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Hot Walls and Strange Rooms

Our house could be called a ‘typical Andalucian village house’, but in Andalucia there is really no such thing. Okay, most villages houses are painted white; the majority have (often very ornate) window grills and blinds or cortinas over the front doors (and blinds often over the windows too), so that you can let fresh air in without the inside of your home being on view to passing neighbours. Roof tops here are either tiled in a light rust colour, or made of cement board (ours is still cement board - the tiles come later!).

But apart from that, I would say that there is nothing typical about an Andalucian village house. They all appear to have been designed ‘as they went along’, probably with a ’starter house’ and others ‘growing’ alongside and then alongside each other in a rather higgledy, piggledy fashion. Each house is different: some are one storey, some two; some are very large and others are extremely small, with a vast variety of sizes in between. There is no basic pattern to any street and I think most house building designs have depended on what the builder and his clients could afford at the time, with additions perhaps later. Some houses are deep, with an outside yard leading to an ‘animal house’ now usually used as an extra bedroom, bathroom or garage and opening onto the next street. Others, like ours, are built on quite small plots of land, so they are not very deep but floors have been added to them over the years, building up being the ’space-saving’ solution. And of course the angle of the street determines the shape of the house. If the house is on a steep incline, or, as in some cases (in Guadix and Basra for example) built into the face of the surrounding rock, then the house will be on several different levels, inside and out.

And as for the walls that ’separate’ each house, these do not follow what people in the UK would consider a ‘normal’ pattern either. It is usual to find that part of one house (a cupboard, a staircase, or even a whole room) is actually within the space you would have thought should be occupied by the house next door. We discovered this when we wanted to open up an alcove in our kitchen to make space for our fridge-freezer. Our ‘alcove’ had actually been tunnelled into our next-door neighbour’s living room (I have yet to see what it looks like from their side, but I imagine that their living room is rather an odd shape!) and the ceiling of the alcove was underneath one of their bedrooms. Needless to say, we quickly had a steel support installed across the new space we had channelled out - we didn’t want our neighbour’s bedroom falling on top of our fridge-freezer!

On the subject of walls, estate agents trying to sell Spanish village houses to unsuspecting ‘Brits’ often wax lyrical about “the thick, stone walls of typical village houses”, which are supposed to “keep the rooms warm in winter and cool in summer”. The reality is somewhat different. It is true that most of the older houses are built out of stone - any chunks of rock that could be found at the time! This made the walls thick, it’s true, especially when the assembled chunks were cemented over, but it also made them extremely porous if the roof leaked. Just one tiny gap in the roof will allow water to run down through the maze of rocks inside the wall. It has nowhere to escape to. The walls can then become very damp. And as there are no ‘party walls’ between houses, the damp that affects your neighbour affects you also. We found this problem with the wall in our house which we share with our neighbours. It is the only stone wall we have. The roof had been leaking between the two houses for years and the rocks inside must have been like sponges! We sorted-out the leaky roof with waterproof concrete (the best way out here - if it’s cracked fill it with concrete), so our neighbours should be pleased too (after all, we have also secured the floor of their bedroom!). But there was nothing we could do about the side of the wall inside our house. It will probably be further months before it dries out completely, despite the heat.

To add to the problem, the previous tenants had tried to sort out the damp problem by covering the wall with cheap plaster and boarding. The boarding we removed, along with the plaster which simply crumbled. But our ‘Brit’ builders then simply rendered the wall again with cheap plaster. And that is something else - cheap Spanish plaster. It is not to be recommended as it doesn’t take paint! We found this out when every layer of paint we had applied to the wall (including an undercoat of sealant) just peeled off again. At the moment, the side wall of our living room is a surreal chaos of different levels of peeling paint and uncovered sections of plaster. Of course, had we decorated the ‘Spanish way’ things would have been fine. We found out recently that most Spaniards (in old, village houses anyway) simply cover their walls with distemper. It’s the only known substance that stays on the cheap plaster. We’ll do that too …… once we have managed to scrape off the remaining sections of peeling paint!

And on the subject of walls and ‘typical village houses’ … As I said, Andalucian villages grew over time, with additional houses being slotted on to the ends of others as and when required. So end houses tend to be the newest houses. Ours in an end house.

At some point during the Twentieth Century, Spanish builders moved away from using rocks and began building houses with bricks. And bricks used in Spain are very different from the solid housebricks found in the UK. ‘Spanish’ bricks have a thickish outer layer and a honeycomb-like centre. In other words, they are full of holes! It’s great for threading cables through, but it does make the bricks much lighter and more fragile than their English counterparts. The ‘open to the atmosphere’ nature of Spanish bricks makes it essential that they are protected by a thick outer layer of concrete …… or so we thought ……

Now, our house, being a more-recent additon to the street, is built from bricks (apart from the wall which is actually our neighbour’s wall anyway); single-walled of course, the way village houses are built here. When we purchased the house the bricks on the side and back walls had not been concreted over, so one of the top priorities on our ‘to do’ list was to get them rendered with white, weather-proof concrete. The white stuff went off the list as our ‘builders’ decided to use ordinary concrete instead, but we supposed that it was ok and at least it had been done.

What we didn’t take into account, however, was that the bricks are also ‘honeycombed’ to let air circulate wthin them. Open to the atmosphere, they take in the heat but can also expel it. But when those bricks are concreted over it is a different matter.

For the last couple of weeks, the temperature here has risen above 100 degrees most days. In the early morning the sun rises to the back of the house and the only walls affected are to the rear bedroom and the roof terrace. In any case, at that time of the day it is only about 80 degrees! But as the sun creeps around, it hits the side wall of our bedroom. By 4pm we have what can only be described as ‘hot walls’. And they are really hot! The heat has nowhere to go. Opening windows just brings in more hot air. Sitting in our bedroom without the air con running would be like slowly cooking in an oven. It could even be fatal. Thank god for air conditioning! If it ever fails during the summer months we will probably have to camp out in our living room, eating ice cream, or even move in with our neighbours!

Of course, bricks covered with concrete provide good insulation for Andalucian mountain village winters, which can get bitter cold. The trouble is that compared to summers, winters here are relatively short.

We have much still to learn about living in Spain, but one of the things we have learned, to our cost, is this: always employ a Spanish builder. He knows his area and what he needs to do the job. British builders, with their insistence on using ‘Brit techniques’ together with cheap Spanish building materials, haven’t got a clue!

(via No me lo puedo creer!)