Part 43
I post details of my house build on here with the hope that others can learn from my mistakes. Here is a problem we encountered while applying for a residential permit.
While our house was being built, our ‘adviser’ arranged for a 37kwh transformer to be installed. He said it would be necessary for the roof welding. Not knowing much about the way things work here, I did not realise that this was far too large (and expensive). When the house was completed and we arranged for the electrical inspection, we discovered that this transformer had never been used and the supply was from the original temporary meter on a pole further down the road (with wires running across several empty lots). Our electrician had run the drop wires down the garden ready to be connected, but we were told that they were too small for use with the larger transformer, even although they would have been adequate for our normal needs, and a lot larger than the ones used for all the welding. We also had to buy a digital meter rather than use our existing standard meter; this also had to be installed inside a metal case.
It is standard here to pay a deposit of the average of three months bills, but we had to pay a deposit of P35,000 until we could show the first three months bills. These averaged at just under P4000 so we finally got a rebate of P30,000. Also our ‘commercial’ meter has a multiplication factor of 40, so initial they were only going to charge us for 10 units instead of 400. We were also paying a few pesos for the temporary meter that had been disconnected.
Colin