Power restored!

So... another week older already!

Last night's promised (or hoped for) return of full electricity service didn't materialise. Helen attempted to put some washing on just before we went to bed, and all seemed well until about 5 minutes later when we were suddenly plunged into darkness again and had to resort to reading our books by torchlight. That meant no hot water AGAIN this morning, so Helen had to brave yet another icy cold shower after her session on the turbo trainer. We hoped that the electricity would sort itself out during the day though - having paid "our" bills yesterday, there was no more reason for it to remain flaky.

I never did quite get around to dressing and photographing the apartment today - Helen always said I wasn't a 'completer-finisher', and it seems I'm reverting to type, but don't worry, it WILL be done this week, I just had bigger fish to fry today, namely the office.

Having built the shelving unit/cupboard for the office last night, I was keen to get it into position and start organising (and boy was there a lot of that to do!). This was always going to be a big job - fitting so much stuff into such a small space takes very careful consideration, but that's exactly what I did, as well as some throwing away where sensible. It took me the best part of the day just to fill some shelves with the contents of a few boxes, but by the time mid-afternoon rolled around I could see the floor AND my wife working at her computer in the corner - although she was a little put out by the amount of noise my organising was making (e.g. "can't you thrown the pencils in that drawer a little more quitely?!").

The much tidier office. (Still needs work, but getting there.)

While wer'e at it, here is the (floor to ceiling) bathroom cabinet that I built yesterday.

And some more familiar bits and pieces from our old home resurfaced after unpacking in the office today.

Nice to see some of our favourite things again.

At lunchtime, we stopped for bruschetta and, having made sure to save Helen's work on the PC, we attempted to switch on the power-hungry washing machine... We held our breath... and it kept going!! We concluded that our payment, along with the faxing off of the receipt, had eventually made its way through to the power company and they had restored full service. Indeed, as I write, the water heater is merrily increasing the energy inside its insulated belly to a point where I can have a hot shower this evening! I can't wait!

We were SO glad to have got that issue sorted - a touch frustrated that we've had to fork out for electricity that we never used in order to get the normal service back, but from our email conversations with our geometra, we think he might be planning to sort the discrepancy out somehow - don't understand how, and we may have misunderstood with our limited grasp of the language, but time will tell, and in the meantime have got HOT water. Simple things!! 

All of the issues with the electricity spurred me into trying to make sense not only of all of the smart meter's menus, but also the bill that we had received - I was finding it frustrating not knowing what was happening and not feeling in control.

After an hour and a half with Google Translate, the bill (four pages of very small A4 text), a calculator, a PDF from a website about an experiment with smart meters from a customer perspective, a couple of random forum posts and the scribblings we made the other evening from reading our meter, I somehow managed to work out the times when the different price bandings switch over, and the costs of a kWh for each band. I then tallied it up to the missing bill, the one we'd paid, and worked out how much we've used since.

I have NEVER studied a utility bill in such detail - it arrives in the UK, you pay it, and then go about your business of using more, barely giving it a second thought - often, even the thought of doing price comparisons seems too complicated (although though I'm sure that's partly the idea).

Anyway, here, a kWh in peak time costs us €0.19 and with a maximum supply of 3kW, the most damage we can do is €0.57 an hour. In the off-peak periods (7pm-7am weekdays and at weekends)  it's €0.12 per kWh, so only €0.36 per hour at full capacity.

You can see that, even without the restrictions imposed by having an unpaid bill, there are quite a few limitations as to your usage: the washing machine here is AA rated, but it still uses just over 2kW, so when that's spinning away you have to be mindful of what else you use. I now know that the large water heater upstairs is heating away at just under 1kW - I know this because the smart meter will give you a readout of exactly what you're using at that moment. We plan to check each of our electrical appliances individually so that we can use our allowance more efficiently - should we struggle, we have the option of upgrading to a 6kW supply, although that would raise the price per unit, so we'll just see how it goes for the time being.

So, at the end of after another hot but slightly less muggy day, we called time on the working week as we needed to head to the geometra's office to collect and pay a water bill. Andrea has spoken to the supplier yesterday and found out that the account with the water company was also in arrears - to the tune of nearly €200. He told us that we would need to settle this too, before he could sort things out and transfer the account to our name. He had drawn up the bill for us to collect from his office and pay at the post office a couple of doors away. We did that, and returned the receipt to his secretary for faxing. So that's another one done, leaving just the phone account now - we know that they are owed money because they've tried calling to say as much. Fortunately, it's the geometra's job to transfer the utilities over as part of the sale so he'll jump on that soon and we can converse by email using Google Translate.

After we'd ticked that job off, we went into town to purchase a new cordless house phone, as the one we'd inherited was proving rather difficult to hear on. We then decided to treat ourselves to a Friday night drink and we sat in the square for an hour with a beer watching the locals buzzing around finishing off their weeks and passing the time of day - it felt like being on holiday again.

Drinking with the locals.

We have wetter weather due this weekend - along with thunderstorms if the forecast is to be believed. I'm not too bothered about that after this week's oppressive heatwave, but I think Helen would like some weather that's appropriate for strimming - let's see just how accurate the forecast is.

Finally, a few notes of interest on the wildlife front: we almost ran over what we later discovered were turtle doves (yes, two turtle doves) on our way back to the house; we heard a very vocal owl in the early hours of this morning; and during the night, I was woken by Helen getting up and going to my window, having heard an animal noise that I took to be some kind of bird - she was adamant that it wasn't a bird, but to be honest I was fighting consciousness, so didn't argue. After some discussion today, and having heard lots of a very strange kind of barking noise in the woods since we've been here, the penny finally dropped in Helen's head - muntjac deer bark. A bit of Googling later, we were listening to a recording (of muntjac deer) that not only replicated the strange barking noise exactly, but also the strange squeaky noises we heard in the night (and I had to take it all back, having said it was just a bird). Another mystery solved.