Empty House

The trip from the airport to our new house involved a few stops that we couldn't avoid. We had to stop to sort out getting a Portuguese mobile phone plan and look into the internet, on our way to an appointment with the lawyer who handled the sale, to get the keys of the house. After that a quick trip to my cousin's house to pick up a bag that we left there after our last visit and then we had stop to buy a few necessities.

We have been using a small handle-shaped scale to make sure that our suitcases weren't over the aircraft limit. Anne did a great job in the last hour before we left organizing and balancing all the luggage weight. I had a duffel bag with all my clothing and a second suitcase with all of our important documentation plus whatever miscellaneous other items Anne chose to include. I also had a carry-on bag well over the aircraft limit with all my camera gear and my computer and iPad.

Anne had paid for one extra suitcase so that she could bring all of her "things of importance" (art studio in a box, creative writing, etc.) and a bunch of other things she described as "things to make it a home" including a small ceramic face that Jessica made at her preschool in Grahamstown when she was four. It has a big lopsided grin and a blob of a nose and had been hanging outside the door of all of our previous houses. This thing weighs a pound or two and looks to me like a face of one of the totems that scare off evil spirits.

One of the suitcases had sheets and a duvet for the bed that we had arranged to be left behind for us and also a few table cloths.

I was, of course, anxious about a few things. We knew what we had not been told about our previous home when we bought it and we have friends with horror stories about omissions in the details of the house that cost them a bomb to fix. I was waiting to see what we would uncover when we arrived here.

I was also worried about the airline wanting to check the bag with my really heavy camera gear and computer.

Amazingly the check-in at the air port was really smooth. I apologized for the 5 large suitcases and the person doing the check-in said "this is nothing!" I think because all of them were exactly at the maximum allowed she didn't think to check anything other than the dimensions of my bag - which she did by asking me to turn around to show it to her.

The luggage was checked all the way through to our final destination even though we had a 5 hour layover in Lisbon which meant that we wouldn't have trouble lugging it over long distances through both airports.

So the flights went off without a hitch. We were of course, exhausted. Neither of us were able to sleep on the 6 hour flight to Lisbon or in the airport.

Lunch on our way from the airport.  Albufeira shopping center

 

We landed at 5:20am in Lisbon after leaving at 6pm the previous night (+5 hour time difference) and finished the little shopping we had to do at about 5:30pm, arriving at the new house just around sunset at 6:18pm

We were absolutely exhausted.

The house is walled in by a high fence and a pair of gates with hydraulic arms. They opened beautifully as we pulled up and we edged in with Anne excitedly going to the front door to let me in while I stood at the gate pressing buttons to get them to close. They budged and locked up and budged again but would not close.

Walled garden and a flapping shade cloth on the list to fix

I gave up and we made our triumphal entrance into the empty echoing house - it has a few essential pieces of furniture - a couch, a large bed, a table with chairs and a small desk with a desk chair.

We did the tour, stopping in each room to turn on the heat (they installed a wall mounted unit that does both air conditioning and heat). The house was cold. We unpacked a few things and had late supper and made the bed but the water was ice-cold.

I went into the "engine room" where the photovoltaic heated water is circulated into a tank. The tank temperature showed 10°C and the pump that was supposed to circulate the water was making a weird buzzing noise.

The previous owner did not leave detailed instructions as promised, rather a quick video walk through that said something along the lines of "these dials should both be at 3 so make sure there is enough water in the system by using these two levers". I assumed that one of the levers reduced the pressure and the other increased it but when I tried them the pressure went to 3 and once I turned it off it slowly went back down to 0.

Resigning myself to fate I said to Anne lets go to bed and we can look at this again tomorrow, knowing that in addition to the poor instructions, the previous owner had also not left behind any contact information for someone that we could call to help with a service. How many days ahead with no warm water?

We went to bed at about 10 which took the number of hours since sleep up to about 42 and I woke with my alarm at 6:30am (1:30am EDT) got up dutifully and went back down to the engine room to see if I could trace the pipes to get a better idea of where the water went from those two levers.

I turned one of them back on and as the setting went back down to zero I heard the sound of water outside. It was an overflow pipe - which, ok, means that you don't need to release pressure as it handles that itself (maybe?).

I then decided that I'd light the stove that is supposed to supplement the photovoltaic cells in the winter.

AGA-type stove to supplement solar heating

Of course the previous owner had not left a helpful amount of wood for us but I found some scraps under a wheel barrow and within an hour there was a fire going and the dial on the insulated hot water tank started to rise.

He had said in his video that 30°C was enough for a shower but for the underfloor heating it really needs to be at least 40°C and so we kept feeding the fire after finding an expensive home improvement store that sells them by the bag. It looks like on the third night we'll be able to have a warm shower.

In the meantime the gates have been bothering me and when Anne drove off today to find out what had happened to the man who was supposed to get our internet connected, the bloody gates started closing all the way and then opening all the way over and over - as if they were waving her goodbye!

We also discovered that our basin leaks if you fill it up for what Anne calls a "Cowboy splash" and what I was taught in the army was some other unmentionable cleaning ritual. Luckily it doesn't leak if you just run water.

There are plenty of things that we know need attention but we decided after the first couple of days to take the long view on this and pick off each problem as we can.

Once we have internet I'll be able to research calibrating the gate hydraulics. The hydraulic arms look too strong for the wall and the gate and show signs that they have been hammering the concrete wall posts because they try to open or close beyond where they can.

On the plus side we have pleasant neighbors who took me to a local hairdresser in the next village. Her husband delivers wood by the ton (which is about half a cord - an American unit of measure for wood) so we should have enough wood to see us through the last month of winter.

The first week here was eventful. I found myself walking around a local supermarket wondering what we've got ourselves into before catching myself and pointing out that we have got ourselves into an adventure (which cheered me up no end).