Your thoughts, advice and recommendations

Hi everybody, I wonder if someone could help me. I am in the process of buying a property near Arboleas and would like to install a burgular alarm and wood burner fire. Firstly the alarm, do I buy or do I rent ? is it best to go with a company that has it's own security people for repid response ?  Secondly the fire, is it best to go with a wood burner ? or a wood pellet ? or a multi. your thoughts would be gratefully received, and your recommendations considered.

many thanks

Seashells

I would put central heating in !!!! It's cold, cold, cold in winter.

Regarding alarm, would find out what other people are useing at go on the best personal recomendation, wood is expensive here, so pellets better although stove to burn will cost you more, or like other said central heating wood be nice, as its very cold when you get used to heat during summer,

Hi,

I can't help with alarms, all I can say is get a dog.

Have a look for a stove with a back boiler, ours is a Hunter, it runs up to 10 rads. and give us a tank of hot water too. I've never seen one here, ours came from the UK.

Regards, Febe

Thank you everybody for your thougts and ideas. I have heard of a company called Securitas for the alarm, has anybody got a contract with them, if so what do you think.

Hi;

Like febe and esteban I cannot comment about an alarm system; I know there is one National company who advertise on Spanish TV; the cost runs out at 99 Euros initially then about 1 Euro per day, making the overall cost in the first year something in the region of 450 Euros...which strikes me as being rather expensive. Especially as you would still have to cover the cost of building and contents insurance. But...do you really need a burglar alarm? The presence of a box outside the house is normally an advertisement that there is something within worth stealing...and may act as a temptation...

If you are over here full time (and this is just my personal opinion) it's a waste of money and if you are going to use the property as a holiday home theres not a lot you can do in the event of a break-in if you are 2000 Kms away!  Inland areas are generally trouble free and the neighbours will look out for you.

But if it gives you contentment or peace of mind then fair enough; personally, I've got 4 dogs... !!!!!

On the subject of heating; we have a wood burner and at times its like stoking the Flying Scotsman and about as expensive too. Unless you can get a contract with a supplier you are likely to be paying around 3 to 4 euros for 10Kgs. and you can easily burn that in a couple of hours.

However...he are a couple of links to wood burning stove suppliers...this one is UK based, this one in Spain on the Costa Brava South, both have been extremely helpful to me in the past.

Also, there is a company that advertises in one of the Granada freebies that might be able to help.

They are here. Don't know anything about them but they do specialise in pellet fires. We had a Spanish architect visit our house on a totally unrelated matter and when he saw our wood burner, he suggested going over to a pellet burning and it seems there are grants available for people in Andalucia. We haven't investigated this so cannot comment...

Hope this helps a little.

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Hi

I cannot comment on alarm systems either. We have two big dogs. Soft as soap but the burglars do not know this.

We thought about wood fires but after much discussion neither of us wanted to clean out the ashes. We settled for oil central heating and we heat the whole house for about the same as our friends who  warm one room with a wood burner.

To give an idea of costs, our system runs 11 rads and cost us almost 400 Euro to fill our 600 litre tank.  Our friends are now on their 4th ton of wood at 110 Euros per ton.

Jean

Just one thing with dogs, robos are now useing sonic guns too pascify them as they do the jobs.