Building Standards
When you buy a property in the UK, even a new one, you know how to appraise its design and solidity and what problems to look for such as insulation, rising damp, leaky roof, condition of plumbing and electrical systems etc. You also know how much to budget for to fix what is wrong and when in doubt either the mortgage company's surveyor or a structural survey will identify any more serious weaknesses. In other words you are confidently self sufficient at buying and maintaining a property in your own country.
What is more you tend to trust your fellow countrymans workmanship and that the house and its foundations have been built to the proper standards. Even if something turns out to be bad later you know how to fix it or how to take action to get it put right. In Spain very simply you have no idea how houses are built, how they are bought and sold, the tax implications, the language, the medical procedures, the law, how to buy a car etc. etc. you tend therefore to assume that it must be just like back home.
Well it is not. It is very different. Just look at the photographs to see how different it is.
The problem for foreigners is that they dream of escaping the awful weather and come here to relax on their terrace or pop down to the beach and bask in the sun with a gin and tonic and a good book or play endless rounds of golf in their shorts. With this motivation in mind they set off to the estate agent to find a place to make their dream of living in the sun a reality. Then while touring round looking at various properties they are concentrating on the wrong issues, that is the view and the weather and they kind of life they could live here. They are not looking at the brickwork or the plumbing or how thick the walls are. They do not think about damp or parking or security. They are not thinking about value for money. They do not think about the practical issues of access, will the doctor visit, will a taxi come down to our house 3 miles down a dirt track. They ignore the number of steps or the steepness of the terrain as they do not think about growing old and the potential difficulties of getting around. They do not think about the large amounts of taxes involved not just in the purchasing but also the selling. They do not think about the whole picture of property ownership in Spain they still only see the dream. Leave your dreams back in the airport. Bring only a hard nose with you and use it.
Prior to 1993 there were simply no official building standards in Spain. There was only the builders standard. There were far fewer properly trained architects and building inspectors didn't exist. Building projects have only just started to be insured but despite all this we do not hear about buildings falling down like we do in the Phillipines or China. The actual builders here in Spain do fine work, after all it is not their decision about which materials to use or which plumbing or electrical wiring to install, but their masters.
But why is the structural condition of a property important in the evaluation process of buying a home here in Spain?
Very simply heat, cold and noise. The insulation properties of a home are crucial to a happy life here as a well insulated home practically eliminates the accumulation of the irritant factors of living in Spain which are heat, cold and noise. With the majority of the 50 million annual visitors coming just for a two week beach holiday, developers see no reason to build well insulated properties. For these two weeks most people are only in the property to sleep. They certainly don't go round kicking bricks and inspecting plumbing or listen out through the toilet wall to hear what the neighbours are up to. With a sunny climate all year round you live with the windows open all the time to keep it cool. Mopeds, car radios, folks enjoying a fiesta until 7 o'clock in the morning generate lots of noise. Folks on holiday don't hear this noise as they are probably the ones making it. But when you live here you don't party every day. Slowly these noises become irritating and when you become irritated then everything about Spain suddenly becomes irritating. Just visit the International clubs and listen out to the elderly foreigners who have lived here all the years doing nothing but complain about the heat and the noise. Spain has always been hot and noisy, they just chose a property in the wrong location with the wrong insulation and that is their fault, not Spains.
To keep the heat out you need thick walls, preferably with some added insulation. To keep the cold out you need thick walls and to keep the noise out you need thick walls. By thick we mean 20cm thick. Look at the walls of the next place you stay in in Spain. Listen out in the toilet for how loud the er.... noises are. Can you hear your neighbour er... snoring. Can you hear the lady in high heels click clacking over the floor up stairs. If you can we can assure you that after living there for a couple of months you either have to like it or lump it. Floors are made out of solid reinforced concrete, they are earthquake proof, but concrete is one of the best conduits for sound that there is. These concrete floors should be covered with a layer of grit before the floor tiles are laid, this grit absorbs the sound of the high heels and reverberations of daily sounds. Many typical holiday properties won't have any of these, just one row of thin hollow bricks to the walls and the floors. They might look nice and have a marvelous view but...
The reason that so much concrete is used to build houses here in Spain is the same as all round the Mediterranean. They are predominantly designed to keep cool. Yet in winter these cool houses can be very chilly inside at night even when the outside temperature is over 10ºC. The holiday home will not have any heating as for the short time that people are here in winter they think it's warm compared to back home. But when you live here your body adjusts to the climate and at 10ºC in winter it feels cold indoors. You will need heating for at least three months of the year mornings and evenings (longer in mountain villages), especially in the bathroom and that is in the Costa del Sol where the winters are the best in Europe. Thick walls help keep the heat in in winter and out in summer. So what type of walls should your Spanish property have??
Properties built prior to 1993 should have a structural survey prior to an offer being made. Especially if built on a hillside or near a cliff. Unfortunately there are very few structural surveyors in Spain, so if you can find a friendly builder with substantial knowledge of how Spanish homes are built, pay him to have a quick look. €80 should do the trick. He will deduct this from any work that may ensue. The ferocity of the daily hot sun coupled with a salt laden moist air quality plays havoc with wood, plastic and paintwork. The expansion and contraction of the house continually causes cracks to appear. The old ladies of Frigiliana, one of Spains most beautiful mountain villages, repaint their old white houses just prior to the village fairs......... at least twice a year. What ever the paint salesman says there is no such thing as a paint that won't crack in Spain. Termites play hell with untreated timbers. Plastic insulation to outdoor electric cables drys up and then when it rains next time....power cut.
When looking at a very old property (town or village centre or fincas) it probably has enormously thick walls which function perfectly as an insulator. These walls were built of scree (a mix of mud, sand and cement) and stones. They are painted with a white chalk paint that had very little waterproofing properties and as a result old houses are very damp. Also if built into a hillside the back wall abuts the rock again causing serious damp problems and flood through the walls when it rains hard. Plus sewage and water pipes and electrical insulations will all need replacing if you want all your modern machines to work at the same time. It is why most Spanish people are knocking old houses down and building new ones. It is simply too expensive to restore an old wall to even keep the facade of an old house.
Properties built about 30 years ago whilst not falling down will be ready to have the roof replaced along with all the wiring and the plumbing. Not just inside but also throughout the whole urbanisation or apartment complex. The materials used at the time of construction were substantially inferior than those available today. We often hear of foul water coming up through the toilets or up through the floor when it rains hard. Ask the president of the management committee for their proposed maintenance program and budget for the next few years, remember you will have to pay your share of these extra maintence costs over and above the normal annual community fees. Murphys' Law says that as soon as you have completed the purchase of your new apartment the lift will need replacing. If you are on a tight budget this can be a serious problem as you simply have to pay for these replacements.
Find out where your water comes from. It could be mains in which case there should be no problems other than low pressure in peak season. If you like a high pressure shower every day find out if the property has its own storage tank and where is it and how old is the pump and how clear of calc is the pipe system. Is there any water purification system or decalcifier. It could be a privately managed supply especially in the countryside. Find out how much water you are entitled to and from whom and for how much and what condition are the in and out pipes and the storage tank (deposito).
On a trip to Gibraltar to stock up on M&S undies we saw at a roadside café an old photograph album of Malaga with streets still with open running sewers in the middle of the street. We assumed that it must be from the 1800s but when turning over the photo we saw the date. 1958! Please try and remember that until the late 70's other than coastal tourism, Spain had spent over 35 years under the leadership of a Facist Dictator with no investment into anything much. Most of what you see around you today has happened since 1980 shortly after his death. The administration systems however are only just beginning to be modernised from how they used to work under Franco. They are still very paperwork intensive and very petty in many respects.
We all know the jokes about arriving at your holiday resort only to find your hotel half finished in the middle of a building site and being woken up by cement mixers at the crack of dawn. Whilst these instances have substantially reduced over the last 10 years, the construction work continues to try and keep up with the annual growth in tourism. Whilst therefore your current view of mountain and sea is just wonderful, beware the new motorway. They are springing up all over Spain to cope with the increase in traffic. We all remember driving down the M4 when it was first built admiring the lush green fields, now all we see is the red brick of Reading. Development follows motorways. They can interfere with your driveway or the access route to your house and change your tranquil location from heaven to hell. Each town has a five year plan for construction sometimes normally by luck they have collaborated closely with the managers of the National Road network. Check with the town hall that your lovely detached villa is not soon going to be near the next dump, or sewage treatment plant or shopping centre. Or that your penthouse will not soon be adjacent to the next 4* Hotel or apartment block with a nice view of your neighbours washing.
At SPOG we hear of numerous stories about bad builders but most of the problems are to do with the legality of the building project rather than the building methods themselves.
