Will our walls fall down?

The many plumbers have gone and the electrician is free to work in peace. He takes his work very seriously, constantly thinking about our future needs. Although we’ve said no to TV and telephone, he’s left us the junction boxes and an embedded tube up the roof so we could later put in cables from aerials/satellite dishes without having to open the wall again. Probably a good thing – if an Italian buys this house it’s unlikely they’ll share our taste for new technology and no TV!

Roscoe is not the flavour of the month with the electrician. Just after the cable tubes were cemented into place, the new high definition cable arrived from Hong Kong. And its ends were too chunky for the tube! Normally an electrician could attach the ends of a cable after feeding it through, but this HDMI technology is highly protected against piracy – designed to stop anyone interfering! The only option was to put in yet another tube double the size of the others.

(On the subject of new technology, we’ve been downheartened to hear that broadband is unlikely ever to reach the village. Both my local phone shop expert and computer mechanic are of the opinion that even a low quality of ADSL would cost too much to bring to our village, where few people would want it. More encouraging news, a neighbour has mentioned using UMTS, a kind of high speed internet that uses a mobile as a modem. I’m currently using EDGE, which is half the speed of UMTS and frustratingly slow, but sure to cover all of Italy. UMTS is not everywhere, and there are no 24/7 packages, but would probably still suit us better. We’ll need to do some tests with our neighbour’s phone around our house!)

With all this futureproofing, plus our current cabling needs, and all the pipes for the radiators, our walls are looking distinctly patchy! Normally pipes and cables could go under floor tiles, but our floors are made of beautiful old tiles that would fall apart if lifted. The workmen were given a strict injunction not to touch them. Which is needed, given that this is Italy and everyone is tearing out old features and putting in nice modern marble...

The men do seem to share our concerns about drilling into the supporting walls. Our main toilet cistern is not able to be, as planned, encased in the wall. I was not happy to hear that our only option was to have it overhead, as in Victorian loos. This rules out the Geberit two-button, water-saving flush – so a bit less environmentally friendly too.

Meanwhile the one pipe that’s not encased is the gas pipe. They have to be exposed in case of leaks. And given that the oven is at the far extreme of the house from the gas meter, this means a lot of visible pipe both on the front of the house and inside. Had I realised, I would have paid a bit extra to have gas coming in from the relevant side of the house.

Ah well, I’ll know next time!

Over to you, readers, a request: do you know of Geberit-type flush plates (the two-button plate for a wall-encased cistern) that aren’t big and ugly? It’s for our guest loo. Or indeed, for our main loo, flush mechanisms that can go with an overhead cistern but that are environmentally friendly?