WATER! Never take for granted life's basic necessities..

This is day five without water in our little town of Atenas!

Last Friday night high winds knocked over a tree that broke the water main and the support below. The break is located over a local river and the only access is through a couple of farms on either side of the river. We currently have about 16,000 residents without water.

The national water company, AyA, has been delivering potable water to the various neighborhoods via tanker trucks with 4 or 5 spigots on the back end of the truck to fill multiple containers at once. Folks are toting water in every conceivable container they can find. I've seen 2 liter Coke bottles, buckets, pitchers, barrels and even trash cans lined with plastic bags.

There is also a new well in the central park where folks can go to get fresh water from 7 AM until 10 PM.

We are one of the lucky ones. We don’t have a well, but we decided to install a 660 gallon water storage tank when we built our house back in 2011. City water feeds our storage tank so we are always circulating fresh water through the tank. We’ve had a few water shortages over the past few years, but never anything that lasted more than a day, so we’ve hardly ever needed to ration water. This time, however, the situation is severe.

In 2014, we installed a saltwater pool, without knowing how handy it would become in an emergency like the one we face today. We have been able to use pool water for flushing toilets, washing dishes, and even bathing (without soap of course). On the bright side, we are in the middle of our rainy season, so the pool is getting re-filled with rainwater daily. The water is circulated through the pool’s filtration system every day, so it is always fresh. We’ve invited some of our neighbors over to fill buckets with pool water for their toilets, and they are getting their fresh drinking water from the daily tanker truck deliveries.

In spite of the dark clouds above us, there is one silver lining... The affected schools are closed due to sanitation issues and the kids are on an unexpected holiday.

There was an article in today’s paper quoting our local mayor, and he said we may not have city water until Thursday of next week. That's 8 days from now, so it looks like we will be rationing water in the coming days, until this situation is resolved.

Never take water, one of life's most basic necessities, for granted!

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Project Swimming Pool

Finally, it's happening! We are adding a small swimming pool next to the Rancho, our outdoor living space. I have wanted a swimming pool from the get go. John, on the the other hand, not so much.

John had a home with a pool, back in the 70's, in Illinois, and he hated the upkeep it required back then. I sincerely hope today's modern systems make it much easier to maintain.

I have always wanted a pool. I grew up swimming in my neighbor's or my uncle's pools. The neighbor's little boy, Frankie, was not allowed in his pool unless my brother, or I, were with him. I became a junior life guard when I was 11 or 12 and carried my Red Cross credentials proudly.

When we built the Casa and the Rancho, John and I agreed to build the Mirador (observation deck) for his telescope above our carport and pre-wire the stairwell storage area for a future pool pump. The mirador turned out to be a terrific platform for viewing the surrounding mountains, but it's not so good for watching the stars and planets with the telescope. Who knew that the mountains to the north and south of us would block both the North Star and the Southern Cross? This makes it impossible to lock on to the North Star or Southern Cross, and use one of them to track objects in the night sky. Sorry about that, John. I know it's a big disappointment.

North view from the Mirador

Now it's my turn to get what I want, our swimming pool... We took some bids on fiberglass pools a couple of weeks ago and found a local company with great references. They offered us a proposal in our price range and started construction yesterday. The pool wont be very big, just big enough to get good and wet and get in a little exercise. The overall dimensions are 3.5M wide x 4.5M long x 1.5M deep. That works out to about 11.5' wide x 14.75' long x 5' deep.

When we built the Rancho, we included a bathroom with a sink & shower, then we put an another shower on the outside back wall, planning for the future pool. The shower will work out perfect. It's just going to be a few steps from the edge of the pool.

The Guava tree we cut down :(

As with all construction project, we've already run into a few snags. We had a beautiful 15' Guava tree that had to be removed. I tried to give it away to anyone that was willing to come transplant it, but got no takers. Yesterday the crew had to cut it down. John is going to dry the fruit trunk and branches and use it for firewood sometime in the future.

We also discovered the drain pipe for rain water runoff, and pipes for sprinkler system, run right through the pool site. They can cut the pipes to the sprinkler system out and cap them off because they are on an isolated zone, but the drain pipe will have to be re-routed away from the pool.

Day One of the Big Dig

The crew thinks they will have the hole for the pool finished by tomorrow. Sometime next week they will truck in sand for the base and sides, and then they will set the fiberglass pool in place. We have left over concrete pavers from the construction of the house, so we are going to use them to build the pool's coping and border.

I'm hoping everything will be finished in a week, or so, and we'll be enjoying our new pool very soon.

Next project... teaching da boyz, Randy and Goose to swim.

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