So this was a little random when someone asked what we consider to be our best three purchases, we have made. They’d seen me comment about our ZERO electric bills, so they asked the question.
Anyway, here goes, excluding the house and car, there are our best three purchases we have made recently.
Solar System
This is without doubt our best ever investment, aside from the house and car. We shopped around, got prices from 4 companies and went with the people we chose and it was a doddle.
The guy came from the company, he spoke excellent English, they did a proper survey etc, did all the paperwork, supplied and installed everything.
Our bills in 2025 averaged 12.50 per month, which was basically the tax aspect. This did change recently, so our credit in the cloud actually covered that too, meaning our last 5 bills have now been ZERO.
Pellet Burner
When we lived down in Freila in the campo, we had a wood burner in the living room plus a pellet burner in the kitchen. During the long winters down there it was handy in the morning to fire up the pellet burner for instant heat, but the log burner was great too. Night time was a case of throwing on another couple of small logs to let it burn through the night, to keep the house warm and the dogs happy.
Now the upside of the pellet burner is quicker heat, more controllable and cleaner, as we talked about here in the comparisons.
Water Tank & Pump
Where we live, during the summer months when the holiday home owners turn up, the water pressure is really poor. In our en suite we have a solar tank shower, but the house bathroom is a gas boiler and the pressure was a problem.
The easy fix for this, as a friend and neighbour told us, was a water tank and pump. Boy this works a treat, the pressure problem is fixed, the water is constant and the heat instant.
Another advantage is on the rare times when the water company are doing repairs and cut off the water for the day, we have plenty of water.
The Last One
I know, I know. The article was about our best three purchases, but I felt we needed to include this one. Spain has drinking water that is drinkable, but not great to the taste. The most popular answer to this is buying bottled water from the supermarket.
The water is also hard with calcium which causes issues with your kettle etc, so unless you’re using the bottled water in your kettle, you’ll see the limescale etc building up.
Instead of continuing buying 4 or 6 of the 6 litre bottles and lugging these around, we bought a water filter drink system, which filters the water, and provides cold or hot water to drink. As there are only the two of us here, for 48 weeks of the year, this works a treat.
This system is a Waterdrop brand, it filters cold and hot water, and it’s great. There are different settings for the capacity you want dispensing and you set the temperature too.
Other Notable Mentions
There are a couple more buys that we think made life easier for us.
The Gas BBQ
We bought a Broil King BBQ at the same time we bought our outdoor furniture from Siesta Group, and it gets used at least twice a week, from the obvious meat barbequing to making homemade pizzas on it.
Ninja AirFryer
While we’re talking about cooking, we got this 3 years or so ago, as there’s usually just the two of us, it is more economical than the main oven, even though that is a fan oven.
Online Banking
We use several accounts, one reason is they cannot be embargoed or frozen by the authorities here, over something and nothing.
1: Wise.
N26 Is The Second
N26 are as good as Wise, we find.
Too many times we have heard or read about people having their Caxia, Santander, etc. local bank accounts frozen, due to some unknown tax bill that wasn’t paid, that was for the sum of 8.00€, but the bill was still in the previous house owners name.
We didn’t need this hassle!
One We Didn’t Need
Hey, I’m not perfect. never claimed to be, and from time to time, I get things wrong. One thing that we thought sounded great, so we bought was a pool heater. We have a 10×5 pool, I use it from April through till the end of October usually, but the prospect of being able to use it year-round really did appeal.
Anyway, we got the potentia increased, the boletín eléctrico paperwork sorted, the electrics checked and updated, then got the heater installed. It was tested at the completion of the install and worked fine. We then tried it ourselves a week into November, and it worked fine. It’s not been used since.
Final Thoughts On Our Best Three Purchases And Our wasteful One
These were all lifestyle choices, the solar though was the best by far. As much as we both liked our wood burners, the pellet burner is great. There’s no more having to buy seasoned, dry wood, storing it and then cutting it down to size, if it’s too big.
Thankfully water disruptions are few and far between, but we do have a water supply if needed. The filtered water is great for drinking, it’s a countertop appliance so there’s no big system under the sink.
As for the pool heater, it’s something that will add value to the house, when we come to sell it.
