The most famous slogan for the Costa Calida is that the sun shines for at least 300 days. Not a word lied to. The sky is clear blue almost every day, not the gloomy cloudy weather that we often have in the UK. Now it is fortunately not the case that it only rains for the remaining days. No, a day of rain is really a rarity. I think it rains for 10 days, sometimes no more than a drizzle. But about once a year the “gota fría” comes, or the “cold drop”. In the late summer or early autumn, the still warm, moist Mediterranean sea air from the East collides with the already cooling Atlantic ocean air from the West (source: Wikipedia). Then it can really go wrong. Then a rain cloud literally falls down in one go. The result can be that 500 mm of rain falls in 24 hours (for comparison: in the UK an average of 700 mm falls in a whole year).
This was again the case in September 2019. It was also the worst gota fría in 140 years. The low area between Alicante, Murcia and Cartagena was completely blank. There were six deaths and 3500 people were evacuated. It is a bit strange when you arrive in Alicante and see the photos of flooded highways and parking places on Facebook. It was even questionable whether we could reach the Country Club. With a little luck, the highway there was accessible in the afternoon. In Mazarrón it turned out to have been better than expected. There was no more to see than some extra rain puddles. Now it became clear why everywhere there are those dry deep channels. At the Country Club there are a number and also on the road from the highway to the sea at Bolnuevo you see one. Just after the gota fría those channels suddenly became rivers.
The area is hilly. There are also considerable differences in height at the Country Club. When the soil is dry it absorbs little water and the water has to go somewhere. With rain you not only get the water that falls to you, but also all the water from higher ground. So even with a small rain shower it can quickly become a hefty stream. So you have to take that into account when building a house. For example, think of walls as boundary barriers so that the house/garden do net get blank because of a mud slide. It is also important that what stays outside can go away. We are for example at the bottom of the mountain. That is why a 24 cm drain pipe has been placed under our entire plot at the lowest point to allow the water that comes from above to drain away from below.
Rising damp With so many days of sunshine you would expect that moisture is not a problem in Spain. Nothing is less true. Because of the construction with a lot of plaster, you see the problems of rising damp in many places. We have also heard some horror stories from homeowners who had to repair everything after a year of completion. Apparently the builder has not complied with the norm. The problem is that it is difficult to structurally solve this after construction. This is exactly where you see the difference between a good builder and the person who only builds optically beautiful houses.
Building in Spain is different than building in the UK. They don’t know bricks. Everything is built with concrete, concrete blocks and red bricks. You don’t see that because everything is finished with a thick layer of plaster. Fortunately, our contractor makes the standard choice for quality. He sometimes even goes one step further than our architect (and building supervisor) wants. We see that reflected in choices and materials used. But more about that later.