Water has never been something you
could count on here, but ever since our return it has been even more inconsistent. Then due to the sink hole in our kitchen
breaking the one pipe carrying water to our bathroom and the construction in
the back resulting in the move of our washing machine, we have become very
creative to supply water to the bathroom and washing machine. This has led to many mini floods in the house
as I fill the washing machine with a hose and forget to watch it, resulting in overfilling. Outside the house
I have always thoroughly enjoyed the rain.
The clouds and rain keep the temperature a few degrees cooler, though
slightly more humid. Plus, it reminds me
of the states; I find the sound very soothing and desire to just sit, listen, and
watch it with a good cup of coffee. I
grew up in Portland after all.
In the past week I have
experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows associated with
water. We now have water in the
bathroom!!! A very exciting high! I could not imagine how water would be
brought back to our bathroom as we live in a brick and concrete home. But there is nothing like calling in a local
to solve a problem. A ‘plumber’ we knew
came over the very day John called.
John showed him what we wanted.
The following day the ‘plumber’ had moved our water tank, re-worked the
piping from the tank, piped water into the bathroom, added a sink, and a shower
head, all by 6:30pm. When the full pressured
city water came on that night there was one leak, resulting in some big puddles
in the kitchen. But even with the leak,
we enjoyed a shower for the first time in our own home since our return!
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New Sink
Now there is a place to wash hands, other than the kitchen sink, after using the bathroom!!!
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| Cement walls chiseled out to inlay piping. |
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| A Shower!!! |
We spent the entire week enjoying
the sink, shower, and water in the bathroom!
Then I experienced the lowest-low yet with water.
Saturday morning, we were woken up
at 3am by a neighbor knocking on our bedroom window. It had started raining as we went to bed,
which again created a soothing sound which lulled me to sleep. We got up of course to see what in the
world could our neighbor want. I could
hear it was still raining, or had began again, I’m not sure because I was sleeping
really well. As soon as John and I
opened our bedroom door, we stepped into about an inch of water. Water was flowing, I mean you could see it
running in from our front door to the lowest point in our house, which
happened to be the kitchen. This turned
out to be a blessing. We had no idea what to do except get
anything and everything of value off the floor.
The ‘backyard’ had recently been elevated at least 8 inches because of
construction, resulting in our backdoor being unusable and absolutely
no place for the water in the kitchen to exit.
After raising all we could, John went outside to see what else he
could do, while I used a broom to sweep the water into the
bathroom (all bathrooms here have a drain in the floor). A contributing, if not sole
cause of this flood was that our gutter in the front of the house where all our
gray water and run-off from the street is supposed to go, was currently
filled with sand, rocks, and dirt, again due to construction. The heavy and continuous rain created so much
water with no place to go, it ran straight into our house. John proceeded to dig out some of the gutter
and also create a channel for the water to run through into the next door banana
garden. The water in the kitchen
collected to at least a depth of 2 inches before the flow slowed down. I was able to push or sweep, most of it into
the bathroom to drain out of the house.
The irony of it all draining out through the bathroom was the drain
originally went out to the gutter in the front.
In addition, a hand full of tiles in our bathroom broke a couple days before, due to
another sink hole type issue. As this
had not yet been repaired, at least half, if not more of the water I swept into
the bathroom, exited right through the floor.
At first I considered this a blessing as the draining kept up with the
flow coming in.
But, as it turned out, all the water running under
the house either from the bathroom, or the smaller amount that entered the boy’s
room, caused a sink hole in the boy’s room.
Thankfully the boy’s slept through it all.
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| Broken Tiles in the Bathroom |
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The Boy's Room
All except a row of tiles around the walls sank down.
Broken tiles are as sharp as glass, so we taped the edges and now encourage all play to occur outside their room.
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Early on I checked the water flow into the boy’s room, then an
hour or two later we went in to clean and saw the floor damage.
It was such an adventure, one I hope not to repeat. After we got all the water out, there was so
much dirt and silt to clean up that we were
exhausted and aside from cleaning, spent the rest of Saturday napping and
resting.
Now we await a construction worker to come to fix the floors and hope we can sleep through
the night if it rains again.
Water IN the House
