They say “don’t drink the water” and that’s only the smaller half of it, just dealing with agua in general is a Chinese fire drill down here.

Starting a couple of weeks ago it I was getting some serious discoloration in the toilet bowls, like 3 days after a scrub down and it looks like ice tea had been in there a month. I changed two of the 3 filters on the incoming water supply spending a portion of my kid’s inheritance and cleaned not only the bowls, but the tanks with muriatic acid (they sell it by the gallon down here for good reason). Of course I don’t wear rubber gloves so I’m hopeful I’ll grow new finger prints soon. At the same time I also ran a sizable quantity of Clorox through the system and sat back to enjoy life – 3 days later the stain is back like a scuff on a white sidewall tire (remember those)?

I may be from NE, but we had good running water, nothing like this, so I’m at a distinct disadvantage. I bit my tongue and admitted stupidity and called for David the maintenance guy to bail me out. He took one look and headed for the aljibe.

As I’ve often said; MX plumbing and wiring are a mystery (actually I’ve said some other stronger things). It turns out water from the street comes into the first main filter, then to the casita and on back to me where it goes into a little cement box in the ground with a toilet float valve to control level in the aljibe which is a much larger “cement box in the ground” – actually about 8’ deep and 6’ X 6’. In NE we’d call it a cistern, but it wouldn’t look like this. From the aljibe it goes through a pressure pump and two more filters and an ultra violet “bug killer” and finally into the house (where even after running this gauntlet it was staining the porcelain).

When David opened the top of the aljibe, wow, water weeds were in great profusion (apparently not what you want). So, we began running hoses to drain the 2,500 gallons of water. He went to get help and I pulled the main filter and washed off some of the layers of mud – yes, mud, it was uuugly!

David’s helpers included his wife and two other ladies who work with him. Now here is a curious part and the Mexican guys have it figured out; when the water level reached about 18” in the dark hole in the ground he dropped a ladder down, his wife and another went descend down into the aljibe with floor sweeper brushes and he gets in his truck and heads off to somewhere else while they muck out and scrub down the interior of the pit – what a guy? Mucking out the dark hole in the ground is a job that I could physically do, but you couldn’t pay me to actually do!

When it came time to refill the system one lady put the main filter canister (I had removed) back on and turned on the water to refill the aljibe which took over night – I sat back thinking my problems were over. After another round of muriatic acid cleaning I smiled at adding “aljibe cleaning” to my list of accomplishments (sort of).

Parallel to this water song & dance, the pool is giving me problems because when I add water to fill evaporation loss it goes green? – thought it should be blue, hmm. While I’m trying to figure out the pool problem, 3 days pass and the porcelain bowls are stained again? – is this the Keystone Cops or what?

Applying some reason and logic I headed for the main filter and pulled off the canister and sure enough - - - the lady had not only NOT put in a new filter, she put it back on with no filter at all, so the clean aljibe was refilled with 2,500 gallons of stuff you wouldn’t put out for your dog – great, just great. I poured a white bucket of street water, it was awful. Then put in the filter I had washed, poured another bucket, not much better so I jumped in the Jeep and headed for the mailbox. Why you ask? – because my mailbox is at the pool supply place and as long as I was getting a new filtro might as well check the mail (amazing how things work around here).

I began to pump out of the aljibe for the second time, and no, when it was empty I did NOT go down and swab it out; I figured the clean water would be good enough and with the new filter wow, now we’re talking clear agua so I began the refilling process which took overnight. This time I decided to wait a few days before I do the acid thing again to be sure I’m getting good clean water in the house – now, back to the darn pool, or as I call it; the money pit out back.

Gustavo the pool guy speaks as much English as I speak Spanish so it’s always a puzzling conversation, congenial but puzzling. A few days earlier I had done some rewiring in the pool pump house (trying to get a bit of order and safety in this MX nightmare) and noticed the salt system was shut off, I turned it back on, next day Gustavo turned it off again? – so why, and that’s when the fun began, to put it on a bumper sticker it’s “no bueno” – huh? This system requires salt in the pool and converts it to a “sanitizing agent” like chlorine and cost about $2K to install, so the fact it was no bueno was NOT good news and also explained some of the verde (green) agua of which I have about 15,000 gallons, so if you need some, bring a bucket.

This time of year every day and night dead leaves are falling and blowing into the pool with dust from the road etc. and so I skim the smutz daily, Gustavo skims and vacuums twice weekly and it’s still a mess plus I’m running the pump 3 hours a day for a pit I’ve not been in yet? – I think this is some sort of MX “bleed-the-gringo” thing because electricity is 3 times or more NOB prices and the pool guys are telling me I need to run the pump even longer to filter the verde aqua.

Ok, let’s back up a notch and apply some logic here. I know nothing about pools or salt systems but now that I’m an expert in aljibe, it’s time to learn “pool”. I’ve been suspicious of the pump because it doesn’t seem to move all that much water around and if it’s not moving a goodly amount in 3 hours (and Gustavo wants me to run it longer) then the filtro isn’t able to do its job. Add to this the salt system not working and we’re building Stevie’s perfect storm.

I started by studying the salt system manual first thing yesterday morning while the caffeine was in full force and grasped the operation and noted the system was installed wrong but nothing I could do about that now. I needed to test for salinity of the pool water because watching the LED’s seemed to indicate it was going into cutoff due to low salinity – I needed a “sal tiras de prueba” (salt test strip) or a “salinidad kit de prueba” (salt test kit). How do I know what to ask for? – real easy, I type it into Google translator and write down the results to show to someone at the pool supply place.

No sal probadores and she didn’t know where I could get any, so plan “B”, buy 100lbs of salt (50 kilos) and dump it in the pool and see what happens – basic, maybe even dumb, but no choice, desperate gringos do desperate things.

I cranked up the system and watched the flashing lights and it was looking better for a time then it cutoff again due to low salinity, so back for another 25 kilos and while I was there I looked at new “bombas” (pumps) because mine looks like a bilge pump off some early Spanish explorer’s frigette. I asked if someone could come and check my bomba – yes, they would send the “bomba man” – does make you wonder what that old song “La Bomba” was all about huh? (Google translator chocked on Ricky Martin’s version).

I had also noted in the manual that the “cell” which magically converts the salt to algae killer might need to be cleaned with – you guessed it, muriatic acid. This thing is the size of a filter and screws into a special housing which requires a special size wrench to remove. Of course I don’t have one and the supply place didn’t either, so I improvised with a piece of web strapping from a suitcase and a pair of vice grips (the potential for calamity is high at this point) and managed to get the cell out and prepared a nice acid bath where I let it set and cook for a couple of hours and removed all the calcium and encrustation.

In the mean time I dumped the salt in the pool and took care of another project while the cell was “cooking” in acid.

I reinstalled the cell, cranked up the bomba and things were looking pretty good as the power meter out back loved every minute of my extended bomba session, in fact it’s rumored that CFE is building a new office based on income from my usage alone. The bomba man showed up and agreed its not moving enough water and is going to check the grande filtro to see if it’s plugged up – maybe “la próxima semana” (next week) so we’ll see, but maybe we’re making some progress. So, fun fun fun from waterworld continues.

Oh, a really exciting thing happened yesterday, on my first trip to the pool supply I came around the corner to discover an actual road grader (one of only two in captivity on the entire north shore – cobble stones don’t need no gradin' fool) and a dump truck actually working on the rutted ravine we call a street by the new school. I immediately grasped the magnitude of this event and did a returno to get the camera and record this for posterity realizing it might be the only time in my lifetime this would happen. They spread a layer of something between dirt, and maybe sand, as two of the guys living next to the work area and I watched. One said they’d been promising to do this for 4 years, but not until after the new sewer line was installed – sewer line? – probably not in my lifetime.

I headed on to the supply and as I came back a few minutes later I saw the grader making its escape down the Carretera which was bad news meaning we’d fallen victim to premature congratulations actually (foolishly) believing they were going to do a decent road repair job, when it was now obvious they only spread a new layer of portable dust aroused by ever passing vehicle. And, there were several rocks the size of my head which were left apparently in the mix and deposited for we locals to remove, so I stopped took a pic and kicked them out of the middle of the street – can’t wait for some rain to turn this into MX gumbo.

As I said, each day is an adventure, some days a lot like the Keystone Cops of old, but MX style. I also have another project going but can’t reveal it yet as it’s a surprise for my neighbor who may read this.