Before I get into the business of our trip, I wanted to share two scenic photos we took. The first one opens with the namesake of Torrente de Agua and that is the lovely waterfall which abuts the length of our property. With the rains so heavy, you can almost hear the noise of falling water into one of the many pools which are part of the course of the falls. You know for sure it is rainy season when you see that reddish silt floating in the pools - picking up the natural color of the rock.
The second photo was as we were driving up the mountain to our land, and captured this wonderful view across the Parrita valley towards rain forests, with a spectacular view of the rain falling there. That 'body' of water in the foreground is actually the river which is reasonably wide at this point, especially during rainy season. But this is not atypical of much of the year in mid afternoon.
So one of the things we absolutely, positively had to complete during this trip was the plumbing to below the first floor.
In this photo, we put together the drains for the second floor bathroom. We know it can look confusing. The left side with that white elbow is the upstairs toilet. The pipe that is narrower is actually the vent shaft which goes across the ceiling to the outside, and then up to provide incoming air to help drive the flow when one flushes the toilet. Just to the right of that pipe (where that blue flexible electric conduit crosses, is the air vent for the grey water drains for the shower and sink. The ceiling in the room will be lowered about 8" so that it is flat, with this plumbing above it. It is still a nice height, just lower than the rest of the rooms. We make up for that with a large floor to ceiling window, plus a generous window over the sink. These two should bring in great light, and make this a warm and comfortable bathroom. All this notwithstanding, the shower into which we're looking will remain unfinished
at least through January, and possibly February 2009. This space gives us good access into the electrical panel, and we want the opportunity to provision for Air Conditioning before we close up these walls.We wanted to include some new photos of the storage level of the casa. One might think of this as the 'basement' although this floor, like all the others, is well above ground level. You can see the TV cables hanging down so that we can run a signal to each bedroom and upstairs. As of now, we don't know what we will use for TV. The switchbox on the wall will be the bottom switch so that if one is working on something at that level, and it gets
dark, they can turn on the overhead lights. There are separate switches and lights in the closed room (aka, the dry room). More on this space in the next blog post...In this final photo for this post, Enrique our electrician is running electric at the lower storage area (bodega) level. The tubing on the ground uphill is the drain plumbing pipe we will install in January. The metal lower down is construction material. The zacate block you can see running outside (from the post with the switch box) is just a temporary walkway. Later in the project we'll create a cement pad here, and a concrete stair going up. But most likely we'll also leave that path as it goes to the parking end of the driveway, and will be very convenient.
All for this posting, yet another from this trip.
Thanks for reading, feel free to comment.
Ricardo y Jeeeem
(Dick and Jim)
No comments:
Post a Comment