growinspain

A small voltage solar panel does not need the sun. If you have a light on a timer inside your home ( a good deterrent) this could be used to maintain the battery.

missile

My suggestion is to fit a hidden isolation valve after the water meter and breaker between the external meter and the fuse box.

Jon-Bxl

We discussed this earlier, I suggested it as a possible solution.

But there could be a safety or legal issue around it, though I am not sure. There are many homes that are empty and no services available until a buyer takes over.... So it seems like a similar situation ....

Jon

Jon

missile

It was I who suggested it, see my post No 24
Do you think a squatter who broke into a home would stay if he found there was no water or electricity?
Do you think he/ she could make a successful legal challenge to force the owner to connect the supply?

Jon-Bxl

It was unintentional if you feel I was nicking your 'credit'. I'll happily concede, without checking, that you thought about it first re isolating supplies.

​​​​​​I dont know what to 'think' of this squatter rights issue - as it came as a huge surprise to the level of rights they have, e.g the legal manipulation of the rules (eg multiple changing of lawyers to extend the stay), organised crime examples, even the illegality of cutting off payments to close down the supplies (thus having us to pay for their usage).... and the possible safety/legal rules of isolating supplies. It goes on.

I started this thread as I heard there was a new problem of squatters in CE, and in the long past, decades, I knew squatters in the UK, but I didn't know the situation in Spain. Thanks to very interesting posts ... I have a better idea... Though remain surprised...some squatters seem capable of many things, practical and legal....

Jon

DOWNANDOUT

On my thread 'Tenant Eviction Nightmare 2' , one of the posters mentioned that if you have a smart meter at your property you can request the 'Potencia' to be very low (maybe 1.1kwh or less). You will not be cutting off the supply (which is illegal) but reducing the capability of squatters to ramp up the debt you would be liable to pay in between the 1-2 years it would take to go through the courts to evict them.

I'm going to check it out with 'Curenergia' to see if I can reduce the 'Potencia ' to some very low Kwh ( maybe enough to turn on 1 light for a few hours). This should deter squatters from staying in the property if they ever gain entrance.

Curenergia have informed me that if the supply is disconnected it cannot be reconnected without the wiring tested to meet some European standard for safety and efficiency. Therefore if your property is quite old (ours was built in 1960) then it would likely fail this test and you'd have to pay for rewiring (which I assume can be quite expensive).

growinspain

1 light is 9watts (led) so they would have to run over 1000 of them to trip the breaker and when that happens all they need to do is flip it back to it's on position.
We have 6-something and sometimes we trip ours, water heater(2000w), oven(2000w) and a heater(2000w). The LED bulbs on thru out the apartment then trip the breaker. We turn off one of them and flip it back on.
1000 or 1100 watts is still livable with a gas bottle for heating water and stove top cooking.

Spain has been very easy to come to for almost any nationality for a long time now and I guess you would be returning to the island and are double jabbed so returning to see the apartment first hand should be a big priority.

DOWNANDOUT

That's quite a lot of light bulbs but see below what the energy company sent me and they say its enough to turn one light bulb on (but I suspect it wouldn't be a low energy LED). Not sure what you mean when you say all they have to do is flip it back on. Our property is a flat in a building block so uncertain how they could just flip it back on.

I didn't think about gas bottles and stove top cooking but I suspect its possible for them to do that, but at least they'd have to pay and not us. Do you think 0.5kw is too low for a squatter to live there?
---------------------------------------------------
Your meter is remotely managed, it sends the reading to the distributor directly.

As for the power, there is no limit, if you want you can go down to 0.500Kw, you can only turn on a light bulb, the amount for lowering the power is € 9.044760 + VAT. But during this year, until 05/30/2022 downloading twice will be free.

Raising the power has a cost that is:

Extension rights € 17.37 kW x contracted power + VAT

Down payment rights € 9.044760 + VAT.

Access rights € 19.70 x contracted power + VAT

Mark604

"Not sure what you mean when you say all they have to do is flip it back on."
When the system is overloaded the breaker switch flicks off. You just disconnect the device that is causing the overload and flick the switch back on to restore your electric. It's just a switch, up and down.

DOWNANDOUT

But does each apartment in building blocks have these breaker switches?

Mark604

You would expect so, otherwise if there was a problem in one apartment the whole building or set of a apartments would lose power. That's not a normal situation.

bitmanev

yes something like this as the smart meter will adjust the max current by the provider will do that remotely

growinspain

Yes, the old ones just had a changeable fuse in the interior easily gotten into and looking like new when finished.
A friend in Holland - 20 years ago always had one in the car, backpack just in case they wanted a squat or to have a get together.
The rules in Holland used to be for the squatters and it was so easy... Probably not now.

DOWNANDOUT

This example of what squatters did to a Norwegian couple's holiday home made me really angry (look at the 30+ photos of what the scumbags did to their property). I thought our experience was bad (ie. 4 yrs to get our tenant squatter out) but this is far worse.

Spain is gaining a terrible reputation abroad - Terrazas del Rodeo (terrazas-del-rodeo.com)

DOWNANDOUT

Ok - apologies - just being over exuberant