Chapuza? Shocking! Testing Spanish Healthcare...

The flat has so many hacks that when we bought the place, the plumber we brought in said "es una chapuza!", it's a hack, a bodge. And the more we start to fix it up, the more we understand, the more we agree. It's beautiful to look at, but it's frankly amazing the electrical wiring hasn't burned the place down already.

Like most apartment buildings we've seen, there are light- and air-shafts in the center of the building that bring in light and air into interior rooms. It ain't much, but we have a frosted glass window in the shower that opens into a shaft; we get a little light, but can open it and get a bit of cross ventilation with the mass of exterior glass doors.  

But -- oh, boy -- that shaft has been cluttered over the decades with ducts, wiring, air conditioner compressor plumbing, water pipes, etc. And our previous owner had a thing for electric ... uh... effects. In addition to the under-wall and under-bed LED color-changing disco lights, he wired a high-intensity halogen light in the light shaft outside the window: you turn on the bathroom light, and the frosted window is blasted by 1000W of light. Fortunately, it burned out years ago, so I wanted to remove it.  

I'm an electrical engineer, renovated a 100 year old DC row house, and feel comfortable with wiring, even foreign 230VAC systems. Turn off the wall switch, unmount the lamp, carefully pull each wire (in case they're not really on the switch), then I tested the hot, neutral, and ground: all zero volts as I expected. But then ZAP! I got a nasty shock as I was cutting the wires. WTF?  I can only imagine that most electricians are not barefoot, standing in a wet shower stall, which is grounded to the building plumbing. Exciting, to be sure; fortunately, not fatal.

The good thing is that we noticed a water supply ball valve, which was half closed. Ball valves are great devices, but they are always fully open or fully closed. We took a chance and turned this one off, and didn't hear anyone else in the building screaming. We then tried our sink: nada; nada in the bathroom, nada in la cocina -- we'd discovered the shutoff valve to our apartment!  This is great, because we have to get a new water heater installed and they'll need this.

We spent yesterday trying to disentangle about 100 meters of mixed speaker wire from the bedroom surround system, which ran parallel with line voltage that had been hacked into the headboard, the wall, the ceiling, and on and on. After a full day, we still were not able to puzzle out where the source of power came from, and where it went to.  In Spain, green/yellow is ground, blue is neutral, and brown or gray are hot (switched and unswitched, I think). Then I found one a blue and black pair that had been cut: it must be unused, I naively thought I brought out the volt meter; another WTF moment, it was hot with about 10VDC -- DC!  We decided it was "the hour of vermouth" and to look at it later when our shipment of household goods arrives with a "fox and hound" tool to trace the wires. 

We have to return the renter's deposit, but our realty firm said we should deduct the cost of repairing the front door entry knob that he'd pulled out of the door. Spanish door knobs aren't like US models: they're hefty hunks of round metal mounted to the center of the door that you use to pull it closed -- the lock is separate. They have a threaded rod that runs through the door and is captured by a nut on the inside, very straight forward. But our previous owner, in his high-design low-practicality manner, mounted a piece of glass -- with adhesive! -- to the inside of the door, so the knob hardware couldn't pierce the door and glass, and it wouldn't tolerate the pressure of a nut. It looks, like so much here, to have been held in with an excess of adhesive.  Time for me to hack his chapuza.

I got a stack of different sized washers -- 30 cents from a ferreteria that entertained us pantomiming "washer" -- started to carve out the glue to make a clean connection. On my first cut, I sliced quickly and deeply through my left finger. Blood everywhere. It wouldn't stop. I didn't hit bone but it sure looked really bad. 

After some web searching and calls to our Spanish insurance company, we were told to go to the same place that Irene went in 2019 for a badly twisted ankle. We took a 20 minute cab ride (7€) to the 24x7 hospital, showed them my insurance card and shiny new residence permit, and were given a number. The doctor saw us, pronounced it "superficial", and applied "paper stitches" (basically a porous Bandaid) and told me to keep it dry for four days. I felt like such a hypochondriac but glad I didn't need stitches. 

As with Irene's visit, after being seen, we just ... walked ... out... the... door. No forms to fill out; no co-pay; no credit card; we will never hear about disputed charges or unauthorized procedures. You cannot believe what a relief this is, especially when you're already traumatized and thinking about other things. Americans: you really need to experience this -- seriously.