1500 More DIY questions

Hi everybody,

I was wondering if anyone out there I could offer me a bit of advice. I have been offered a part share in a property near Caldarola in le Marche, the property is in a rural location surounded by woods and high up on the side of a mountain but with a decent road up to it. I design and install bathrooms and kitchens and am pretty handy with things like electrics, boilers rsj's etc. My problem is that although I know what I can and cannot do in the uk I know nothing about building regulations in Italy apart from what I have managed to learn from this excellent site. The house is slightly complicated in that it is actually two properties, one small old cottage, with a more recent larger house on the side. The cottage is a wreck, the rear wall has collapsed and the roof has fallen in but the rest of the property is sound with good walls and roof. No one has lived there for about thirty years and although there is evidence of wiring and some plumbing neither the electics or water are conected.

The figures I have been seeing for full renovation strike me as being quite expensive for the work involved and what I would like to do is to do as much work on the property as I can in order to keep costs under control. From what I have read, a lot of this will depend on the level of permission that has been granted. My understanding is that if you have a maintenence permission then you can do quite a lot of it your self where as once the property has been deemed a project then you have to have all the work done by registered builders/plumbers/electicians, I could be completely wrong about this and would welcome any input from anyone with experience in these matters.

Also what happens if you go down the alternative technology route? I am installing solar panals in my own house in the uk and am fairly sure that I could supply most of the hot water and a fair bit of the heating this way for the house in Italy and it would also be possible to use wind power and 12v lighting with a backup geny for heavy duty use such as washing machines and an inverter for use with plug in items. The house comes with quite a lot of land and has a spring which produces water all year which could be purified. I lived on a boat for several years and so am used to this way of doing things and I could put the sevices of the house together in such a way as it would not require connecting to the mains electricity or water. Now would this make life easier, are the permissions required in order to connect the services or do you need them anyway no matter what you do? and would I need permission to install a low voltage system? I also understand that I could register as an builder, would this allow me to do the work myself or is there a clash of interest in working on your own property?

Thanks very much for reading all this and any thoughts or advice would be most welcome.

Cheers