Water accion available?

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Wilson25
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Water accion available?

Postby Wilson25 » Fri Feb 21, 2020 3:59 pm

We have a holiday home in the Torrox/Competa campo. Water is currently metered via our builders water supply (Patamalara) but we would very much like to have our own accion. Does anyone know of any for sale?

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spanish_lad
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby spanish_lad » Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:27 pm

I think you are asking for your own water supply ? Is the "builders" supply a black pipe dangling along the street etc?

Is the house a new build ?

I would recomend going to the office in Torrox Pueblo, and asking them about your own supply - but without a bit more information none of us can really help ?

If the water meter and piping to the house all looks "normal / standard" then I would suggest that the builder is your supplier? It might well be written into your contract that you have to buy water from them for x amount of years ?
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Wilson25
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby Wilson25 » Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:43 pm

Thanks Spanish Lad for your reply. When we bought the house in 2007 we had a water contract with the builder so that he would supply the house with water from his Patamalara supply. We have a connection hose from the main supply with a meter and we pay him each year. There are other neighbours with this arrangement from the same builder and when everyone is using water at the same time there is no water pressure.
We would prefer to have our own water accion for the house in our names. We have been in touch with the guy from Patamalara at Torrox pueblo but there were no accions for sale at the time. Just wondered if anyone had heard of friends/neighbours looking to sell their water accion.

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spanish_lad
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby spanish_lad » Sat Feb 22, 2020 12:55 am

Sorry thats totally lost me? Whats a water accion?

Normally water is supplied by a big company (is it patamalara in torrox now?) , and comes directly to your house, from them, under the road, then theres a water meter outside your gate. The pipework from the meter into the house belongs to you, anything on the 'outside' of the meter is down to them if it leaks or anything. You get the bill in the post for water usage per m2 and a small charge for their maintainance/equipment.

Ive never heard of buying a water supply from a neibour?

Is it a campo house or a town house ?

If theres space in the house / garden, and theres no spare supplys avaliable (ridiculous, if a group of houses is bought they must have water, surely?) Then the only option is to fit a tank with a pressure pump, which is filled from your shared supply.
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fincalospinos
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby fincalospinos » Sat Feb 22, 2020 9:18 am

[*Sorry thats totally lost me? Whats a water accion?]

It is a share of a water supply situated on the hill by Pavo Real bar on Competa/Torrox road.

It is owned and administered by Patamalara, a company based in Torrox Pueblo.

When we bought our first house in the area, 1 "Accion" entitled you to 70,000 ltrs a week, and the cost per accion in those days was around 1,500,000 Pesetas ( approx 10K euros. You also had to pay to lay the pipes from the nearest Patamalara supply pipe to your own property.
The cost of the actual water that you used was very cheap, and I believe, remains so.

Later on, they reduced the weekly amount of water pre accion to 35,000 ltrs / week, and again around 10 years ago to 17500 ltrs/ week. This was deemed sufficient for a normal villa with a garden.
This meant that people with the original larger accions could split the amounts and sell them off as an independant accion, and I understand that these are making similar money to the original cost.
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olive
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby olive » Sat Feb 22, 2020 9:58 am

I am not surprised that those 17500 accions are sub divided. Our water company surcharges usage over 3800 a week.

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Wicksey
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby Wicksey » Sat Feb 22, 2020 4:15 pm

We have a similar arrangement with a neighbouring landowner who originally owned ours and our neighbour's land. We both have contracts with him for 17.500l pw (he is also with Patamalara). I do find it a pain not being in control of our own water supply but as the OP found, there are no accions/half accions for sale. Even if you do find one you also need to pay for the connection to the nearest meter point which may be some distance away, plus you really need your own deposto as the water is only on a few times a week, our's seems to be at the weekend and one day during the week. It would cost about 10k I think all in.

Is there anywhere you can build your own deposito or buy a large plastic one that you can have above your house so you have natural pressure? It would certainly be a cheaper and easier option. I guess the builder you buy your water from must have a holding tank somewhere, (as in our case our neighbour has a 350m3 tank up on the hill above us), so maybe that's why there's not a lot of pressure when everyone is using it. It would take more than our lifetime to make any savings by having our own accion so we shall continue paying the neighbour for the water which is really cheap.
fincalospinos wrote: Later on, they reduced the weekly amount of water pre accion to 35,000 ltrs / week, and again around 10 years ago to 17500 ltrs/ week. This was deemed sufficient for a normal villa with a garden.
As I understood it the Patamalara system is supposed to be for farmers and not meant for houses. It is not treated drinking water and meant for irrigation. Paco the water man used to be really rude to a friend if he complained there were problems with the supply to his house.

Wilson25
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby Wilson25 » Sat Feb 22, 2020 5:36 pm

Thanks very much for your input. Fincalospinos - you have explained perfectly. Wicksey - we have 2 small plastic depositos and a pump but may be better investing in a much larger deposito. The problems are obviously more apparent in the summer (with plants and fruit trees to water) and everyone taking more water at the same time.
It also occurred to us that if anything happened to the builder where would we stand with water supplies. Anyway probably best not dwell on that now and try to increase our holding supply.
Thanks again everyone.

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Wicksey
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby Wicksey » Sun Feb 23, 2020 3:09 pm

Wilson25 wrote: It also occurred to us that if anything happened to the builder where would we stand with water supplies.
We do have a contract with our water supplying neighbour. It was with the escritura when we bought the house and our gestoria asked him to come with us to her office to do a new one, so we do have something in writing.

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fincalospinos
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby fincalospinos » Mon Feb 24, 2020 8:19 am

[*As I understood it the Patamalara system is supposed to be for farmers and not meant for houses. It is not treated drinking water and meant for irrigation. Paco the water man used to be really rude to a friend if he complained there were problems with the supply to his house.]

.Wicksey you are correct, these accions were originaly for agricultural use, hence the 70.000ltrs / week, but as land was sold off for building villas, usualy in plot sizes of around 5000 sq mtrs, Patamalara realised that there was no need for this amount of water. This is why they started to split the accions into smaller amounts.

The supply used to be on for 4 - 5 days / week, so a storage tank is important. In the 20 years that we had access to the water supply, I can only remember one or two problems with supply, and apart from when the main pump had to be replaced, it was usualy running again within a week. So anyone taking on a supply, make certain that your storage tank would hold enough water for a week at least.

The water is untreated, and is fine for showering, household use etc, it is not advisable to drink it. The water is also hard and therefore a build up of cal in pipes can be a problem if not cleaned regularly. We fitted a salt based softener between the deposito and the house to reduce this.
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spanish_lad
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby spanish_lad » Tue Feb 25, 2020 4:24 pm

wow, well there you go. Something that I didnt know about!

It seems like a crazy situation, especially for that cost?

I´d be fitting gutters and drains all over the place and having my own tanks on my land instead of paying out all that money.
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Wicksey
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Re: Water accion available?

Postby Wicksey » Tue Feb 25, 2020 5:06 pm

We did at our first house that didn't have any available water supply. The difference was in those days we used to have very wet winters and easily collected enough water to last us about 8 (careful) months (lovely and soft without cal too). Then we had to have water deliveries over the summer which, even 20 years ago, were about 90€ a tankful of 10m3.

If you buy a house with an accion or the sort of agreement that the OP and myself have, then it isn't expensive, it's just that if you want to buy the accion it can be several thousand euros then you have the additional costs on top already mentioned. Out here in campo-land there isn't any choice for many of us as there is no treated drinking water supply, only agricultural, or you have to sink a borehole which in itself is another expense without any guarantee of success.


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