Water, Water

(Sorry about the server being down so much, but there is nothing I can do about it. Often, I cannot even open the blog editor to upload text, much less photos. Maybe if folks complained to Google and Blogger, they would finally take this seriously. If anyone knows of another blog site I could use, please drop me a line. Blogger s**ks.)

For the first five days or so in our apartment we had very low water pressure until it finally ran out, and we went for two days with no water at all. We only had drinking water from the garrafon (large water plastic water jug), and water for the toilets by dipping a bucket in the cistern. Let me explain.

Every house in Mexico has a water tank on the roof. Newer ones have PVC tanks, older ones have ceramic or brick tanks. Most newer houses and a lot of older houses also have a cistern at ground level that acts as a back up if the public water system does not fill the tanks on the roofs. This is also filled from the public water system, but once filled, it just sits there for an emergency. If the roof tanks run out, you turn on the cistern pump to refill the roof tank until the public systems gets back on line. The public system only fills the roof tanks at night (at least in our neighborhood), and you can hear the gentle gurgling at 3 AM. Kind of like rain on the roof even though it has not rained from months.

When we moved in two things were against us. They were working on the water system in the neighborhood (to get it up to World Heritage standards?) and thus, there was no public water for a week or more. The other problem was that the pump on the cistern did not work because another one of the tenants had turned it on, had forgot to turn it off, and the motor had burned out. Yes, they should get an automatic shut off valve when it gets close to empty, but since that only happens once a year or so, the cistern never really gets close to empty so why spend the pesos for a special valve. There is, however, a valve to stop filling up the cistern when it is being filled from the street. Anyway, we did not have water in our roof tank and could not replenish it from the cistern which was full. Since our tank was low before the water was cut off, we had been doing laundries (we bought a washing machine right off), and because the other tenants had been filling up their tanks in the previous weeks, they still had at least a trickle, but we had nothing.

After several days of calling the owner and leaving messages, and then two days with “nada, ni una gota de agua” (not a drop of water), the owner finally sent an electrician who arrived around 7 PM, and then came back around 10:30 PM to make sure everything was working properly. We were already in bed when he knocked on the metal door (reverberates like a bell), but it’s nice to know someone cares. We also need some wall hangings to help deaden the echo.

But still the water in the kitchen and one bathroom was only a trickle. Carl suggested that maybe the little strainers on the spigots were blocked, and low and behold they were filled up with mineralized crud. Once that was removed, everything has worked just fine.

The public system is for washing clothes, the dishes, the floors (tile, remember?), the patio and flushing the toilets. Drinking water is bottled, and delivered to your kitchen by guys wearing neckties. Yep, neckties. We had two young, intelligent-looking guys (just like in the ads) deliver our water and put the garrafon in the garrafon holder. Except for the ties, it reminded me of living in southern California as a kid where all of our drinking water was also bottled and delivered to the house.