a new year: new apartment issues

[VJ]

It is getting old... but again new issues with the apartment...

We yesterday got a call from a technician who wants to check the antenna cable in our place. Our downstairs neighbour resigned from cable television, and is complaining that the antenna does not work. The technician on the phone said there is a roof antenna, with a cable going from apartment to apartment, in some box somewhere.

We did not have such a box in the apartment when we bought it 4 YEARS AGO, and when we then asked about possibilities for TV, the building administrator said there is no antenna, and that cable is the only option. THEY JUST LIED TO US. We confronted him today with this and he just started laughing... "No, I never said something like that". I have 3 witnesses, but nothing on paper (and the witnesses are probably too close to me to hold up in any case). Now he told us that you are not allowed to remove the box, as the cable is considered to be building administrator's. If the cable is the responsibility of the building administrator, then on one hand we should give them access. However, on the other hand there is nothing about this cable in any documents.

We never had the box, but now they want to start looking for the cable. Giving the mess the previous owner made with cables, it got us worried: if they just removed the box, it should be a small issue, but if they removed the cables as well, then we have a problem. It may even be that the problem is not in our apartment but higher. But the reputation of the previous owner when it comes to cabling does not inspire confidence. Will it ever end?

But from now on: all communications with the building administrator will be on paper. No more mr. Nice Guy with them. They lied to us, which either way will give us mess and costs (because of course it has to be at our cost + the cost of fixing our own wall). This is the second time they failed to inform us about things.

[VJ]

Well... they guy game and starting measuring. Close to where the antennabox should be, we have a socket. So there is hope that the antenna cables run close to the socket. Good news is that the cables run in a pipe, and he should be able to just pull new cables when we find the pipe. He removed the socket and checked near there but could not find it. It was running late, so he had to stop.

Now, the plan is that I will continue looking for the cables or pipes (more delicately than those guys would), and then perhaps he can connect the cables. Still a big mess, but I'm hopeful I can find the cables with minimal breakage: if the cables turn out to be less than 6cm from the socket, we could even manage without any repainting at all!

But of course, we have to find people to fix the box at which time we can have they guy come back to install it in a proper box, but that can be later.


We decided not to play hard with building administrator, because it would be a pyrrus victory. We want some leverage when they finally will do the renovation of the facade.

[Umfriend]

So, uhm, how long have you been there now?

[VJ]

So, uhm, how long have you been there now?

I should check the exif header on the first photos I took there...

Meanwhile, this weekend I searched a bit in the wall and found the cable: the socket is exactly where the cable should be, so it sufficed to scrape a bit near the bottom and top of the hole to uncover it: a nice white TV cable in a grey tube going down, and a grey tube going up (but I could not feel a cable). The hole in which the sockets fits is bigger inside the wall, so it may even be possible to pull a new antenna cable from the upstairs neighbour to the downstairs neighbour and route it around our socket. On our next renovation, we would then add an antenna connection in our flat: it is in a bad location and that way we would avoid big mess now. We could then later branch of this cable and guide the branched off cable to a better location.

Happily, we called the guy... and he is surprised it is a white antenna cable in the wall going down: the downstairs neighbour has a black one... Today I'll work a bit more on it, perhaps I can uncover more of it...

[Umfriend]

"On our next renovation"... I wonder whether MURC will last that long and odds are..... it will! ;-)

[VJ]

Well, they intend to renovate the facade of the building... Might be this year or next; not sure how much mess that will give inside and if that would necessitate some refreshing inside as well. It should have been done already, but there were more urgent matters (electricity and gas).

They should - according to the plumber - replace the pipes for the central heating, and he anticipates that within 5-7 years. They are outside of the walls, but the previous owner hid them behind gips-cardboard, which we kept and repainted. So if they get changes, it will mean a big renovation in most rooms, one that would for sure make adding a connection to the antenna a small matter.

So a "next renovation" is not such a long stretch...

I've uncovered some 10 cm of cable in the pipe, and it looks fine to me... hopefully there is not to much plaster in the pipe, to allows us movement in the white cable. At the moment, it does not budge...

[Umfriend]

OK, at least show us a picture of the facade...

[VJ]

Well, the antenna guy came... Of course the white cable is not the cable that it should be. So the pipe from us to the downstairs neighbour is (partly) blocked: from the hole in the wall, we see the white cable going about 10 cm down in the grey tube, and then we see some gips. The cable does not budge. There is a small hole in the gips through which we can put a thin piece of metal (think: unfolded dry cleaning hanger) about half a meter down. This makes us still hopeful that we have to find a way to remove the gips from the pipe. The biggest worry is now that we do something that causes it to fall to an unreachable place. It seems to be above the plinth, but of course we don't know how far it goes. The antenna guy thought of removing the plinth, but of course they are newly installed (4 years ago) and tight as it should be. I'm hoping to manage without having to remove them, because it would mean we need to get somebody to fix them as well, not just the wall.
I had the idea of drilling in the wall, into the pipe, but below the gips, so we can put something in the drilled hole to block the gips from falling down. Other alternative is just opening up the wall enough that we can cut into the plastic pipe from the side. The pipe is some 2 cm behind plaster, so it should be possible to keep the hole quite small.

Just to add to the fun: one of the new radiators that was installed a few months ago is showing signs of leakage... on 3 sides! Two sides are where the pipes come in and out, the other side is where there is a cap to close another possible place for a pipe. So plumber comes on Monday....

[Fat Tone]

Let's admit it folks. We are NEVER going to see pictures. EVER.

[VJ]

So I took a holiday on Monday, to accommodate for the plumber (who of course can only come at 14.00). I figured: while I'm home, I can try to solve the issue with the antenna cable.

I managed to open up the wall a bit, and discovered what the previous owner did: they reused the place of the wallbox to put their own. And they reused the space of the conduit to put their cable, not to have to cut into concrete. In doing so, they crushed the top of the conduit. Luckily in such a way that it kept the dirt out, and I could quite easily open it up by cutting some 6 cm in the wall.
The antenna guy also called, and we explained what the situation was: I managed to open the pipe, and enlarge the hole to fit a double wall box (to keep our socket there also). But the hole was 3mm too shallow to fit a plastic wallbox. The guy suggested he could come to finish it. He had good tools for making the hole deeper and managed to connect the antennabox. I still have to wire the socket (remove the cables, put them through the back of the plastic box, put the cables back), and then we just have to secure the wallbox and plaster it. All in all, the hole is not too big, we will just have to take care not to clog the conduit.

Plumber removed and reattached the radiator, but also told us that in the other 2 buildings under the same administration, the renewed everything: gas, electricity and intercom. In ours, we know they talk about the first two. But our intercom is dead (cable issues - previous owner was very creative), so we may hold out fixing that one... In the other building, they also moved the electricity meters, which may mean pulling a new cable from the fusebox, so more wall breaking may be in the (near) future...

[VJ]

We got a list of scheduled renovations from the building administrator!

It includes video intercom, renewal of central services (gas, electricity, security), renewal of the TV reception system (not sure what they mean by that, just a new antenna? or new cabling as well?), and more such things.

No planning on renovating the facade yet, but yesterday we learned that the building is on a list to become a protected monument. There are 2 levels, depending on how much can be modified still, and it is candidate to be on the more moderate level. But either way it will imply that there would be funding for facade renovations. And it adds some other securities (building cannot be removed, area around the building cannot be modified that it would block the view to the building, ...). Decision would be in the next few days probably...

[Umfriend]

But such protected status would, I assume, limit how much you can do with the facade, no? We have "monument"-status including funding and tax incentives but with strong limitations on changes: it has to be kept as it was intended. For quite a few here it appears to be a mixed blessing.

[VJ]

Yes, luckily it is listed for the second level rather than the first. The first level is much more restrictive. I'm not sure exactly what restrictions it would impose, but our building administrator tried to apply for it in the past. The main reason is that the building currently is still in a very original state, but as a consequence is really in need of renovation. From what I understand, it should give more positives than negatives...