tube, which I do not have. I am not found of the ones that take pods, since I think it is an insane packaging - very expensive for the environment. I prefer the machines that grounds coffee beans - always gives a better tasting coffee than if it is made from pre-ground coffee.
I use a rechargeable, Wind ricaricabile Mega Ore, phone card, as Salsabor, that I load and active before I visit. I have also bought one of these: http://www.globesurfer.co.uk/ Which gives me wired and wireless internet connection in the house by just plugging in the sim card and configuring the APN. I get excellent speed using one of these antennas, see link below, connected to the router and mounted on the house´s outside wall - on the same side of the house as there is a mobile base station. This is almost a must if you have an old stone house like me and don´t want to sit outside in order to get a decent speed. http://www.poyntingdirect.co.za/pK-OMNI-A0069-10M/3-Omni-Directional-Antenna-with-10-m-cable-and-selected-adapter.aspx One also needs a few cables and adapters... This way I can work over the internet while being in Italy
What is the value of the certifiaction for the buyer - if one discovers, as we did, that part of the plumming is broken and we had to tear down a big part of the outer wall in order to fix it.
Thank you for your help, even though it is still difficult to value the tree. As Sprostoni wrote, it grows like weed on our land, so we have more of it. We will not install a stufa until next year and we are mostly here in the summer, but I think we will wait for him to make us an offer and decide after that.
We have just tiled a big room and needen a stone step in a corridor. You should look for a marmista - they have tons of different shades of stone to choose from. We used one in Piano di Coreglia (where I think there are 2 marmistas), and I know there is one in Bagni di Lucca as well (previous post). For an entire staircase I recomend getting several quotes - some like to make extra money from the stranieri...
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We have a large, 20 000 litre, above ground Intex pool in which we have salt water. We have been running it for 2 years now and it works like charm. One must now that it is not enough to just put salt in the water - that will never keep it clean! One must install a salt water clorinator, a machine that produces clorine from the salt. The clorine produced by this machine is less agressive to human skin and eyes than the normal clorine used in pools and I cannot even feel any smell of it. The water is crystal clear and very pleasant to the skin and the eyes. The only problem that I have had is that I have to clean the clorinator from calcium regurlarly, but that is because our water is very hard. The salt I just by in the supermarket €0,13/kg, and I need 55 kg to start up the pool from scratch. So though the installation cost is higher, the running costs are much lower.
We have a house near you and spent several days of our vacation looking for good looking canopies. We went to Leroy Merlin, where most of them were made of plastic, and the ones made in metal were very modern. We looked at Brico, but all of their models were made of plastic and more cheap looking than the ones at Leroy Merlin. Papeschi in Gallicano had a couple of models which seemed to be of good quality - still plastic, and still a bit modern. On the plus side was that they had them in a number of differnt sizes. We have an old house and would really like to find something made of black iron. We are thinking of asking our lokal blacksmith to make one and then order the plastic roof separately. Since I have ssen a number of good looking ones on other houses I thought that finding a nice one would be easy. I was wrong!
I have friends that are interested, and I have sent you a couple of messages. Please check!
I have a house nearby, close to Diecimo, and I tried out the different reception qualities with my mobile phone and found that the best for us is Wind. I bought the sim ricaricabile at the Wind shop at Carrefour in Lucca and put it in my mobile router which also have an extra antenna. It works excellently, and gives us wifi in most parts of our (stone) house. I load the card using an italian Paypal account via their website wind.it - very easy! It is €9 a month for 50 hours. For me unlimited download for a certain time period was better than the fixed maximum Gb deals. That way I can manage my work remotely and not need to worry about running out of bytes :-) I can pause and restart (costs €5) the card anytime I want, or just let the money run out on the account, then when we come back again in the spring I just load it with money again and it starts up automatically. To get the current remaning hours and "saldo" I just send a free sms and get an sms respons directly.
I have an italian Saeco machine which I have used extensively for more than 10 years. It has never failed me and still makes excellent coffee. It lookes almost like the model Royal, except for the milk tube, which I do not have. I am not found of the ones that take pods, since I think it is an insane packaging - very expensive for the environment. I prefer the machines that grounds coffee beans - always gives a better tasting coffee than if it is made from pre-ground coffee.
I use a rechargeable, Wind ricaricabile Mega Ore, phone card, as Salsabor, that I load and active before I visit. I have also bought one of these: http://www.globesurfer.co.uk/ Which gives me wired and wireless internet connection in the house by just plugging in the sim card and configuring the APN. I get excellent speed using one of these antennas, see link below, connected to the router and mounted on the house´s outside wall - on the same side of the house as there is a mobile base station. This is almost a must if you have an old stone house like me and don´t want to sit outside in order to get a decent speed. http://www.poyntingdirect.co.za/pK-OMNI-A0069-10M/3-Omni-Directional-Antenna-with-10-m-cable-and-selected-adapter.aspx One also needs a few cables and adapters... This way I can work over the internet while being in Italy
What is the value of the certifiaction for the buyer - if one discovers, as we did, that part of the plumming is broken and we had to tear down a big part of the outer wall in order to fix it.
Thank you for your help, even though it is still difficult to value the tree. As Sprostoni wrote, it grows like weed on our land, so we have more of it. We will not install a stufa until next year and we are mostly here in the summer, but I think we will wait for him to make us an offer and decide after that.
We have just tiled a big room and needen a stone step in a corridor. You should look for a marmista - they have tons of different shades of stone to choose from. We used one in Piano di Coreglia (where I think there are 2 marmistas), and I know there is one in Bagni di Lucca as well (previous post). For an entire staircase I recomend getting several quotes - some like to make extra money from the stranieri...