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by Karen McConnaughey

One thing you’ll find out when you move to Mexico is that when you fix, repair or change ‘something,’ it will generally impact something else you might not have even thought about. We learned that when we got a pressurized water system for our house. I was tired of my little dribbling sink water and it seemed to take forever to do one load of laundry. Did I tell you we lived in a small Mexican village? So we decided to install a pressurized system. Great, right? Life will be perfect.

Our first adventure with the new system was taking a shower using our 20-liter hot water heater.  A shower…hot water, then immediately cold water. Oh yeah…pressurized system, water gone quickly! Off to the ferreria (hardware store) to get a new hot water heater…a really big hot water heater…72 liters. Sometimes Bill and I are such hayseeds…the minute it was installed, we waited an appropriate amount of time, and I got my request in first, “I’m going to take a shower!” Bill was surprised…As the man, I think he expected to be first. Not being the first can be upsetting to a man’s psyche. At that moment I didn’t care…I went first! It was such a lovely, wonderful, pressurized, long, hot shower that I really tried to stay in there to see how long it would be until the water ran cold. It never happened. Bliss. When I went into the living room, Bill immediately jumped up and said, “How was it?” I just smiled and said, “I never ran out of hot water.” He immediately had to try it and came out long afterward with the same silly smile on his face. Life was really perfect now!

Well, the next thing to happen was I heard Bill yelling in our yard…If you’ve been reading this blog, you know we live in a Mexican community near Lake Chapala, don’t you? We don’t live in a gated community near the main hub of expatriates, so we have all the challenges and charm of living in a Spanish-speaking Mexican village with a tad less infrastructure than the main expat community.  So I heard Bill yelling, and rushed out to see him holding precariously onto a split hose spewing water everywhere. He yelled, ‘get Enrique.” Enrique was our go-to guy, next-door neighbor who knew a little English, as well as ‘how to get things done the Mexican way!” I rushed to Enrique’s house, shouting “Senor! Ayudame, por favor, ayudame.” Since I was screaming “help me” at the top of my voice, I’m sure he thought I was being mugged right outside his door. The look on his face when he came to the door was pure terror. I just motioned to him quickly and he followed after me as I pointed to Bill soaking wet in the yard. No words were needed after that. Enrique got his tools and everything necessary to repair our problem. Of course, he wouldn’t accept any money, because “that’s what neighbors do for one another.” God, I love Mexico! The next day, we installed PVC piping to go along with our new pressurized system. Now it’s perfect. And, it really is…situation repaired…we love our purified, pressurized water, and we love our new hot water heater.

On that note, another interesting thing about our hot water heater is that now every year around April or May, we turn it off. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t have hot water during those months, because, trust me, we do. Really hot water; the water comes out steaming. Our 72-liter hot water heater resides on our back terrace behind the bathroom. It is in total sun about 14 hours a day and heats up all day long. The first time I experienced the phenomenon of “solar-heated” water during a pre-going-out-to-dinner shower, I skipped out of that shower so fast, you would have thought my feet were on fire…which, come to think of it, they were. Oh, so that’s what they mean by solar heating. Nice. Just think…if we bought a solar-powered water heater, which they sell here, we wouldn’t have to use the gas on the hot water heater at all during the year! And I also discovered if I want to wash delicate clothes, I let my washer run awhile before I put the clothes in. It’s all in learning what to do when, isn’t it? I love learning about Mexico and the challenges of living in a foreign community and loving the diversity of my Spanish-speaking neighbors who are always ready to help. Life is perfect in Lake Chapala, Mexico!