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I have just had an offer excepted on a town house in Bomba and we need to do the electrics & put in heating do you have any tips for me from your expperiences.

Congratulations on making such a good choice. No doubt by now you have discovered that the one headache in Abruzzo is the dialect or rather the dialects. At get togethers with neighbours we can barely understand one word in ten at times, then we travel to Bologna and discover that we can understand and be understood.

We're over by Teramo on the edge of Gran' Sasso, I take it from your post that you are deeper inside one of the national parks?

[QUOTE=debbieb]I have just had an offer excepted on a town house in Bomba and we need to do the electrics & put in heating do you have any tips for me from your expperiences.[/QUOTE]
We had help from an electrician to install new consumer unit and trip switches, plus advice, then had a local handyman come and work through the process with us. The system is different from UK obviously, but in some ways is more logical (or at least it was for us non-experts!). It does involve taking lots of individual wires through either surface conduit and/or plastic pipe laid into the walls. In our case, to keep costs down, we used the exisiting pipes and sometimes this meant reducing the number of sockets we could have because we couldn't physically fit the wires in! However, we also bought everthing ourselves (from Castorama and local ferrementar) so we knew what our costs were. Of course, if you have any doubts I would suggest you use a professional or at least get it checked at the end! We are on a very tight budget so we really couldn't afford to pay an electrician to do it all. As for heating, again we used a plumber to install the caldaia (boiler) but we bought this and all the pipes, connectors etc ourselves from his list. We have a friend who has a building business and got stuff at trade prices. You have to have a certificate to show your boiler was properly installed so make sure the plumber gives you all the paperwork, and then get it checked every year. Again, the ½ûÂþÌìÌÃs use a different system for radiators as a rule, which involves lots more pipes as each radiator has two pipes (one to it and one back). If you have 8 radiators you have to accommodate 16 pipes somewhere .... These are all connected to a coliatore, which looks like a candleabra, and this is connected to the boiler. However, you could use the UK system if you prefer - we have seen that in some places.

Hi all - we have recently purchased a holiday property in Civitella Messer Raimondo, Chieti, Abruzzo - as we are new to the area can anyone suggest picturesque villages, areas we can visit.

Appreciate the advice,
Ciao
Mark

[QUOTE=markwon]Hi all - we have recently purchased a holiday property in Civitella Messer Raimondo, Chieti, Abruzzo - as we are new to the area can anyone suggest picturesque villages, areas we can visit.
[/QUOTE]

Chieti, very picturesque.

You do not have to go far. Villa Santa Maria is beautiful and world renown for its cooking school: [url]http://abruzzo2000.com/abruzzo/chieti/villasantamaria.htm[/url]

[url]http://www.angelfire.com/film/casale[/url]

Hi

Did we meet in the Restaurant by the lake in June when you and your wife we having lunch with Guisy?I was with Angel another HAI scout.

If not forget it if yes sorry about the Scottish comment.We finally bought a house near Manoppello.I found a great site on Civitella,lots of intersting old photos from last 100 years.look in 'general chat' and 'intersing' web sites.

Becky

Hi we also have a place in Abruzzo. Where are you????