The waterfront where we are staying at Valle de Bravo, Mexico.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Valle de Bravo, Mexico.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Cancun on December 17th!

Sunday, April 28, 2013

We have water...sort of.

The water lines here at the campground are still frozen. Despite the fact that we had a gorgeous sunny day yesterday with a high of 18C (65F). But even with weather like that, we're expecting it will be at least another week before the lines are thawed out.

But, we need to be able to flush the toilet!

So one of the guys brought a 250 gallon tank over and we set it up outside. Then we ran the emergency firehose all the way down to the lake, drilled a hole in the ice (yes, it's still about 3 feet thick!), and pumped the tank full of lake water! Then we hooked the tank to the house pump.

All sounds very simple, but this exercise took us a few hours!

That's my work truck for the summer! And there's our temporary water tank in the back.

The tank set up and full of lake water.

So now we have running water in "the cabin". Our brand new toilet flushes just fine, and the hot water heater seems to be working too. The fridge is working with no problem. Still a couple of things to be done in the appliance department though. We found out that the oven isn't working. And there's some kind of electric problem with the ceiling light in the living room. Oh well, need something to do to  keep busy!

While the other two fellows were installing the toilet and hooking up the water, I kept busy in the "basement" while Ruth was working on organizing the house.

The "basement" is really just a crawl space. And it's only about four and a half feet tall so it's a little cramped trying to do anything down there. But over the years, they've used it as a kind of a storage space for anything else that didn't have a place of it's own at the campground. It was so full of crap that you couldn't move around down there. And a lot of it was just garbage. 

So around 8:30am yesterday morning I started dragging everything outside so I could sort out what's useful and what's not. And so that I knew what there actually was down there.

The "I think it's worth keeping" pile.

The "this is going in the trash" pile.

Not done yet. This is after I've already removed the stuff in the two pictures above!
Yes, those are expensive RV toilets in the background. Yes, there's a story behind them. Maybe we'll get to that another day.

So it was a good first day. Nice to be getting back into doing a little more physical stuff, although it might take a week or two for the muscles to get used to it! Ruth has got the interior of "the cabin" pretty much organized, so maybe we'll show you some pictures of that tomorrow.

Two of the board members, Derwin and Leah, invited us over to their place last night for a game of cards. Had fun playing Kaiser...similar to Euchre.

I'll be surprised if this is thawed out by the May long weekend three weeks from now!


25 comments:

  1. What a lot of trouble to flush the toilet!

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    1. Yup. But kind of necessary. I suppose we could have used the outhouses. Umm. No.

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  2. Glad to hear you got some kind of water system going, that will make life easier for you guys., Hope it warms up soon,but your Canadians and can take the cold. Sam & Donna.....

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  3. So how are you going to stop the hose from the portable tank to the house from freezing everynight? Did you wrap it with heat tapes or are you going to drain the line every night?

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    1. I don't think it will freeze. It only goes a couple of degrees below freezing at night, if that. And with the water movement when the pump comes on, it is unlikely that will happen. And if it does happen to freeze, it would not take long to thaw the next morning.

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    2. Ok, wasn't sure what the night time temps were at this point.

      Keep your wits about you when in PA.

      I am sure you will have a fantastic summer up there, great fishing and beautiful area. Enjoy.

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  4. Dear Kevin and Ruth,
    You are soooooo lucky to be doing what you are doing in such a lovely place.

    Bye for now,
    George

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    1. Thanks George...but as the saying goes, "you make your own luck"!

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  5. You guys are amazing! You just drive in and get to work making a beautiful spot even better. It looks like you'll be okay with water for showers, toilets, etc. for the time being - good innovative work.
    I'm sure Ruth will be ready to serve up one of her pancake breakfasts in no time. And, you're already making friends - this may be the dream job of the decade! Love to hear from you...mp

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    1. Had pancakes this morning as a matter of fact. I am sure we will have fun but we will also have lots of work to do and some days we will be putting in some long hours but it beats sitting behind a desk.

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  6. Reminds me of the many days without power in the Virginia mountains in the winter when we melted snow to flush the toilet. And we weren't even in Canada. Makes you really appreciate the lives many of our grandparents and great grandparents lived and how easy we have it comparatively. They worked hard that's for sure but I think they had a lot less stress in their lives.

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    1. Kevin's Grandfather and Grandmother lived/worked on farm near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan back in the 1920/30's and we have heard the stories from his dad and his uncles how hard their life was especially in the middle of winter.

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  7. Leave it to Kevin to clean out the 'basement' and put things in order. I am sure the board will appreciate that! Life is so much simpler when there is order.

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    1. Part of the reason for cleaning up under there was just to see what was there and if we could use anything of it inside the cabin. Nice to know what available to the campground and get it put in the right spot or in the trash if it is no good. It already looks so much tidier.

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  8. Won't take long and you will be organized,and back to work. We kinds have ater too, ast least in our holding tank, they should be turning on our water this week.

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    1. I would have thought that you would have had water in the park by now. Ontario has had warmer weather than here or do they just wait until the first of May?

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  9. actually at 65 you were warmer than us !. Grew up in rural area on well, in winter you'd better not be the one to turn the water tap off all the way as pipes would freeze. just the small trickle kept water flowing and pipes from freezing as long as it didnt get down to zero or below. When you said 'cabin' I expected 500sq feet and logs. :-)
    Have fun.

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    1. Nice to know it was warmer here, unfortunately it won't last, suppose to go down to -8C (17.6F) tonight.

      I grew up in the country on a well too in Ontario and I don't think we ever had a problem with the pipes freezing. Maybe our pipes were put down further in the ground and any pipes in the basement were wrapped up with insulated foam.

      Our cabin is a nice small house, about 900sq feet. It has everything that we need to live comfortably.

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  10. Rule #1 for campground owners: if ice on lake is three feet thick---and caretakers' toilet line is frozen---advise caretakers to spend an extra month in Mexico!

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    1. We like our rule#1, unfortunately we weren't adviced of this or we would have happily stayed the extra month.

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  11. I bet those expensive RV toilets aren't as expensive as the one Tioga George paid $1000 to ship from Texas to Tequis :)

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