More road works in our area

It's more than seven years ago that builders started digging up roads in Larnaca (and, we assume, other towns around Cyprus) in order to instal the new sewage pipes. The ones for storm drainage seem to have taken effect, and despite an extremely wet winter we have not seen any flooded streets in our neighbourhood.

Our street had its pipes installed in September 2011. Richard asked one of the builders when they expected the houses to be connected to the massive new mains drainage system, and was told, 'about five years'. He thought, at first, that the builder (whose English was not entirely fluent) had mistaken the period, and meant 'months'. I was more cynical. I reckoned five years was probably an optimistic estimate.

It turned out that I was right. Five years later, we had heard nothing. It wasn't until this time about a year ago that we received our official letter telling us that we needed to get our septic tank sealed, and the connections made so that we could be joined to the main drainage. The letter was all in somewhat complex Greek, but Google Translate is pretty good these days, and I can type Greek almost as fast as I type in English.

The main part of the letter said (in translation):

Please be advised that the sewer council of Larnaka (SAL) has completed the construction of the drainage system in your area and you can proceed with the connection of your premises after first submitting a request and obtaining the required permit. The application should be submitted on the attached form.

The SAL undertakes that the construction license will be issued as soon as possible, meaning that the application will be complete and accompanied by all required documents and documents. Then, with your own contractor and on the basis of the license you secure, build the private construction of your building. The Technical Inspector of the SAL will carry out an on-the-spot check on your contractor's (or your own) presence as soon as possible after your call. If the private building sub-building meets the technical specifications of the SAL, the Technical Inspector will issue the consent to link your property to the sewerage system.

Submitting an ΙΥΟ license and obtaining consent for a connection is also mandatory even where the private system is built.

For your convenience, we attach all the information you need to submit your application for an IYO, that is, the application form and the technical specifications. We furthermore inform you that the relevant information and these documents can also be found on the website www.lsdb.org.cy

If you have submitted an application for the construction of a IYO and you have obtained an IYO construction license and a certificate of consent for the connection of your premises, please ignore this letter.

It is noted that the connection of your premises is mandatory and must be completed within six months from the date of notification, ie until 08/06/2018.

It all sounded rather confusing, and we didn't do anything for the first few weeks. But then gradually our neighbours started having extensive (and very noisy) digging done. So Richard contacted a friend to ask who she used as a contractor. We were given a contact number, and a helpful guy came over to look at what we have currently. He explained that first we had to employ an architect to draw a detailed plan, then that had to be submitted to the sewage board for approval. They would grant a license, and we could then employ a builder he would recommend to do the work.

He told us that there was a long queue for this, and no, it couldn't possibly be done by the end of June, but that didn't matter at all. We said we would be away for six weeks over the summer, and he shrugged and said that nothing would happen in July and August anyway, so we didn't need to worry about it till the autumn.

A very competent architect came over, took extensive notes, and went away. A couple of weeks later she brought us the plans and charged us eighty euros. It seemed like a reasonable fee for some highly detailed drawings. She said that she had already submitted the plans to the relevant board, and gave us the reference number.

Summer came and went, and by the end of September we had heard nothing. So Richard phoned the number we were given by the architect. He was told that yes, our application was in process, and we should hear something by the end of the year.

Sure enough, last Monday there was another letter in our mailbox.

This one (according to Google Translate, again) told us that our application had been accepted, and that we had to go to the sewerage board to collect our license. It would cost us 60 euros, and after collecting it we should employ a builder to make our connections. At last!

It was rather a busy week, so it wasn't until Friday that we went to the sewage office. It was a bit complicated to find, but well-signed:

The letter told us to go to the first floor, so we did that, and handed over sixty euros. We were given a receipt and told to go to the second floor, where we were finally given our sewerage connection license. It says that it was actually granted on December 17th, but the letter was not written until January 3rd, and did not arrive in our mailbox until nearly three weeks later - we have no idea why the internal Cyprus post is so slow, but this is not unusual.

Richard phoned the original contact in the afternoon, who said he would come over with the builder soon, to give us a quote, and then, hopefully, the work can start.

All of which is great, even if it has taken significantly longer than usual.

But... this is Cyprus. Nothing is ever straightforward.

On Tuesday, there was another letter in our mailbox. This one was just a brief notification:

The word 'ΟΔΟ' means 'street', so we were amused that instead of putting in our street name, whoever filled this in merely put 'ΣΑΣ' (which means 'your').

We were less amused that this turns out to be a notification that our street is going to be resurfaced.  Finally.  Over seven years since it was given its temporary resurfacing after the initial digging for sewers.  And then we will be employing someone to dig part of it up again in order to make our connection.

Sigh.

On Wednesday and Thursday last week the former surface was dug up and the rubble removed, leaving it like this:

Some other streets in the neighbourhood have also had their surfaces removed, so we assume they are finishing that process before starting the resurfacing. It will be very nice to have roads that are less bumpy, and look smarter...

Until our builders arrive and dig it up again. 

Calls from the Cyprus Traffic Police

Richard has just returned from attending a conference in Scandanavia. He flew in the early hours of last Wednesday morning. Since our street was blocked off, due to ongoing construction work, he could not park in our driveway, or even in front of our house.

So, as he has done for the past few weeks, he found a place to park in a nearby street, in front of someone else's house. Cypriots can be a bit possessive about the road space in front of their homes, but with so many road works going on everyone locally seems to have been fairly flexible recently. It was a street where construction work had finished, so we hoped it would be all right for five days.

Mid-morning Wednesday, the phone rang. I said 'kalimera', in response to the greeting, and the person at the other end launched into some rapid Greek. I was about to say that it must be a wrong number when I caught the words 'Mr Richard', with a query. Yes, I said slowly and in English, Mr Richard lives here, but he is not here now.

More rapid Greek ensued. I apologised (in English) and said that I did not understand. I have learned from experience that trying to apologise in Greek just leads to a response in Greek which I still won't understand.

So the person who had been speaking to me found someone who spoke English, at least somewhat. 'This is the traffic police', he announced. Then he read out the number plate of our car and asked if it belonged to Mr Richard. I acknowledged that it did, but that Mr Richard was currently out of Cyprus.

'You must move the car, it is blocking,' I was told. I did not, at that stage, know exactly where the car was, but was pretty sure it would not be blocking anywhere. More to the point, I don't drive. So I told the man.

'You have a key?' he asked. I said that we did.

'Then you must ask a friend to move the car. It is blocking.'

I said I would see what I could do. I knew that at least one other person was on the insurance, possibly more. I wrote a note on Facebook (to local friends only) explaining the dilemma. And saw one friend online, whose husband - I thought - was on the insurance. It turned out that he was, and he would be able to come over late morning, and would happily move the car to somewhere safe behind the building where he lives.

So far, so good.

I went for a brief walk to check exactly where our car was, and it wasn't far at all. Nor was it blocking anything. It was parked in front of a fairly wide house, with plenty of space, nowhere near the driveway.

I discovered that I could even see it from one of our bedrooms:


At lunch-time, our friend arrived. He started the car with the spare key... it turned over... and nothing happened. He repeated it. And again. Each time, the car sounded lively - the battery was evidently fine, and the petrol gauge showed plenty of fuel - but it simply would not go.

After several more attempts, our friend said that we must have some kind of immobiliser chip in our key, which rendered the spare one rather pointless (unless the main keys had been locked in, I suppose). So he walked home. There was evidently no way to move the car until Richard returned. I did find an email address for the police, and wrote to explain, but had little expectation of anyone reading it.

Having heard stories of cars being towed away and even crushed when they could not be moved for a few days, I felt quite anxious for the rest of the day.

On Thursday, late morning, I had another call from the traffic police. This time it was from a man who spoke excellent English. I explained about the apparently immobilised car, and he understood immediately. I gather it's quite common although it's not something we've had on any of our other cars. Probably they were all too old.

He sounded very worried until I said, 'So, I'm afraid there's really nothing we can do until Monday. I don't see the problem since the car is NOT blocking anyone in...'

.. and he said, 'Monday? Your husband returns then?'

'Yes,' I replied. 'Early Monday morning. He is only away for five days. '

He sighed with relief. 'Oh well, in that case, we can wait. There is no problem at all.'

So that was that. I still don't know why we were phoned. Did the people really complain that they were blocked in, or is there some further construction work to be done in that street? We will probably never know.... this is Cyprus!

Construction work almost finished in our street... maybe?

Life seems to have been dominated, recently, by the sewerage pipes being put down in our neighbourhood. It's noisy, and dusty, and means that people driving to or from our house have to find new routes almost every time, since different streets are closed off in the area.

The first digging in our little bit of street happened just over three weeks ago. A day later, the noise was considerably worse and the disruption extensive. Then we had a little peace, until they started digging trenches across the road, to join (eventually) with our septic tanks.

As I explained in the last of those posts, the workmen then roughly covered over the holes, leaving the road bumpy but useable. As it remained until a few days ago, when the diggers and other noisy machines came back. Slightly to our surprise, they dug up the top couple of inches along all the channels (lengthways and crossways) that had been roughly surfaced, and removed all the excess rubble. it looked rather neater than it had done:


But made the road, once again, unusable for cars. And it all seemed remarkably inefficient... why put the rough surface down, we wondered, if they were going to dig it up again a week later?!

The following day, all was quiet. At least, it was in our street. We heard the ongoing rumble of digging and other construction work in other roads nearby.

Then, after the time when the workmen usually finish, they arrived with just one machine, and painted some kind of tarmac along all the new shallow channels. Perhaps they needed to seal them in some way:


There were barriers and diversion signs at both ends of the road, but they didn't stop an intrepid driver who drove half way along the street, bumping noisily in and out of the channels, making me wince each time and wonder just how much damage had been done to a rather new-looking car.

However, almost opposite our house the driver got stuck in a slightly wider hole, and had to reverse out after rather a struggle. Then performed something like a 23-point-turn to turn the car around... which was finally achieved to the accompaniment of applause from several of the neighbours who had gone out to watch.

The following day, the workmen returned, starting at 7.00am as usual, and working through the day. This time, they managed to fill in all the shallow holes on one side of the road, meaning that cars could at least get along it without bumping up and down too much:


I took that picture just after several of the neighbours had been out with their hoses, washing down the street, as Cypriots love to do.

And today, at last, the road itself is completely done. At least, the surface is smooth.

Well, fairly smooth.

It would have been too much to hope for a complete re-surface, but it definitely looks better, although it's hard to tell from this photo:


- the only thing now lacking is access into driveways, where the pavement is still rough and unfinished.

Cyprus sewerage digging work continuing...

It's amazing how quickly one gets used to noise in the street, and general disruption in the neighbourhood. It's been ongoing for some time, with routes by car changing almost by the day as different places have been dug up for the local sewerage and (theoretically) storm drain project that is gradually taking place all around Cyprus.

It was almost two weeks ago when the digging started, in earnest, in our little bit of street. It only took a few days for the main pipes to be laid, then the hole was filled in again. The workmen kept going from about 7.00am every morning until 3.00pm, at which point they stopped, left the machines lying around, put up a few fences for a low-key kind of security, and departed.

They didn't work weekends, either. But our road was inaccessible for several days, meaning that rubbish piled up since, obviously, the dustmen (garbage collectors) could not drive into the road. However, by last weekend peace was more-or-less reigning, the road was accessible again, and the cats were able to relax.

Then it started up once more. This time, channels had to be dug across the road, to begin the process of connecting the sewers with the current septic tanks that we all have. Not that we'll be able to use the drains for some time - possibly several years - since everything has to be in place beforehand. The trenches were probably a couple of metres deep:


There were rough metal sheets over the pavement enabling us to walk down the street, so we weren't actually imprisoned entirely in our houses:


And there was a rather puzzling (typically Cypriot) diversion sign at the T-junction at one end of our road:


Puzzling for two reasons:
(1) Nobody could drive - or even walk - straight ahead anyway since there are houses there.
(2) Nobody could even drive up to that sign, since our road was closed.

Yesterday, they filled in the holes. It was excessively noisy and dusty, but by 3.00pm our road was open again. It looks rather a mess and is pretty bumpy:


But perhaps, one day, they will come back to re-surface it. Probably a week or two before the electricity or phone company comes to dig it up again for some other purpose...

Constant rumbling in the street... sewerage project in Larnaka

I was fairly blasé about the digging in our street yesterday. Even when the water went off, I wasn't too worried. We had some drinking water stored, and at 8.00this morning our mains water started flowing again.

There was a deep trench cut in our street, just like the ones we've seen in other roads in the neighbourhood in recent weeks:


- and this morning, about 6.45am, work started again. Various mechanical diggers have been up and down the road pretty much all day so far:


It's now mid-afternoon, 3.00pm, and they just paused. I'm not particularly hopeful since there have been several brief, wonderful pauses in the noise throughout the day. Blissful moments of silence before they start up again... although, this time, it seems as though they might indeed have stopped.

Richard asked one of the men how long it would be before the house drainage systems (currently septic tanks) can be linked in with these new storm and sewerage drains. About five years, he was told. Which, if previous experience is anything to go by, suggests that it could be twenty or twenty-five years at least. Unless, of course, the man was muddling his chronological units and meant 'five months'. In which case, I suppose it might be a couple of years.

At least I know what's going on, and hope it will be worth it in the end. Our cats have been very disturbed. Sophia is terrified of machines with arms, which must look like some kind of nightmare cat-eating monster to her. She has spent most of the day so far curled up by the stairs, which must somehow seem safer. Or perhaps offers a quick escape route upstairs if necessary:


Cleo is not quite as unhappy as Sophia, but when it's particularly loud she hides under the coffee table, a place that was always 'den' for the cats when they played games as kittens:


As for Tessie, she apparently thinks we're having an earthquake. She has been running around the house, crying. I think it helped when I picked her up so that she could actually see the diggers, and perhaps see that the noise was coming from something outside... but she is very disturbed:


Tim went back to the UK very early Tuesday morning. Good timing, since the work started about four hours after his flight departed.

Richard's timing is not so good. After working about 50-60 hours per week for many months, he finally decided that he would take a day off so that he could sleep all morning.

Today.

It's hard to think of a worse morning from the point of view of having a peaceful rest...

Now there is real digging in our street...

It was at the end of June when we received a notice in our mailbox about the sewerage construction in our neighbourhood. Lasting up to three weeks, they said. I was dubious... but then a week later, we did indeed have workmen digging up the road, somewhat.. not very deep, and it only lasted one morning. So much so that it only warranted a brief mention in the update I wrote at the end of the week.

It seemed odd to me, since other roads nearby have much deeper channels built, and far laster-longing disruption. But Richard thought that perhaps we didn't need deeply-laid pipes in our road. It all seemed to have been done, anyway, and there was no sign of anything else happening despite plenty of work going on in other roads around our neighbourhood.

This morning, I was just on my way out of the house to go to the bank, at around 7.30am, when I saw a man in some kind of digger machine driving slowly up the street. His English was fair - just as well since my Greek is not - and he told me that they were going to dig up our road in an hour, so we had to move the car.

I went back inside, squeezed orange juice and made coffee for Richard, then apologised for waking up him, but said that if he wants to use the car today, or perhaps any time this week, he should move it before 8.30. I suggested he wake the people staying in our guest flat, too, who have a rental car at present which was parked out on the street.

Then I walked to the bank, only to find that the ATM was out of order. The bank itself doesn't open until 8.30 and I didn't want to wait around. So I walked on to the place where I thought there was another Bank of Cyprus... only to find that it had closed. By then I was not far from the sea-front, so I walked on... and found a bank with a working ATM enabling me to withdraw cash.

I had been planning to walk back via the froutaria, since we need some more fruit and veg... but since I was already at the sea-front, decided I might as well walk along and go to our PO Box, which I haven't checked for a week or so. On the way I spotted that Estia, my favourite stationer was open... so I went in, and browsed around, and was delighted to find that they had one of my favourite kinds of photo albums available. Sometimes they don't. So I bought it, plus a few new ballpoint pens that I needed, and on to the PO box where I found my latest order from Kodak Gallery - 160 photos from the past four months.

And then home, feeling decidedly warm but not as hot as I would have done a month ago. I had been out for over an hour, rather than the twenty minutes or so I had expected. Richard had gone to work, the rental car was moved.. and there was, indeed, a large digger making deep holes in our street:


A couple of hours later a man with almost no English knocked at the door, telling me I had to move the two cars parked in our driveway. I tried to explain that I don't drive, but I could call my husband if they really needed them moved... although I could not understand why as they are parked well away from the street. Eventually he managed to explain that if they were not moved, we would not be able to get them out as they were about to fence off in front of the drive. Which, I said, was fine. One is our 'old' car, used by guests if they don't rent a car, the other is our 'big' car which we really want to get rid of but haven't yet managed to do so.

Right after lunch, there was yet another knock on the door. A problem with water, they said. It would be fine tomorrow. At least, we think that's what they said. Either that, or it would be a problem tomorrow as well. Sure enough, the mains water has gone off. Perhaps the digger went through a water main. We have plenty in our tanks for showers etc, and if we run out of drinking water (which comes from our mains tap) I suppose I can buy some in bottles.

I suppose it's pretty good that the street digging is happening only six weeks after it was supposed to have finished...

Friday update

For once, the week has not whizzed past as rapidly as expected. And that's not because Summer is here; oddly enough, it's been less hot than expected (no more than 30C in the sun) and perhaps more significantly, it hasn't become really humid yet. Somewhat sticky in evenings, but really not bad at all during the daytime. I know this will change sooner or later, but in the meantime am enjoying cool early mornings, and being able to use the kitchen in the daytime without either suffering or using the air conditioning.

On Monday, the Christian Writers' group met here in the morning, and we had a potluck lunch since it was our last meeting until September. People travel out of Cyprus during the summer, very often, and it's likely to be much too hot to do anything much - and we like eating together a couple of times per year. It was good that I had something to think about, since I was feeling a little on tenterhooks: our son Tim was flying out of the UK on Monday.

Or so we thought.

Originally he had been planning to come to Cyprus for just two and a half weeks in August. But for various reasons his plans changed, and he decided that he would like a longer break in the sun. We were able to find some very good value flights via Lufthansa, with the outgoing ones on Monday, due to arrive at 2.00am Tuesday morning.

Mid-afternoon, Tim called to say that while he was on the bus on his way to the airport, he had received a call letting him know that his flight was cancelled! However they told him to go to the airport anyway and they would sort it out for him. He wondered if they would put him on a bus to Heathrow and the Cyprus Air flight... but no. They booked him into the Airport Hotel overnight, and found three flights on the Tuesday, due to arrive at 5.00pm. Which is a much more sociable arrival time, and since he was coming for eight weeks, losing one day isn't too big a deal.

He had to be up very early (4.00am UK time!) on Tuesday, but all the flights went smoothly, arriving in time for the connections, and we were very happy to see our son at the airport when he finally arrived. He was tired, but suggested a game in the evening... at which he creamed us both:


(Anyone who plays Settlers and wants to know a little more about the game, I did write a brief post about this game on my Settlers blog which has been much neglected recently).

Yes, that's Cleo in the box lid. She has become much more sociable in the summer, and her favourite place to sleep is in the lid of any box that happens to be open. Whether or not she actually fits...

On Wednesday Tim relaxed, and slept somewhat, and chatted. At least, he tried to relax. It wasn't easy because the road works finally started in our street, and they were extremely noisy. The cats were upset and scared. Well; oddly enough Cleo, usually the most nervous cat, wasn't too worried. she did flick her ears a few times when a particularly loud machine went by, but other than that did not seem too concerned. Sophia sat on the stairs, looking extremely worried, but then she always hates loud diggers, which she seems to think are going to eat her.

Tessie surprised us the most by being truly terrified. She mewed - real mews, not her usual chattering cries - extremely loudly when I was in the bathroom, evidently telling me to get out. Then she hid under the bed. We can only assume that she thought we were having a major earthquake and was trying to keep us safe.

Thankfully the pipes seem to have been laid very quickly, and the road was back to normal again by late afternoon.

We were due to play a game with friends in the evening but they had to cancel due to illness, so Tim watched a DVD with Richard in the evening . And on Thursday decided that he'd done enough relaxing, so he went to the office to do some (voluntary) work with Richard. As he has done today.

Then friends who are shortly leaving Cyprus had dinner with us last night. So it's been quite a busy and enjoyable week.

Notice in our mailbox about Cyprus sewerage works...

A couple of days there was a piece of paper stuck in our mailbox that wasn't the usual junk mail. It was an A4 sheet headed "IACOVOU-ZEMCO JOINT VENTURE" with an address and other contact details underneath, all in English.

The rest was in Greek. And while I could probably have figured out what it said with the aid of a dictionary, I knew from previous experience that it would be a lengthy and tedious exercise, so I thought I'd try Google Translate, instead. It even allows phonetic typing, so I started by typing the words with their English equivalent letters, although after a couple of paragraphs I switched to typing in Greek as it was easier.

In a nutshell, the letter said that sewerage works were due to start in our street on June 29th, and could last up to three weeks. They apologised for the inconvenience, and asked that people move their cars and keep their children out of the way. Then there was a note that residents can't yet connect their own houses up to the new sewarage system.

However Greek still seems to be fairly formal when written, so that brief paragraph took up a whole sheet of paper. I was surprised at how readable the translation was. So for anyone else who happens to have received this piece of paper and wonders what it says, and for the sake of posterity, here's some of the translation - after the bit that simply tells us what date they're due to start working and how long it should take.

Conducting this work will cause some discomfort which we will try and minimise, and for which we apologise. Your co-operation and understanding are useful and necessary.

Please park your car away from the area of construction work for both the uninterrupted passage of machinery and safety of your vehicle. And to avoid delays in the execution of the work.

Great attention will be given to safeguarding your children, who should be kept away from the dances of the work and the handling of machines, to avoid accidents.

In case of error, please contact the responsible security person (name, number)

Please, at this stage, note that the network of sewerage and rain water is not in operation, so you must not connect your premises to the sewerage system without permission of the Larnaka Sewerage Council. They will inform you in due course.

Other than the 'dances' of the work (and the concept is rather appealing...) I thought the automatic translator handled it extremely well. And it was much quicker than sitting down with a dictionary to do it myself.

However...

Today is June 29th, and it's nearly 5.00pm. And other than some red dots being painted down the centre of our street, to mark where it will be dug up, nothing has happened so far...

Disruption in Drosia

I suppose it was a couple of weeks ago that we became aware of the extensive road-works in our neighbourhood. Or perhaps it was a bit longer ago. There are so many random diggers and other disruptions to the roads in Cyprus that we've almost stopped noticing them. But Richard mentioned that he was having to drive a little further to get home, due to diversions, and I could hardly help noticing that there were road-works which I had to skirt carefully while walking to the local shops:


The digger was creating a channel right through the tarmac on the road.

Then our mains water went off for a few hours, about ten days ago. We've got so used to having constant mains water that we no longer store lots of bottles, and I'd just run the washing machine. Thankfully it was on again by lunch-time, a reminder of the days gone by when we only had mains water two or three times per week.

However, it reminded me that, slowly, Cyprus is being converted from septic tanks to mains drainage. I believe it's funded by the EU and was one of the requirements of Cyprus joining the European Union seven years ago. There have been extensive road works in many districts, and apparently it's now our turn. Not that they've reached our street yet. But I continued to take photos when going to the shops - such as these slightly confusing diversion signs:


Or this machine, which our most intelligent cat, Sophia, appears to think is a cat-eating monster. Not that she's seen one for a while, but she was sitting on the balcony one day when a machine of this ilk was turning around, with the 'mouth' apparently opening and closing in her direction. She is not a nervous cat, in general, but I have never seen her so petrified. She hid under my desk for some hours. She will not be happy when the construction workers reach our street.


Here's a glimpse of the new pipes and drainage that are being installed:


The workers seem to be progressing rapidly, possibly hoping to have finished before it gets really hot and humid. They have started work before 7.30 each morning this week, and by today most of the holes had been filled in. The roads look scrappy and dusty - it's probably too much to hope that they'll be nicely re-surfaced, but at least the diversion signs seem to have gone.