The Year of Stress

And thus with the chimes of midnight there came an end to what has been "the year of stress". It all started one rainy night back at the end of January when while driving back from classes on the other side of the capital when a rock landed in the road just in front of us. The inevitable collision wasn't life threatening but it did damage the car enough to render it in our eyes not worth repairing but we did instigate a procedure for claiming the cost of the damages back from the government. Or friend Sheila paid for the repairs. But in the mean time we needed a car for me to get to and from work. So we purchased a second hand Citroen C2. All was then fine for a short while until one day we were driving out of Santa Domingo after picking up some paperwork from the town hall when there was a tapping noise from the engine upon investigation we suspected that it was the timing belt so we called a tow truck, our suspicions were confirmed a few days later when the garage gave us the quote which was just a shade over 1,000€. The really annoying thing about this is that we would have taken the car in to the garage for a service at 80,000Km which was in about another 1,000Km.

Our claim against the government for the damages has now turned into a court case with us now suing the government through the Courts which will take awhile, and a some point mean a trip to Tenerife when we eventually have a date for the case to be heard.

We have also been plagued this year by problems with the catrastal register (Land registry). It appears that when we brought the house the registry wasn't updated. So when we discovered that this was the case we tried to sort it out, Oh how wrong we were. First we tried to sort it out in the local town hall. Nope, the guy there told us that the numbers on our documentation were wrong and that we would have to get the document changed before we could register the changes. So about a month later we went to the notary's office and spoke to them. Nope they said the document is correct. They suggested going to speak to the main office of the registry. So we went there after first going to the wrong place. They said fine what you need is a copy of you deed and your ID and fill out the forms. So we did that and thought that would be all, but no. A while later we received a registered letter which said that unless we produced so documents within 10 days we could face a fine of up to 6,000e. So we took the letter off to the notary's expecting there to be a big problem but all we needed was a copy of the previous owners deeds so after paying 9e we went back to the registry and handed over the paperwork. Again great we thought that's done, but no. We received a couple of letters a few weeks later that again we to to the notary's. The upshot of this is that we have to get all the people who own lands that border ours and four witnesses to the notary's to sign an affidavit and we also need an official survey done of one plot due to a size discrepancy. The size discrepancy is odd because the deeds were based on the registry figures at the time they were made.

So on to the next year and lets hope the next year leads to a resolution of some of the outstanding issues and that we don't have as many problems as this year has produced.

A Message

Just a quick message to all our blog readers everywhere

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS

AND

A HAPPY NEW YEAR

 

Lots of Love Helen & Theresa

Storm Warning

I'm sitting writing this blog entry on my old PDA in bed, I'm doing this because at the moment this is about the only room in the house that's got any light. It has now been about 27 hours since the power went off at about 3 yesterday. We did have power briefly for about 10 minutes just now before it went again. Why the power has been out for so long we're not exactly sure but we have just had some very serious storms come through. In fact last week we registered a wind gust of 104Km/h. We have suffered some minor damage the worst being that water had got into the charge controller for the solar system (because we hadn't sorted out the new enclosure) which means that we are limited on our solar power, we do have another charge controller but to get that working we have had to buy some new batteries and will need to get a few things done before we can install it. Another problem is that we have had a wall collapse on the lower terrace which we had to clean off the road.

We were lucky with this storm as in the north we were sheltered from the worst which came up from the south east.

PS We have had power back on for a short while this evening but its only on for about half an hour before it drops out again. But it was on long enough to get the freezer back up to temperature which meant that we were able to check that it was all still frozen. Which it was thankfully.

The saga goes on and on……

We received a couple of letters recently from the land registry(The Catastro) which stated that the registry couldn’t be updated due to some problems. See here. So this morning with Sheila we took these letters to the Notary over in Los Llanos expecting to be able to pick up yet another piece of paper to take down the offices of the land registry in Santa Cruz. But no it would seem to be a little more complicated and thus more expensive.

It would seem that on one plot the size of the plot has been updated in the land registry at some point and no longer agrees with the size recorded in the deed, So we have two options; the first is to track down the original seller and get a new deed drawn up with the correct size in it, But as from what I have been told he now lives in Venezuela (a lot of people for La Palma went there in poor times for work, including his farther who built the house in the first place). The other option in to hire an official surveyor for about 200€ to produce an exact measured plan of the plot that we can take to the land registry. This is the least of the problems.

It would seem that the other plot of land is much more complicated. I don’t quite understand the exact problem but it would seem that the ownership registered in the land registry doesn’t tie up with what is on our deed or the previous owners. So in order to sort this out we need to get a affidavit done by the Notary to prove that we are the owners of the land. But in order to do this we need to gather up the following people; The owners of  all the land which borders ours, four witnesses from the area, and uncle Tom Cobley and all. We also need to put adverts in the local press, get a piece of paper from the town hall which says that the land doesn’t belong to them. As you might guess this whole lot is going to be expensive, we were told about 700€.

We are pretty annoyed because we are sure that the previous owner had to do something similar to this before he could sell to us, and it would seem that this didn’t get as far as the land registry.

This has made Helen feel very upset and hasn’t helped with her depression, and with the ongoing stress  it has made of us feel very unsecure.

But on a lighter note when we got home we checked the post box and found a letter from the Land registry which confirmed that the house registration had been updated. So at least we own the house but not just the land around us.

LET THERE BE LIGHT, in the loo

After 2 and a half years we have finally got mains lights in the out side loo. Up until now we have been using a solar powered shed light. It worked fine as long as you did not use it much (it only had about 15 minutes of illumination time). We have had a few problems with the tube going twice and now the batteries have failed and the replacements don't work..

So we thought it was about time to get the mains power out there. We put in the conduit from the Kitchen to the loo when we did the Patio But needed to add junction boxes by the loo and run the conduit around the loo, add switch and light. As well as sorting out the power to the Kitchen (which meant adding a temporary Junction box in there as well).

Main junction box for power and data outside loo

Conduit etc at rear of loo
More conduit will be added later to the bottom box to supply the observatory 

Running the conduit around the loo and adding all the junction boxes was not a problem, What was a problem was getting the power cable through the conduit from the main breakers to the kitchen and then from the kitchen to the loo. It would seem that the cable puller only functions for pulls of half its length and these two runs were longer that this. But after the adding of grease  and digging up the conduit in two different places we managed to get the cable through.

External light switch (outside due to the shower)

So finally we have nice bright electric light in the loo. Makes it feel a lot more inviting at night out there.

Let there be light

Trouble with the land Registry

When we brought the house we specifically asked if there was anything else we needed to do, And were told that there was not. Then about a year later we realised that the land registry(The Catastro) had not been updated. (The only way that you know is that when we pay out taxes in November the house is not in our name).

So the next time we were in the town hall with Sheila, we tried to sort the problem out but the Guy there said that as the plot numbers had changed we would have to get the house sale (the deed?) changed. So we had to go and see the Notary.

They said that there was nothing wrong as the changes was due to the subdivision of land between agricultural and urban land, and she suggested that we should see the head office in Santa Cruz. Which we did….  And all went off ok.. simple fill in form and hand over copies of all our documents.

THEN about a month later we received a document by registered post that seemed to say that there was a problem with the documentation. That amounted to the previous owner not having updated the registry when he inherited the house. So €9.00 and another document later all seemed to be happy.

THEN today we received to recorded letters from the Catastro, and I thought “Ah here are the registration certificates for the land..” But NO. It seems they have not updated the registry as: One parcel has the wrong owner in the register. The other they will not update it as the size of the parcel of land in the Sale document is more that 10% different from that in the Register. The thing is, is that the land size is only listed in a copy of the register entry. So they will not up date the register as they have changed it since the house was sold….

Oh fun….!!!

It pays to complain

A few weeks ago while we were shopping we decided to by a tub of cheese dip and some nachos to have as a treat sometime. You can imagine my disappointment when I got home to discover that the jars lid hadn't been fitted correctly and the contents of the jar had a nice cover of mould. So I wrote an email to the company to complain instead of taking the jar back to the shop which would have meant a trip back to the capital. Well today a box turned up with a whole load of products from the same firm. So it pays to complain.