Potential Developments / Improvements / Accommodations Business

The property and grounds are well above average as it is; the current owners poured money into renovating / upgrading the house and grounds in 2004 / 2005. However, like all things, it is possible to develop and / or improve this property and grounds in several ways, including having a tourism / accommodation business.

Increasing property to have 7 bedrooms
Currently there are 5 bedrooms but there is scope to increase this to 7. A 6th perhaps child's bedroom and play area could easily be created from the upper floor guest lounge. In addition, the upper floor office could also easily and quickly become a bedroom. There is actually plenty of space in the lower floor utility room to create an office, or indeed the middle floor's study could be used as one.

Additional property in the grounds
Because the main 9000 square meters of the grounds is Urbano title, it is feasible that one or two houses could be built here. In fact, the current owners toyed with the idea of building an additional 3 bedroom detached house in what is now the vineyard. Their thoughts were to offer a second property either as a holiday let or long term rental.

Log cabins - Accommodation business
As log cabins do not require the same permits as normal buildings, it should be possible to put 5 good sized log cabins in the main and upper grounds with plenty of space to spare. Also, if someone bought the additional adjacent 3200 sqm of land, 4 log cabins could well be placed there. In addition, if someone bought the adjacent woodland section the local council is not planning to compulsory purchase, it is likely permission would be granted to site perhaps 3 log cabins there too. The property itself also lends itself to easily converting the lower floor's very large TV lounge and dining room, outdoor dining area all with large adjacent kitchen, into a restaurant / dining area for guests. As the local council intend building a campsite nearby (details on Extra Building Land page), a very viable tourism / holiday business with around 12 log cabins could be built / operated here, still leaving the owners with a large amount of personal living space.

Lawned grounds - Water well - Sprinklers
Currently the main entrance (vineyard area and fruit garden) grounds are not lawned. The current owners planned to do this once the vines and trees provided sufficient shade to make this more practical (it gets very hot in the summer and many grass varieties struggle in the direct sunlight). The current owners had traditional grapevine archway canopies built; these are expensive and you seldom see them any more. This allows large riding mowers and even tractors to pass underneath. The fruit garden too is spaced to allow mechanized cutting of grass. Beneath the driveway they provided a stout water pipe section to link the two for irrigation purposes, and near the entrance they left a space for a water hole to be bored out.

There is plenty of ground water here and well water would be required to feed a large sprinkler system as would be necessary without impacting the mains water supply to the property. Currently the grapevines and fruit garden only have drip emitter irrigation systems.

Swimming Pool Cover / Enclosure
The current owners have a quality Spanish built concrete swimming pool that is open air, fenced and gated off. It is used for four months of the year from the end of May until the end of September; this partly due to foliage issues (a nearby cork oak tree sheds its leaves in May) and partly because the current owners do not use it when the water temperature is below 27° Celsius; the water temperature rises to about 31° to 32° Celsius in July / August. The current owners simply drain the pool in October and clean it out in May before refilling it. A pool cover would make cleaning, etc. easier but then you would need to keep the water chlorinated, etc. over-winter; the current owner jokes it would be cheaper to drain the pool and replace the water then buy chemicals to treat it when it does get used, so why keep the water and chemically maintain it when it is not in use?

The pool could fairly easily be converted into an indoor swimming pool by simply enclosing it one way or another. This alone should extend the period you could use the pool by 2 months even if you kept 27° Celsius as the minimum usable temperature. If you add a solar panel system to heat the water, you could extend this further. If you added an electric or other water heater, perhaps for when a solar panel is not enough, you could maintain the water temperature for use all year.

Solar Power
The south facing roof of the property very much lends itself to solar panel use as it gets the sun for virtually all of the day. During the winter, the solar panels could power an electric water heater to supplement the oil fired heater used for hot water and heating. During the summer, the solar panels could air condition the upper floor.

Entrance drive landscaping
Currently the entrance drive has a large white wall separating the main grounds with an additional 1500 sqm of elevated upper grounds. Presuming a buyer bought all of this, the existing wall could be removed in favour of a low granite wall in keeping with the other side of the driveway, and the bank could be landscaped. The existing owners have not done this as the existing wall kept their dogs off the upper grounds and the many new plants they set out. Now these plants are established, the entrance drive could be significantly changed.

Below photo shows driveway entrance just past the double electronic gates. 1500 sqm of the land to the left behind the wall is available to purchase along with the property / main grounds of 9000 sqm (see Option 1 on the price page). There is a further 3200 sqm of adjacent land beyond that available as a separate building plot (see Extra Land). The current owners bought the extra land to protect their privacy as it is elevated above their main grounds. The first 1500 sqm is now fenced off with a row of ever growing Cypress trees that form a large, dense and ultimately very tall screen guaranteeing privacy for the main grounds and property, as well as offering good potential and views down to the river for some log cabins.