Update

Tim is still slaving away at work so it has been left to me to post a few words.

Building is going slowly as it is entirely cash dependent but at least the roof is now insulated so the heating can turned on.

Our fantastic builder installed a large rusty wood burner into the living room of the part of the house that is habitable so at the moment all is toasty but we have already had a week of snow so I can tell you that I wasn't looking forward to the next few months without working radiators. With an electric fan, I am able to transfer some of the heat into the bedroom and the kitchen although the temperature differences remain high. At the moment it is about 30C in the living room and 8-9C in the bathroom.

As you probably know, when you use ground source heating, the temperature that eventually reaches the radiators is much lower than we Brits are used to from our gas/electric heating. Usually you have to install much larger radiators and/or underfloor heating. This will mean that whilst the heating - on this side of the house - in our standard sized radiators will be effective for most of the winter (especially as heat loss takes longer through metre thick walls) I will probably still need to use the wood burner when the temperature really drops.

Some of the plaster boarding is also completed. Our builders have curved the apex of the ceiling in the master bedroom and it is going to look beautiful when finished. Unfortunately, it took so long to complete this feature that we have had to make the decision that the other rooms will have to be boarded in a more straightforward fashion to save time/money.

Tim plans to share some of the photos of what was our garden at some point. I am glad that its winter as there isnt a blade of grass that survived the ground pump digging. We ended up with 6 x 90m bore holes (hit water 3 times!!) which were then connected via pipes buried 2m in huge trenches.

Oh well - we are in this for the long haul...

Mysi

So we saw a mouse (mys)…

Tried to explain to Spike – please bear in mind that he is a Min-Pin and was therefore bread as a “ratter” – that he should catch and kill all small moving things. Most especially, we have tried to re-instill this killing instinct in relation to anything that runs across the living room floor or that jumps out of our kitchen cupboards. It hasn’t worked. In fact our not so bright hound is usually totally unaware when the little critters are eating out of his food bowl or running around behind his back. On the odd occasion that he spots one of the little monsters creeping about, he wags his tails and chases it in a sad effort to find a new friend!!!

By the time we saw the third mouse, we realized that there was a bit of a problem. OK, so we have lived in old houses before so I was prepared with the poison. The problem with poison is that it doesn’t kill the mys immediately. This leads to the unsettling problem of finding (or worse, Spike finding) small critter staggering around in the final throws. The worry that said dog might suddenly decide that dead poisoned mys might provide a tasty snack put an end to the poison stations.

Everyone said “get a cat”!

Our builder provided the second solution. He arrived one day with 5 of those spring loaded death traps and advice about potato. Apparently potato is the ideal bait….

No it isn’t, and neither is chocolate or anything else that I found in the fridge. In fact the little critters seemed to prefer Spikes food above all else and Spike didn’t seem to mind sharing at all. So dog food was the solution. The problem with dried dog food is that it doesn’t stick to the trap. In the first few cases the bait was taken and the traps remained set. So, I tied the bait to the hook – little buggers weren’t going to get it off without a struggle.

Of course, I hadn’t quite prepared for the first success. Spike saw it before I did! The trap had not worked exactly to plan and the mys was still writhing in it. Whilst I can usually cope with most things – I am after all a trained medical professional! – the sight of a spasming little mouse being harassed by an excited little dog was too much and I did the “girly” thing and ran out to find a man who dispatched the thing with a large boot.

Again, everyone said “get a cat”!

I sent a text to all English speaking friends to ask where it might be possible to find a “mys killing” fiend of a cat and was instantly besieged with messages and locations.

The next day my Czech friend and I visited a farmhouse. On entry the little girl of the owner presented me with a dangly little 8 week old ginger kitten who immediately became part of the family.

Oz is cuddly, cute and relentless. You should see him and Spike play together – no-one could have foreseen this strange bond occurring. When they are not rolling around on the floor play fighting, they are sharing Spikes food or curled up together in his bed licking each others faces.

And the mice…..

Well, we still see the occasional mys but now that Oz is the grand old age of 12 weeks the critter is usually very dead and soon becomes one with cat. Why is it that when we kill a mouse we feel inhumane and guilty but when our littlist boy does it we feel like proud parents!

Will post some photos when TOH brings back the camera cable!

Mushrooms

According to our lovely heating engineer “Mushroom picking is a competitive sport in the Czech Republic”.

He is right you know! As you drive along the back roads at ridiculous times of the early morning you can already see flashes of clothing through the trees as the foraging starts.

For us Brits Abroad, mushroom picking is not so much competitive as an “Extreme” sport. Bear in mind that on the whole Brits do not forage (although Hugh F-W is helping with the recent surge of interest in this area). A neighbor once turned down fresh carrots from my garden because she preferred to see what she was getting all wrapped up at Tesco. OK so we might pop down a local lane to pick blackberries but how many people actually pick the wild plums and cherries that grow locally.... not many I can tell you.... in fact whilst eating some during dog walking, I am often asked by fellow walkers whether it is safe to eat the fruit from the trees!!

Anyway I diverge. “Extreme”, yes because we Brits on the whole have absolutely no idea what we are doing when it comes to mushrooms. It is a bit like Russian Roulette for us. Our parents didn’t teach us what to look for and I guess that as children a giant puffball was there to be kicked not eaten. Over the last few months my lovely Czech friends have taken time out with me for foraging/teaching trips to various good mushroom hunting spots. So far I have managed to pick some of the most deadly specimens and also some pretty good eaters.

I have a fairly simple system to decide whether I will eat something that I have picked myself. Firstly I try to identify it in one of several mushroom books that I now own. Usually I am left with a choice of two pictures, one of a very poisonous mushroom and one of a particularly delicious mushroom – both of which appear to look the same. Then, I present the mushroom and the pictures of specimens in the book to my builder (yes, the builder – most Czech people have a pretty good understanding of mushrooms). If he says yes, I then take it to my friend Hannah who gives me a definitive answer before I cook/eat it. If he says no, I abandon the mushroom and try to remember what it looked like.

So far, I have Chanterelles in the freezer and I have dried some Boletes ready for winter stews. Of the mushrooms that need be eaten fresh the Parasol is probably the most interesting find. You fry it whole and it tastes a bit like scrambled egg but has the texture of fish (sort of!) The best thing about them is that they are kind of easy to spot because of their size. We measured the last find up against the dog (I didn’t have a tape measure with me) and just look at the size of it!!

Recent posts

Hi all,

As I started the posts a fair while ago they didn't exactly post in the right order so please take the time to go back through and re-read in case there's anything you find of interest ..., will post some more stuff soon .... its all happening, including our budget nearing crisis point so I'm off back to the North Sea for some overtime today having travelled back to the UK from CZ last night in 16hrs ...
See you soon with more updates on the build and I think 'S' has some other stuff to post on Mushrooms and Elder Flower Champagne.

cau...

Heating - a change of mind

After agreeing that we were going to go with solar heating we have changed our minds .... why??, because solar heating is proving to be expensive and not as green and energy efficient as you might think !!.

Basically, despite your solar system heating your water you will still require an electric heating system that heats your water in a storage tank during night time and low light hours. This will require an increase in your electric mains power from 12 to 34Kw. Using the building and room dimensions we calculated our energy, (electric) usage would come to nearly 20,000Kc, (over £660 per month) !!!. I am so glad I held the initial site meeting now as it was our appointed buildings engineer who ensures all works are carried out in accordance with the authorised plans that raised the issue. Without asking he went away and did some of his own calculations and advised us against it. Turns out he was looking to do the same to his own property until he found out about about geothermal heating and ground pumps and has had the system fitted to his property. We went to visit and its very impressive. Ive attached some pics of the system as you can see. We have since had a survey completed and are looking to go this way. Despite the outlay being a little more that the solar system we are looking at a considerable overall cost reduction with a limitless source of heating ....

We have now engaged an engineering company to do the geothermal, (ground source) installations and they recently arrived on site and started installing all the pipework ...

Window problems

(above computer animated image)

Prior to submitting your final plans to the local planning office its a good idea to make contact with them to tell them your intentions. We have done this via our 'girl in krumlov' and have explained to them our intentions and exactly what we want to do. Up to now they have been very helpful as far as explaining what we need to do and which things we need to be compliant with. Turns out we are in a conservation area so need to be sympathetic to our surroundings. We showed our window plans to the office and explained how many we intended to fit in order to provide a sufficient amount of light in the new bedrooms. They were given the ok so based on this we obtained quotes and agreed a company to do the fittings for us. Unfortunately it turns out that the person who initially agreed our plans has since left the Krumlov planning office and their replacement informed us that we had to reduce the amount of windows we intended on installing. This was based on the fact that despite the fact you would see no structural changes to the roof from the street you could see them on the inside of the courtyard from the main road as you pass the village, (from about 1/2 K away, on a good day if your really paying attention !!!, we think some politics going on). Potentially there could be major isues with this ... no windows no light in our new rooms. We were then told we could have them visible from the street instead ??!!. If we had known this before we would have done it this way so had to revise our plans at additional cost. Our architect has been great about all our changes, (he is also a member of the historical society) so did this for a minimal cost. We have had the plans re-submitted along with all the rest of our building permissions and finally recieved the final papers and approval a couple of weeks ago. We have done all we have been asked to do, (again with Czech help) so all should be fine. Prior to final approval we were told that we could start some of the work so long as it didn't effect any of the structure so the builder started work waterproofing and lining the roof as no weatherproof membrane had been previously fitted. Building works have since commenced with a fervour .... including some feets of extraordinary engineering .. ( the beam was huge!!!! ..400kgs) ... I think I'll entitle that one 'Health and Safety' ... but thats another post.

Exchange rates - important

Money is always going to be a big deal when buying / renovating abroad ....

When we bought the house in 2007 the exchange rate was 41.5 Ck to the Pound, we recently bought Ck's for as low as 27.50 .... our last transfer which was a pretty large amount we managed to get 30.45. Hopefully the market will pick up again but with the interntional monetary crisis the market is slow although there have been some improvements. With exchange rates so bad it can't be helping the tourist industry which Krumlov so relies upon.

You will need to consider how you are going to get your money from the UK in CZ. We did this using either one of 2 ways, ...
1) hand carrying sterling and exchanging it once we got over which means you need to shop around to get the best deal .... locally the best appears to be Petra Tour s.r.o no. 4 Karla street in Cesky Budejovice which is about a 1/2 hour drive from Krumlov but you can also go to Pilzen or Prague but that involves a fair trip from Krumlov.
or
2) using an International Money transfer company ... you really need to shop around with these to get the best rates and when you have all the rates you need to palm them off against each other to see if you can get an even better deal. You can try the following ...
http://www.hifx.co.uk/, http://www.moneycorp.com/ or http://www.currenciesdirect.com/uk/ .... these seem to be the best. One thing to be sure of is that you have a Czech bank account and also be aware your bank may charge you for transfering to them from the UK !!?? sounds daft but most seem to do so, up to 1000Ck+. When you do your deal with the exchange company make sure that they will cover any of those costs. Basically follow the process as described at http://moneysavingexpert.com ..... good luck.