Full of character, but still waiting to be understood.

If you’re thinking of renting a house in Malta, for a holiday or longer stay, you’ll come across the term ‘house of character’. My first reaction to this charming personification that crops up in holiday brochures and estate agents’ descriptions is ‘yes, they certainly are’! My second is ‘but whatever their faults, I love them!’ I’ve 12 years’ experience to fall back on, so I’ve got to know every quirk of my place.

But if you’re new to the concept, what is a ‘typical house of character’ in Malta and Gozo, and in what sense do they have character?

What they are
Well, the pictures you’ll see mostly show honey-coloured old stone houses perhaps with a shock of bright pink bougainvillea over the door or gracing the courtyard, but hopefully not near the pool as it drops brachts (the ‘flowers’) all the time! The limestone will be mellow and roughly hewn, not smoothed and bright white in the sun. You’ll see arches, wooden beams, spiral stairways (internal and outside), terraces, never a straight wall, pregnant (bowed, wrought iron-clad) windows and myriad niches, nooks and crannies. Charm indeed.

Where they are
Houses of character are mostly found in old village cores up the winding alleys. Even though terraced houses in theory, they are often called farmhouses because they feature large, arched rooms that were used as stables or as milling rooms. My neighbour must have one of the few mill rooms in a time warp, with the old mill stones still in place. Occasionally, you’ll find a house of character detached, out in the countryside; though the standalone ones are often partly or entirely newly built from old stone (a trend in Gozo where developers realised there weren’t enough of the right-sized holiday homes to meet demand). The term house of character is somewhat loose as it also covers older town houses with roofed balconies. I don’t tend to think of any 20th century town houses as being ‘of character’.

Living in them…
Their true character shines through when you live in them though. If you are passing through them on a week or two’s holiday, they will charm. But here, we relate the findings of some longer-term residents of character houses. Their experiences are useful to those thinking of moving to Malta and renting one.

Finding the house
Most properties (sale or rental) are listed with more than one real estate agent, so make sure you don’t see the same place twice. Be clear about what you’re looking for and if you are an expat, be prepared for some raised eyebrows. Quote: “Our agent was young Sliema (ie. town) lad and shocked we would consider a character house and the countryside! Most assume expats want to live in penthouse flats.”

Rates you can expect to pay
Rental rates vary widely, and it’s not always a case of you get what you pay for. Be prepared to negotiate on the rental. For a 3- to 4-bed place, with some guest space, outdoor BBQ area and pool/pool deck area, you can find properties ranging from €2,000/m – €6000 (and the upper rate one included a view of the old rubbish dump)! Houses of character can have weird bedroom layouts, with one room accessed only via another (so no landing or corridor). So the concept of ‘bedrooms’ to gauge size is vague. You have to go and see places to really know what’s what and whether they are worth the price.

What to look out for when viewing. Hidden extras to pay? Ease of getting maintenance done?
Some larger places do come with a handyman/caretaker,which is a boon to new arrivals in Malta. Electricity is expensive, so look for other ways of heating and cooking (and cooling in summer – ie. some people almost never use AC). There is a pool licence to pay which can mount up if your pool is large. Pools need maintainance (€40-150/month!), and in the summer if being used a lot, pump needs to run 12+hrs a day – which bumps electricity usage up. If you’ve children, be aware of pool safety. Many pools are in courtyards or open to deck areas.

Location: do check the vicinity
Beware noisy neighbours! Especially dogs on the roof. Constant barking can be mind-blowing. I’ve had a neighbour’s dog bark for 10 hours non-stop, literally. And think about parking in those alleys and village cores.

Costly houses don’t always buy you peace and comfort. The vast place for €6,000pm out in the countryside was swamped with flies (surrounded by stables), stank (because of rubbish dump), and was noisy (dogs and a generator next door), and when the wind blew (most days in Malta), it picked up dust and dumped in pool.

Hunters – I can hear their guns from a village core, so expect more noise at dawn in the bird hunting season if you live in the countryside.

Heat, damp, shade and light
Beware rising damp, or penetrating damp and humidity. It seeps in everywhere in most limestone houses, but can be difficult to contain in old ones with no damp proof course, and with wells in the house or courtyard. Damp is not good for asthmatics. See Heating a Maltese house. Air character houses as much as you can – open wide the windows (and let in dust of course) everyday, winter or summer. Some old houses have rooms with few apertures and little light. Do check some rooms have enough task lighting for comfortable reading.

Outdoor areas need shading in summer. Trees are better than relying solely on canvas. Quote: “If you have a shadeless courtyard pool, in peak daytime hours in July-August you won’t be able to use it!”

Trees also mean deep shade in winter, so any limestone paving outside will inevitably go emerald green and dangerously slippery during the winter rains.

Furnished or unfurnished?
Long-term expats usually move with furniture so just want the kitchen kitted out with oven, hob, dishwasher and perhaps washing machine. These do usually come standard in rental places. But be prepared to face the landlord’s mass of furniture, whether you want it or not. There is no storage facility in Malta (apart from the odd private (damp) garage, so landlords prefer to keep it in the house! Beware expensive breakable antiques and bad taste – sometimes the two go together. Again, negotiate to get it shifted somewhere if you want your own stuff in the house. If you need to store furniture, do be prepared to find it smelly and damp when you dig it out to use. Tip – air, air, air everything from wardrobes to kitchen cupboards, year round.

Travel & Transport from out of town places
Buses do go almost everywhere, eventually, even if on long, winding, rough routes. But expect to drive to get around easily unless you are central or in an urban area. One family moving from London had this to say about their location in the Maltese countryside: “We’ve got a cliff-top view, so it’s very quiet and beautiful, and feels very remote sometimes. Amazingly, the local shop delivers and the school bus comes here, but do check as one person we know in Bingemma said the school bus wouldn’t come her way. If you need them, check their routes before you rent.

Final word
Don’t let the list above dent your desire to live in a house of character. Just realise that they do have character, and so, like people, need getting to know and managing! And, they rarely loose their price, wherever they are located, should you love one so much you want to buy.

Photo: Gethin Thomas

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An old favourite dusted off each winter, until kerosene prices shot up!

Friends in the UK have looked enviously upon us in the past weeks. As they struggle in Arctic conditions, Malta has basked in temperatures up to 25°C. It’s been unseasonally warm, even for us.

In my 16 winters’ experience of Malta, I can usually reckon on getting to Christmas without feeling too chill in the house. We’ve had very wet, cold winters of late, but this year is true to form and it’s only now – early January – that my thoughts turn to heating. Many northern Europeans think the Mediterranean doesn’t get cold in winter. I remember a BBC TV programme about Brits emigrating in which one lady packing to move to Spain unwisely thew out her hot water bottle; I bought one last winter for my son’s bed.

The issue of how to heat a Maltese house to ambient room temperature never quite gets resolved. I’ve tried most forms of heating. What I need is a level of warmth that means I don’t have to wear fingerless gloves, two fleeces and a hat indoors – and still feel chill. It is often warmer outside than in. Maltese houses are built to resist sunlight.

We’ve had several queries from those abroad thinking of relocating to Malta about how we heat our houses for those crucial months – Jan to March; February is the really bitter month indoors, I find.

How you heat and how well you keep warm relate largely to your type of flat or house – stone, concrete, top floor, lower floor, thickness of stone, layout of rooms, number of windows and so on. Structure plays a large part in the choice and effectiveness of heating. Few people have central (oil-fired) heating as that requires planning while building or renovating. Fewer still use alternative bio-fuels or have photo-voltaic panels installed. And I haven’t heard of anyone with an Aga or fuel-fired cooking range in Malta, let alone one that can run heating as well.

Clearly, if you are renting, you have fewer choices. If you are house or flat hunting in the summer, do think about the heating issue!

The short answer to ‘how we heat’ is most of us don’t (effectively). We just wear more clothes. For the longer answer and the regular heating options, read on. No solutions promised though, even with modern technologies available!

Wood-burning stove

I installed one three winters ago in my metre-thick walled lounge. The pipe goes up the stairwell and just heats my bedroom above.

Pros: it looks nice, is a focal point, and provides comfortable warmth in one room at least.
Cons: It gobbles wood (one bag @ €6.30 lasts two nights for five hours of heating). Can be messy to clean. Needs to be on a couple of hours to really feel heat. Pipe drips liquid tar when it rains (chimney and piping badly installed!). Some possibility of flu clinker catching fire (not heard of chimney sweeps here, but probably a do-it-yourself job if you’ve a stone chimney breast not piping).
Verdict: I like it for atmosphere and can make room cosy. Not efficient and can’t hope to heat more than one room.

Kerosene Heaters

I had a digital, very effective Japanese-make kerosene heater that gave central heating equivalent ambient warmth – until it went wrong three years ago and no one here can mend it! It would cut out if oxygen in the room was low and had a child safety lock button. About two years ago, the price of Kerosene more than doubled, making it very expensive a form of heating.

A few years back you’d hear a lot of praise for Potez heaters. Estate agents still advertise homes with a Potez kerosene heater in glowing terms:”…a homely living room with a Potez Heater,” was how one put it recently. People now are trying to see if they can find alternative fuels – lighting oil – to use in these heaters. Anyone who was child in the 1960s and 70s in the UK would remember a Potez heater in classrooms. I’ve heard that a Potez heater can heat an entire Maltese farmhouse; shame about the kerosene price. I would recommend getting expert advice on anything to do with kerosene heaters!

Pros: does give great heat – if a modern type of heater. Centrally located, it may heat the whole house.
Cons: kerosene prohibitively expensive. Heater needs care and attention and they can be a hazard for pets and kids, and fiddly to operate. Need to ventilate rooms frequently.
Verdict: If you inherit one, use it in the really cold periods as it is effective, though costly to run.

Gas

My very friendly gas man called this morning (not to be greeted as Rik Mayall did his in that infamous episode of the BBC’s comedy, ‘Bottom‘.) Malta’s gas men deliver bottles, not check meters. They call in my street twice a week, delivering yellow bottles we can’t do without – for cooking and heating. Portable gas heaters on wheels are the main source of heating for most of us. I hate them, but can’t live without them come winter.

Pros: Easy to obtain (if you have a bottle already). Delivered to door. Instant heating. Easy to light. Can move from room to room as you please.
Cons: Heaters can smell (both mine do, even with adapter and piping changed). Bottles heavy to heave around. Metal casing ugly. Won’t last that long in peak winter. Safety concerns: eats oxygen and you need to ventilate rooms often. Produces moisture. Price doubled to €10.50 a bottle last winter.
Verdict: I’d really freeze without them, but don’t like them on safety grounds. So an evil necessity.

Aircons

Some of my rooms have them to cope with summer heat, so why don’t I use them in winter? Well, with electricity prices what they are, it can prove very costly. I abandoned using aircons as heating ages ago, and resorted to gas heaters. If you’ve a more modern flat, fully airconned, you are more likely to use them, swear by them for heating and not worry about the cost. Older houses rarely heat up well with them, and always cool down the minute they are switched off – warmth from a solid fuel stove can linger till next day.

Pros: Easy to use. Safe. Instant heat.
Cons: Costly to install and in older houses, rarely placed in all rooms. Expensive to run. Heat dissipates immediately they are switched off. Dry eyes and skin out.

No heating at all

Yes, this is an option. We won’t have frost on the inside of windows here, though hail storms and temperatures around 3-4°C at night are quite possible in wet periods. So a first line of defence is to put on more clothes. I know someone who won’t bother with any heating at all in their old house – apart from a rare open fire. Their mantra is that if people lived in the 1700s in it without heating, then they can too. I could just about live without room heating but not without an electric blanket to remove the damp, cold feel of my bed.

Roof insulation

Less a heating method and more heat loss prevention. The foam layer on top of the roof can be costly to install and may not do the business in winter. People I know say it can cut out summer heat but that it makes only a subliminal difference to room temperatures when it has to keep warmth in. (I am waiting for per metre costs so will add these soon).

Under-floor heating

This has been quite popular in recent years as it’s become less costly to import the technology. It’s best to install when you are renovating or building afresh as it’s too disruptive to dig up floors later. It runs off electricity, so in theory is expensive. A friend put in in his old farmhouse a year back so has trialled it for one full winter. Here are his views:

Pros: Quiet, efficient [low voltage so, in theory, also low cost]. No big impact on our energy bill – but we’ve only had one winter so far so hard to quantify. But we do use it judiciously – we keep two rooms on consistently [study and main bedroom] and it kicks in for about 10 – 15 mins per hour. It’s silent, cuts out humidity, offers even heat and kills dampness at source. In use with a de-humidifier, we maintain a temp around 18 degrees.
Cons: Needs planning to install. The only thing I’m not yet sure about is the relative cost.

Oil-fired Central Heating

Very few people have this installed, but it does work when it is! Can be ugly and expensive, and you need space to house an oil tank and few people in Malta have that. It’s rare to find here and thought of as a real luxury as it would only need to run around one month a year in reality. I am tracking down more details from the only friend I know with it. I remember her saying she didn’t put it on unless she had to!

Solar & Alternative Energies

Clearly, with all the sun Malta gets, solar energies have come to the fore in recent years, and a lot of people are making use of government subsidies to install solar panels primarily for water heaters. Fewer install photovoltaic systems that generate domestic electricity. You need a good deal of roof space for that I understand. I get a flyer a day through my letter box from local firms offering all manner of solar, eco-friendly, power systems. If you want some unbiased information about the practicalities in Malta of alternative energy supplies in the home, try contacting the Institute for Sustainable Energies at the University of Malta. See also the Malta Resources Authority for background info and about subsidies.

We will be updating this article as we’re sure to get comments in. Heating a Maltese house is a hot topic of conversation in winter!

Photo: Brandi Sims

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