Life Transplanet

We had some questions from some friends about our electric shower water heater that we installed in our house in Rincon, Puerto Rico, so I thought I’d write a more in-depth post. Please feel free to add anything you may know about these types of heaters or other ways to heat water in the tropics.

To be honest, the first time I saw a Super Ducha I was afraid.  The thing you hear all the time in the states is never use electricity and baths / showers. When we were trying to buy the property in Lares, the cabana had a Super Ducha. This thing was anything but to safe: no GFI, no real grounding, it was wrapped with electrical tape and the outlet was really close to the shower head.   We hesitated to use it at first, but given the choice between a cold shower or a slightly warm one, we took the risk. Then we slowly became accustomed to it. We stayed and showered there for about two weeks.  By the time we left for Colorado, I was pretty comfortable with it.

The Super Ducha at the property in Lares, Puerto Rico

Flash forward to now and our property in Rincon, Puerto Rico. We decided on our last trip that taking a shower shouldn’t be like jumping in a swimming pool.  It was ok during the hot and humid summer, we could put up with it, but in January everything cools down by a good 10 degrees and it was pretty chilly to hop in a cold shower.

Here in Colorado every house that I can think of is plumbed for a gas powered hot water heater, but there is no natural gas “utility” that automatically comes with a house in Puerto Rico.  So there were only a few options to getting hot water for your shower and elsewhere.  Put in an instant-on water heater, put in a tank on the roof (solar heater) or just get an electric shower head.

We were only going to be there for a week and didn’t want to turn the hot water into much of a project.  So we opted for the electric shower head. We couldn’t find the Super Ducha brand, but we did find Dur-o-matic.  They actually sell them at Home Depot in Mayaguez which is where we ended up going.  Home Depot has an easy return policy which worked out well.  There are 3 variations of the Dur-o-Matic.   Green (15A), blue (22A) and red(25A).

Dur-O-Matic Green Box

The more water pressure you have, the higher you want to go.  We started with Green because I wasn’t sure what the circuit breaker was rated for in the cabana.  It went fine and the shower was warmer, but it was still pretty cold unless you turned the pressure way down, or ran the water in the bathroom sink while showering (Cassie’s trick).   Our circuit breaker is 20A.  We took the green one back and tried a blue one.  This one was warmer and the circuit breaker still didn’t pop.   We might have been able to use a red one, but we didn’t try. They run about $60 and are very simple to install. All you have to do is get some teflon tape, unscrew the shower head, attach the Dur-O-Matic using the tape, and plug it in. It heats the water before it reaches you. It never gets super hot, but it creates a nice warm shower.

Dur-O-Matic Electric Shower Water Heater Installed!

They also sell them at the Do it Best in Rincon.   Had I known about this store earlier, I might not have made the trip to Mayaguez.  In either case it warms the water up about 30 degrees.  It made it much nicer to be able to shower and for Cassie she was able to take more time to wash her long hair.  However, it is inherently more dangerous to have an electric anything in the shower, so next trip I’ll try to fit a GFI circuit in for  peace of mind. Everything in Puerto Rico is just a little bit different. We’ve learned a lot about what’s really necessary in life, what is just a “want” and all those little in-betweens like a warm shower.

Don’t worry, we did spend some time at the beach too!

Well we had a list of things we wanted to do on this trip; some for fun, some for utility. Of course, we often put off the fun and do the work first, but I think we did pretty good overall.

Here were our goals: what we didn’t get to are in red, and what we accomplished are in green.

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK) (A reminder to be careful what you wish for!!)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

So as you can see, we got quite a lot of the major items taken care of in the time we were there. In addition to these things we also:

*Found our trees that we had planted last time and cleared away the vines and growth from around them
*Weed-wacked the whole fenced area and a little beyond the fence line
*Met with a variety of friends in Rincon/Moca for dinners and poker
*Tried new restaurants
*Planted more sprouted coconut palms
*Planted our avocado pits from the Avocado Party (we’ll see what happens!)
*Found a nearby hardware store in Rincon with prices better than Home Depot and a discount day (10% off on Saturdays) for women!

We still haven’t quite made a decision one way or the other about the wood house. We go back and forth and forth and back, sometimes in the same conversation. There are so many pros and cons to either decision. Getting the bees out of the house really helped us feel more comfortable in it and around it. We could see more potential, and less of a desire to “just get rid of it”. Still not sure though. We would have a long way to go to make it feel like home. Next up for it will be bat removal!! Yikes.

I think we have a pretty decent plan to get the cabana very livable and then we can make our big decision on the wood house. It is definitely cool to have a wood house, as it makes it seem more like Hawaii-style housing: warm and inviting and less like concrete storm bunkers, but as we have seen with all the animals in the house it may be a little TOO inviting.  As you can tell we’re still in limbo on that one.

The wood house from the roof of the cabana

In addition to the bats and the bees, we also had some unexpected canine visitors on our last day there, but they were friendly:

On our last trip here in May/June we managed to get ahold of someone from the University of Mayaguez to help us remove the bees that were in the walls of the upstairs bedroom in the wood house (you can read more of the Bee Backstory here). In summary, we found out that there wasn’t just one hive of bees, but FOUR! So our new university bee friends were able to remove one of the colonies, but couldn’t get the other three. When we came back for this trip we really wanted to get the remaining three hives out of the walls.

We tried calling our bee guy, Jose again, but he apparently didn’t have time or didn’t want the work, so we thought we wouldn’t be able to get the rest of the bees out this trip. Then we lined up the plumber to work on the sink in the studio cabana (we’ll write about that later) and just happened to tell him about the bees in the house. He said that while doing plumbing he often runs into bees in the water lines/boxes and knew of a guy who loved bees and could easily remove them for us (for a fee).

Staying away from the bees-at the beach

And so that is how we met Enrique. Enrique definitely does love bees and was enthusiastic and ready to remove all the rest of the
three hives right then and there. He went in to do the job with no bee suit, no gloves or any protection. He apparently just tore down the wall panels where the bees were located, grabbed the queen with his bare hands and the rest of the bees followed into the cardboard boxes. He made really quick work of it.

He told us they would be agitated in the move and that we might want to leave for a few hours to avoid being stung.  So in that time we went down to the beach and hung out, got some food and came back. In the same time it took the methodical, cautious and precise Jose to remove one hive, Enrique took out three! We returned and there were a lot of bees still buzzing around but Enrique assured us that it was safe to go into the house to see his finished work because the remaining bees wouldn’t sting if they didn’t have a queen to protect (I was still a little freaked out by all of them buzzing around my body).

He had removed all of the bees from inside the walls as well as their honey and comb. He offered us to keep the honey and comb, but we weren’t sure what to do with it. We did get to taste it, and it was really good -sweet and waxy! Britton managed to take a little video of Enrique showing us the removal and the honeycomb afterward. We are definitely relieved to have the bees gone and hopefully by tomorrow all the orphaned ones will realize their queen is gone and they will scram as well.  Although we are a little sad to not have all the thousands of little pollinators working on our fruit trees. Maybe someday we’ll get a hive of our own…just not inside our house

Today is my birthday so we figured we’d go out to dinner. Not so easy. A lot of places are closed on Monday and Tuesday in Rincon.  We ended up making a nice little tour of the town stopping at various restaurants..lol.

Checking to see if Casa Isleña was open…Nope.

Checking to see if the Harbor Resturant was open…..Nope.

We tried Ode to the Elephants too, but they aren’t open till Wed.  So finally we went to Villa Cofresi.  That turned out just fine.  Sun setting over the ocean, live music, good food and even a piece of birthday cheese cake.

I got to thinking about it and I don’t think that I’ve spent a birthday outside of Colorado!  So this was a first for me.  It’s been an interesting life and journey thus far.  I didn’t ever expect to have accomplished half the things that I have!  It’s fun to look back on life and look forward to more and celebrate the opportunity to be alive.  That’s the best gift of all!  Well that and this table to sit at:

This year’s birthday gift (very useful)

We have been making the place a little more comfortable each day.  Today we got a table from Sams.  It’s nice to have a place to sit other than the bed..lol.  Plus it’s an outdoor table so we can use it on the roof/patio too.  We got an electric shower head / heater as well, that I will post more about later on.  Suffice to say it’s more comfortable to have warm water rather than cold swimming pool water in the morning!

Overall it was one of my favorite birthdays!