July
This was a holiday month for us, we spent a few days in the UK, before flying to Turkey to visit some very good friends of ours. This was them followed by a 10 day drive back across Europe to the UK. We completed 10 Countries in 10 Days. A fantastic experience.
August
Teresa’s sisters wanted a holiday at the house early this month, which we were of course happy for them to do. Whilst we didn’t intend to return to the house until the end of the month, to make it easier for them we returned at the end of their stay mid-month, which meant they didn’t have to close everything up. It also gave us the opportunity to investigate why the grass around the pool was dying.
On initial investigation we couldn’t work out what was going on with the irrigation system, it seemed to be working ok. Over the course of a few days we noticed that the water pressure was reduced and in fact on one day at one point there was no water in the taps to the house.
Cutting a long story short, what had happened was a combination of 3 things. Firstly, the pressure on the pressure bladder had gone, secondly the filter had never been cleaned and both these had meant the compressor at the bottom of the borehole had been working overtime, so had weakened. The resolution was to pump up the pressure bladder, replace the filter and replace and upgrade the compressor.
You can see before and after pictures above. It’s amazing how quickly the grass recovers once it has some water.
September
Following on from our/my thoughts about the ride on brush cutter it was decided that we would purchase and a deal was struck with the local dealer and delivery was made in just a week, more on this in a separate blog.
We also investigated the possibility of having the outside of the house repainted, it has been about 5 years now since the place was built and we haven’t done anything to repair any settlement issues on the outside. In fairness we had very few but one or two were beginning to nag that we should get fixed, plus we needed to get new mesh put around the covers on the chimneys, to stop birds coming down. We felt we needed to do something. We contacted a local guy, well he lives local, he is actually Australian by birth, but had been doing a lot of work for friends and they were happy with his work.
We knew that we had wild boar visiting our land, but visits were always at night. I purchased a cheap motion activated camera and attached it to a tree in a place that we could see they had been.
Much to my amazement, first time out a caught one on camera, what a result.
October
We returned to the UK this month as there was a number of things we needed to be taken care of such as family and friends Birthdays, renewing my Passport and getting all the necessary documents should a no deal Brexit happen.
Just a few more days and we will be back in Portugal.