How much would YOU pay for water?

Of course it is a basic necessity. Water. Without it my life is pretty miserable. Ignore the obvious like not bathing or flushing the toilet, but my wife is the kind that relieves stress by cleaning, and is adversely affected by not. Therefore I try really hard to make sure we always have water.

When we first looked at the house we're in, there was no water. After talking to a plumber in the city, it appeared to be an easy solution: Buy a pump, buy a pressure tank, and buy a tinaco (cistern). Not realizing how much water the average person uses every day, I bought what appeared to be huge at 1100 liters. I also bought a 1 hp pump and a pressure tank as requested. There are NO plumbers in El Chal, as we soon found out when inspecting the plumbing in the house. I brought one with me who works for the government in Santa Elena. The downside to this is he only had a week of vacation and as most government employees from any country, extremely slow.

We soon found out that the water is only on here every other day from 7am to around 2pm. I say around because turning the water on involves turning on the pump with a large diesel generator. The guy from the town brings a couple gas cans full of diesel and lets it run until it runs out of gas. Then the water shuts off. Everybody, no matter how much water they use, pays $2.50/month for water. They have a little book with people's addresses in it. I waited for 6 months for a bill before I found out how it worked and then paid my overdue 6 months and the next 12 months. So a year and half of water for only $45. Pretty neat, huh?

Another problem is that the town pump does not pump water high enough for it to reach chest level, let alone shower head level. It would basically only reach your knees. Therefore the plumber had to dig a hole to put the cistern in. After spending a day digging the hole in the rock he finally got everything connected, we waited for our day for water and then tried out the system. It was then we realized whoever installed the plumbing in the house didn't use glue. Every time we'd glue a pipe another would pop apart. For our first 6 months we ran out of water a few times, but mainly because of the shower faucet that wouldn't turn off.

For the next 6 months we never ran out of water. The only time we had that problem was when the electricity was off and therefore the pump couldn't turn on. Then one day we came home to the hose and the pipe it was connected to laying about 15 feet away from where it once was connected. This wouldn't have been a problem except that our pump emptied all of our water and the only way to fix the pipe was to break a chunk of concrete foundation to glue on new connectors. $5

Then one fateful day we came home to a disaster. Apparently a small animal hid behind the blocks that were cleverly stacked to hide our pump from preying eyes and our dogs knocked them all down to get to it. I never found a dead animal in our yard, so apparently the only successful thing they did was to break every tube on every side of our pump, once again emptying our cistern. The next day was not our day for water, but I bought new pipes and connectors and had everything ready for when it finally was. $10

Recently we had two girls come visit us. This had us running our dishwasher every day and doing several loads of laundry. It was then I figured out that the average person uses 80 to 100 gallons per day. So with all the flushing and drinking and hand washing, we drained our cistern a couple times. If you catch it, it doesn't hurt the pump that much, unfortunately we were close and one fateful flush in the middle of the night used the last of the water. The pump ran all night long and by morning it was complete burned out. So the next day I went and found a 1/2 hp pump that I think will save me electricity and replaced it. $120

This week the generator our town uses broke. Fortunately we knew when it broke and started the "When it's yellow let it mellow. When it's brown flush it down." Emergency water saving plan. That combined with no laundry, dish washing, and 1 minute showers has allowed us to have water. Even today 5 days later, our 1100 liters still was about 25% full. Unfortunately, the average stress level in the house was rising at an exponential rate to that of how many dishes were on the counter in direct correlation to the amount of clothes spilling out of the top of the hamper.

I've been meaning to buy a secondary cistern since we found out one was not enough for four people and with twins my wife will be doing significantly more laundry. So yesterday I went and bought one. Being at the start of the rainy season we are going to use it to collect rain water and then after the rainy season we'll work something out to put it on our roof as an extra reservoir we'll fill up on water days. After setting up the new cistern and hooking it up to a hose, I called the voluntary firemen. $120

For $20 the firemen will bring you a truck full of water. 8000 liters to be exact. Of course, our distance from the city added a $30 fuel surcharge, but I thought $50 to be a small price to pay when compared to how much I love my wife and only long for her happiness. We only needed 2200 liters, but I'm not going to let the firemen get away with that much water I'd already paid for, so my wife went with them door to door filling up our neighbor's pilas and barrels. The remaining water was enough for 9 households to also have water. 2 people said thank you. 7 people took it for granted that even though we'd never spoken before and they refuse to wave at us, of course the gringos would buy them water. Oh well, at least I have clean underwear.

So, two months, $305. At least now maybe it's all fixed, unless this generator thing doesn't get resolved soon.