Saturday 9/27- This morning, even before 7am, Ramie was already up on the roof. He got going early this morning to replace the tank on our water heater before it got too hot and sunny out. What? More repairs to our house? It’s only a few years old, why do we have to make so many fixes to our still fairly new home? Well, this is just one more thing that we discovered that our builder messed up. Weird, huh? Sounds like a theme!
Back during the build, Ramie did know that when they were originally installing our solar water heater on our roof, they broke the pipe that goes into the tank. Ramie caught it and made them fix it, however, it's a stainless-steel tank and he’s pretty sure that they just welded it with a regular rod instead of a stainless rod, as we’re learning that these guys are kind of hacks and don’t do things as professionally as we originally believed. This incorrect weld held for about the first year, but ever since then it has been leaking. It started as a very slow drip, but as time went on, the leak got worse and worse. Now it is to the point that it is dripping at a rate of a couple drips a second. We’ve been wanting to get it fixed for almost a year now and when Ramie reached out to the company about it, they told him that there is a 5 year warranty on the water heater, all we needed was to show the receipt that it was purchased & installed less than 5 years ago. Since it was purchased by our builder, and we didn’t get any paperwork from him at the end of the build (another hack move by the builder), we reached out to him to ask for a copy of the receipt. Of course, he didnt have it! Apparently, he doesn’t give the paperwork to the homeowner OR keep any paperwork either. Ramie tried everything that he could to find the receipt, the company searched by our builder’s name, by his company’s name, and all sorts of other ways of tracking, but at the end of it, everyone came up empty handed. Unfortunately, no receipt means no warranty. Let me tell you, as time goes on, we are getting more and more irritated with our builder and everything that was done. He has cost us a lot of extra money in the end and it is nothing short of ridiculous.
Our only option at this point is to just purchase a new tank outright. Ramie messaged the company, got a quote for the tank, paid for the tank, and set it up for them to deliver it from San Jose to Uvita for us. We have had the tank at the house now for about a week now, but haven’t had the time or good enough weather to get it installed… until today.
This brings us back to the 7am start time. Ramie decided that now was as good of a time as ever to do it. He gathered up his tools and ladder and made his way up to the roof to drain the old tank and get it ready to be removed. The tank itself really is not that heavy, it's just awkward for one person to move around. Just think of your 40 gallon water heater tank, that's basically what this tank is.
For those of you that have been with us for a while and read the blog regularly, you may remember when Ramie needed my help on the roof when we installed insulation in the eaves... I hate getting up on the roof! You can read all about that experience by clicking HERE! Ramie decided to try to spare me the trauma of going on the roof again, so he got up on the roof and tossed down some straps. We wrapped them around the tank and he used his strength to pull it up the ladder while I was on the ground to push it and guide it up the ladder from the bottom, and hopefully not get crushed if it got away from him. Thankfully, he ate his Chiky cookies (his version of Wheaties) before this which gave him enough strength to pull it onto the roof.
Once the old tank was drained completely, he had to get it out of the cradle so the new one could be put into its resting spot. This actually turned out to be surprisingly easy for him to do on his own since gravity was in his favor. As expected, though, trying to lift the new one into place was a bit harder, stupid gravity! Fortunately for me, he was able to get the new tank into the existing cradle without my help.
This could have been the end of the project, as all he had to do was reconnect the old connections to the new tank, but being the perfectionist that he is, he just couldn’t leave well enough alone. He decided that he also wanted to fix the poor piping job that was originally put in. While it did the job just fine and didn’t leak, it bothered him that nothing was level and the pipes were strained. That means that a trip to the hardware store was needed to keep going on what should have been a very simple tank swap out.
Once he got home with the supplies that he thought he would need for this project, he gathered some more tools and went back up to the roof. He thought he was getting close to having it all installed and finished when a different joint that he didn’t originally plan to replace broke. Now he had to go back to the hardware store for more parts again. After this trip to the hardware store, he was able to fix that newly broken joint, but when he got it all put back together and started filling it up, some of his new piping started to leak. What should have been a quick and easy swap out STILL wasn’t done! He now had to drain the tank again to re-tighten the fittings, then began to refill it again, only for it to still leak.
This time he thought he knew right away why it was leaking and would have to drain the tank yet again! When he started this morning at 7 he was hoping this would be a quick project that he could get done in the morning before it got hot out, but now it was 11:00… unfortunately it is hot and sunny and he is still working up there. This time of year, our hot and sunny hours are limited, so we wanted this project to be finished before those hot and sunny hours were over so that we might have some hot water for showers this evening. It is now 11am and our water isn’t even being heated yet. The fittings that he found at the hardware store he went to earlier were complete garbage, and he bought what he thought would work, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. So this time he decided to go to the other hardware stores in town to see if he could find some better quality pipe fittings. Basically, the ones that he bought earlier were of such poor quality that you could tighten them all the way, with no more threads left to tighten, but they could just never get tight enough. I guess this is why you see pipe fittings here with a half roll of pipe tape on the threads and then covered in silicone. With all of this going on and our typical luck, by the time Ramie gets this fixed the afternoon clouds & rain will move in and we won’t get to heat the water.
We weren’t totally out of luck, though, because at least our solar heater has an electric backup! It was 11:30 and Ramie was on his way back to the hardware store for the 3rd time this morning. (It is times like this that I am thankful we live so close to town. While we used to think we would love to live up in the mountains far away from humanity, if we lived an hour up the mountain, you’d be lucky to get 1 trip to the store every couple of weeks!) As is typical here, every hardware store in town had the same crappy Chinese fittings that were leaking up on the roof right now. When he was home again, he just did it the Costa Rican way and put more pipe tape on the threads and put it back together. There was still a little bit of a leak, but it will be fine and is less than the leak that started this whole project today. He finally finished up around 12:30, and the result was a slight improvement from what it was. I guess we’ll just have to bring in some good quality parts from the US. It’s for reasons like this that we are always excited when we can load up visitors with things from the US for us.
Lesson of the day: If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
 |
| Helper dog can't help when dad is up on the roof, but she is always nearby watching what is going on! |
Sunday 9/28- Remember that brisket Ramie bought the last time we went to San Isidro? Today we were finally going to smoke it. He had the smoker going around 6am and spent all day smoking it while working on other odds and ends around the house; little things like cleaning up all of his tools and organizing the dry room after his job yesterday. We pulled the brisket off the smoker at around 3:30 and we had to let it rest for about an hour before digging in. It was so hard not to just eat it right away, but finally, just before 5, we dug in, and boy was it delicious!
 |
| Sorry, no "after" pictures... we dug in and ate it before we thought about a photo! |
Tuesday 9/30 & Wednesday 10/1- With that house on hold while waiting for some parts, Ramie went to work with Randall. Finally, after all this time, the belongings that they went to pack up in San Jose in a prior blog post are getting ready to be shipped out of CR. All of those pallets of belongings had been stored at the warehouse since then, and all they had to do today would be pick them up with a forklift and load them into a semitrailer that would then move it all to Mexico for the owner. This was a quick and easy project.
On Wednesday, Ramie & Randall had to go up to Quepos to pack up some belongings for a person who is moving back to the US. There wasn’t a lot, only a partial truckload, and this project went fairly quickly. Since they still had some time before the day was over, they made some other deliveries around the area together so Randall wouldn’t have to do it on his own another day.
The Official Casa Costa Breeze end of September rainfall total was 14.29 inches
Sunday 10/5- After 11 months, it looks like we are finally finishing up the Lego sorting project from the 1st big batch that we bought. We have lots of fully complete sets, lots of sets that are only missing a few pieces, and quite a few sets that are missing too many pieces to be worthwhile and will just be considered “extra parts”. While we are getting burnt out from going through this same batch of bricks over and over and doing all of the final sorting and re-looking for those missing parts, we are excited to be done with this “old” stuff and move on to the 2nd batch next. Yes, it will be largely the same process, but it’s fresh and new with different sets, and we’re excited to see what we’ll find that we haven’t already seen 100 times with this old batch.
 |
| It's been chilly lately - like 70* overnight, and this little freeze baby loves to be curled up in her blankie |
Thursday 10/9- Fast forward a few days in the week. Yesterday afternoon Loren contacted Ramie to let him know that the correct sink had shown up and Ramie could come do the work whenever he was ready. This morning Ramie went to pick it up to get it taken care of right away. Fortunately, this sink fit the hole, so he would be able to finish up the last of the plumbing work. One other thing that Loren asked Ramie to look into was how slowly the kitchen sink drained. He brought the drain snake up there but was not able to find a blockage. What he did find though, was a full septic tank. This may be the exact cause of the slow draining. Ramie got permission from Loren to call the septic company and get a clean out scheduled. Thankfully, Loren would be able to meet the septic guys at the house so Ramie wouldn’t have to make himself available for that.
After Ramie finished at that house, he had to go to town to gather parts for another project. We mentioned in our last blog that our friends Stuart and Gem had purchased a very small, rustic Tico house that they were working to convert into an Airbnb. In our last blog Ramie had to go to the casita to go over what work they would like done. Their main priority was to have him install a suicide shower so they could have a hot water shower (if you don’t know what that is, go back and read the previous blog post). They had been out of the country for the last week or so, so the job was on hold until now when they were back. Ramie gave them the quote of all of the parts and labor, and they gave him the go-ahead, so today Ramie purchased all of the items that he would need to do the project: conduit, electrical wire, a new breaker, the shower head, and other odds and ends. The work for this project will get done next week.
Friday 10/10- Today Ramie finally had the chance to work on some of our own projects that he just has not had any time to do. The extra fog lights that he installed on our truck have been bugging him and they needed to be modified. He had originally installed the brackets that came with the lights, but they were never very stable, and vibrated and bounced so much as you were driving that the light would bounce all over the place. It annoyed Ramie and I’m sure irritated the oncoming traffic even more, so he never used them. Ramie decided that he was going to remove the brackets from the hood and mount the lights behind the grill, on a solid surface of the truck instead. It didn't take him too long to do that small project. The results are nice stable lights now. Then it was time to rotate the tires on the truck and then work on Dusti. We recently got new tires for Dusti and the steering wheel has been a little off center. Ramie is not sure what getting new tires has to do with this, so he wanted to rotate them to see if it corrected the issue. Sure enough, it did fix that steering issue, but there was another issue with Dusti. At some point recently the CV boot got torn; it's just a small tear but it is enough that the grease is coming out and she is not driveable until that gets fixed. Ramie had ordered the parts from the US a couple of weeks ago and they should be here very soon. Today he got Dusti all ready for that work so all he would have to do is put in the new part and put her all together. Normally he wouldn’t be in such a hurry and would do all the work once he got the part, but we have an upcoming request for Ramie’s Rides in the very near future that he wanted to be ready for.
Val & Marshall invited us out to dinner tonight to our favorite Mexican restaurant. They know the type of work that I do for a living, and had some questions for me to plan for some upcoming changes for themselves, but after “business” was over, we had a good time hanging out. . Since it has been raining an awful lot lately we went for an early dinner at 3:30. It wasn't raining too hard when we finished, so they invited us back to their house to hang out a bit longer. It was a fun evening with a lot of laughter, and since we started early, it wasn’t obnoxiously late when we got home, but it may have been past or normal bedtime.
Saturday 10/11- Randall and Jessica had another out-of-town delivery and asked us if we would babysit Hunter for the weekend. Ramie can't say no to having more dogs at our house, so of course he agreed! All of the dogs that we get asked to babysit are great dogs and they are always welcomed to our house. We picked him up first thing this morning, and the first thing that we do when Hunter arrives at our house is to comb this big hairy beast of a German Sheppard. We brush him as often as he will allow us to when he is at our house because he is just SOOO furry!! At home, Hunter is a 100% outdoor dog, but when he comes to our house he gets to stay and sleep indoors.
He gets to sleep inside at our house, even though he doesn’t at home, for two main reasons. 1) While we have fences around most of our yard, we don't have a fully fenced yard. You may recall from a prior post a while back that Hunter and his sister Luna decided to go on a little adventure by jumping down into the creek and taking off. We don’t want to encourage (or allow) him to do that again. 2) We don't have an invisible fence like he is used to at his own home so he doesn't wear a collar when he’s at our house; there’s nothing to warn him that he’s straying too far. We feel more comfortable keeping him indoors with us so he doesn't wander off in the middle of the night. He is a little bit uncomfortable at first, and seems unsure what to do when we close all the doors in the evening. When we go to bed he paces around our room near Ramie and I, so before we fall asleep he gets some extra pets, and then will finally will lay down on the floor and go to sleep. Being the guard dog that he is, he always sleeps facing the door. He is alert to outside noises all night and he gets up to check them out, sometimes growling at whatever he thinks is out there. We aren't used to that much movement or noise at night, as Skye is used to things and only gives a warning bark or growl if something really needs it, so we don't sleep the greatest when Hunter is at the house, but we do feel very safe!
Anyway… getting as much fur off of him as we can outside makes sweeping and cleaning after he goes home just a little bit easier. With round #1 of brushing one out of the way, we let him run and play with Skye while we worked on the blog. It was another rainy day so not too much else was happening. When we got sick of working on the blog, we decided it was time to start on batch #2 of the Lego stuff. Now with the new batch it’s more fun again; it was getting monotonous at the end of the last batch. The
first thing we had to do was sort everything by color and separate out
all of the accessories and odd ball pieces to be put into divider bins to make the next step easier.
We made it about halfway through this part of the project today.
 |
| You are annoying me! |
 |
| Hahaha! Take this! |
 |
| But Hunter, that's my pillow & bone! |
Monday 10/13- I got a day off today for Columbus day. Since much of our the work that we do involves government offices, it only makes sense that we would take days off that the government takes off too. I wish I could say it was eventful, but it was almost a repeat of yesterday. I’m ok with that though, an extra day off is always welcome!
Tuesday 10/14- Today, Ramie’s Repairs would head back to work. All of the parts that he bought last week for the project at Stuart's casita were loaded into the truck bright and early and Ramie was out the door by around 8am.
Hi everyone, Ramie here to tell you about this project. When I arrived at the casita I decided that I would start with the electrical part of the projects first since that will take the longest to complete. I started running the conduit from the electrical panel to the bathroom first, and once I was done with that it was time to run the electrical wire through that conduit. For these showers I needed to run #6 wire, which is a very large wire, because this type of shower head heater uses a lot of power.
Here in Costa Rica, there is a usually a main shutoff switch at the meter where the power comes in off of the main line. I wasn’t exactly sure where the meter was for this house so I went outside and followed the main line that went into the house and headed toward the road. I didn’t see a meter anywhere at the end of the driveway or near the road and I continued following the wires down the road and kept walking and walking and walking. I eventually ended up about a ¼ mile down the mountain but there was no electrical meter nor shut off switches anywhere in sight. I suppose there was a chance that I missed it hidden in the bushes or trees, so I made my way, back up the mountain road and followed the wires towards the house looking anywhere there were plants near the road. I made it all the way back to the house and didn’t find a meter anywhere in sight. This is weird! I called Stuart to ask him where the meter is and his response was something along the lines of “Yeah, we are working on that”. Currently there is no meter. I don’t know how they are getting power without a meter or how the electrical company knows how much to charge them, but that isn’t my problem. My problem is that this means I have to work in the live panel. Ugh, I hate doing that.
Very carefully, I got the wires and new breaker connected into the panel without electrocuting myself and was ready to install the shower head and connect the wires to that. Once everything was in place and connected, I flipped the breaker and headed back to the shower to test it. Did it work? Yeah, I suppose you could say that it did, but truly I was less than impressed with the heat output from it. Is it hot? No, not at all. Is it warm? Yes, I suppose it is warmer than the water from the tap. These things just aren't that great, but something is better than nothing, right? Being the good handyman that I am, I sent a video to Stuart to show him that the project was complete, but also let him know that they weren't going to get a HOT shower, only a warmish one. As I was cleaning up, he responded back to me saying he would rather return this particular shower head and buy the next bigger version of it so they could get more heat. I guess I wasn’t quite done yet! Thankfully, it's easy to disconnect and remove the shower head, and I would still need the electrical line that I ran, so that wasn’t all lost.
I removed the shower head and finished cleaning up then headed towards home. When I got back into Uvita I stopped at the hardware store and tried to return the shower head, but returning things here is very different than it is in the US. As expected, it was a simple “No, it's already been installed and it is used, we can’t take this back”. Instead of trying to convince them I figured that I’d just try to sell it for a small discount from what I paid for it since it truly only had a couple of minutes of use on it. I bought the next bigger shower head and the new breaker that this one would need for it and went home. The re installation would happen a different day since they aren’t in a hurry.
When I got home, I called up Randall to talk to him about these shower heads. Randall is building a small rental cabina and I thought that maybe he would be interested in buying the shower head at a discount. Apparently these shower heads just are what they are and installing a bigger unit isn't going to be any better or make the water any hotter. They just don't put out a lot of heat and you will never get a “hot water” shower like us North Americans are used to. He recommended that Stewart & Gem just save the money and reinstall the original one. With this info I reached back out to Stuart to let him know the situation. He said that he would talk to Gem about it and get back to me before I went and installed the big one (and couldn’t return it after that).
This project is to be continued....
Comments
Post a Comment