So we’ve been
hearing a lot about the extremely dry spring that Colorado has been
experiencing. And well, we don’t have that problem here in Bucay. We’ve been
here for a month and half and it’s pretty much rained every night and sometimes
in the day. A week ago we moved into our
new apartment just down the street from where we were living. We are very
excited about our new apartment. It’s quite clean and nice. The little old lady
who owns the building recently had it built. Basically all the houses or
buildings here are set up with rebar and/or columns sticking out the roof so
that when you want to add another floor you just add it on. So our apartment
was built on half of the roof of our building so we are able to walk out onto a
big terrace that’s bigger than our apartment. We share this space with the
other apartments. People use it to dry their clothes. We’re on the fourth floor
so we have nice views of the mountains when they’re not covered by clouds(which
seems to be most of the time). And yes, we have to walk up three flights of
stairs to get to our place.
We
found this place when we were here for our site visit back in early March. We
were walking down the street and a little old lady asked us where we were
living and if we needed a place to live. So we got to see it then and she
basically held it for us while she continued to have work done on it. She had
rented to a Peace Corps volunteer in the past so I think that helped us out.
Now
here’s where the fun begins… We’d visited the apartment several times before we
moved in and we noticed that sometimes there was water and sometimes there
wasn’t. We’d ask her about it and she’d say that she’d get it fixed or
something like that. So we moved in a week ago knowing that there still was some
problems with the water. For a few days we still showered back at our host
families’ place. We kept leaving our
landlord notes asking her to do something about it. We’d fill buckets and tubs
when we had water so we’d have it for washing dishes, bucket bathing and
laundry.
The
first night we slept there it rained in the night (which is normal) but I also
heard additional water hitting the roof. I get up to discover water in our main
room which is leaking thru the ceiling just inside the door. We had been warned
about water coming into the apartment but we thought it came from under the
front door when it rained really hard. Well, come to find out it does that too.
So I mopped up everything, put buckets down to catch the water and went back to
sleep. In the morning I began to
investigate the problem. Right outside our door on the roof is a big blue
cistern. We were told this would be our water or we shared this with another
apartment. I conclude that this thing must be leaking which is causing our
problem. I stack up two saw horses so I can climb up to check it out. I pull
the lid off the tank and it’s empty.
To make a long
story short, days go by of talking to neighbors, leaving notes with the
landlord and trying to figure out the system. Then the neighbor below us tells
us that there’s something very important regarding the functioning of the pump
for our cistern in his apartment. We ask if we can see it. We go into his
bedroom and coming in through his window is the electrical plug for the pump.
(?) So he saysjust go buy some electrical cord so we can splice it in and run
the cord up to our apartment. My response is, “Si, si, si!” So I buy the cord,
he splices it in, I run it into our kitchen window, plug it in and just like
that I’m filling the tank. I’m so pleased with myself that I send Cherith a
text telling her that I think I solved our problem. After it filled I was able to take a shower
for the first time in our apartment! I send Cherith another text with the news
of my shower.
Now if you’re
paying attention this story started with water coming into the apartment
(probably from the cistern).But I took great care to replace the hose clamp on
the hose going into the cistern and I inspected the whole thing when it was
full and it wasn’t leaking. So why then when Cherith returns several hours
later was the tank empty? I was stumped.
The next day our
host family sends over a guy who was doing work on one of their toiles to take
a look at our problem…a plumber…of sorts. He looks things over and starts
working on the water lines coming into the house down by the street. I was very
skeptical of this approach but I didn’t interfere. He ended up installing a one-way valve so that water won’t drain out
of tank back into the water coming from the city. I’m very confused. It’s like
we have water coming from the street and we have water from our cistern feeding
into the same system.Whatever the situation,the water stops draining out of the
tank.
That night we
hear water hitting the roof again and it’s not raining. So we’re up in the middle
of the night, standing on a saw horse
and shining a flashlight on the cistern. Water is overtopping the tank and
running onto the roof (and the pump isn’t plugged in). In hopes of preventing
the water from saturating the roof again and coming through the ceiling we turn
on the kitchen sink and the shower. We’ve did that for
like three nights. It’s such a waste. I conclude that at night, when no one is
using water, the system is pressurized enough to fill our tank through the water
outlet. So we get the plumber guy to come back and install another one-way valve on the water
coming out of the tank so that water can’t back up into it. And Viola! We now have the ability to fill our water tank, maintain the water in it and it doesn´t overflow at night. We are finally able to sleep through the night without have to deal with this issue in some way.
I´m sure we´ll find more problems with our apartment but for now we´re happy.
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| These pics are just to give you an idea of what our place looks like. |
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| Obviously this is before we moved in... |
