The water man.....

I have always loved water. To drink it, to swim in it, to play in it, and even to enjoy it in solid form. If you ask my friends one of what one of  my obsessions are, they will always tell you that I have a fixation on ice.
It started when we went on a vacation to Tahiti years ago, the place we chose was on the island of Moreea.

The weather was hot, humid and almost unpleasant, especially for a boy from Northern California. Opening the plane door the humidity hit me, then and there I knew that sweaty hot humid places were only to visit and not live there.
Anyway, the resort we were banished to ran on a generator. It started up daily at about 9 and ran until about 8PM, therefore limited ice production....

The first thing after arriving at the place was my requirement for a tall glass of ice with water.  Sorry no ice, was what I was told. We ration it out at the bar, you are welcome to walk over and they will help you.
Great, when I arrived I was given a tall glass with two small ice cubes... that was the start of my quest for ice. Perhaps one of these days I'll write a story about it, but today the story is water.

We get our water from a mountain spring which is located about 25 km from Patzcuaro. It runs down the hill via an aqueduct almost transversing our property to town. We tap into the aqueduct with our 1.5 inch PVC pipe that we ran ourselves for about 1.5 km then to our first tank which we then use solar pumps to pump up to 4 4000 gallon (600000 liters) tanks.

We don't have to process our water, but at one time we ozonated it, but after the ozoneator crapped out we just check it every couple of years and it meets all our expectations.

Well, the property owner next to us, saw our water reservoir and decided that he wanted one too. After all you can never have too much water, can you? He asked for our help in setting up the tanks, and pumps, along with the solar setup and pump radio control.

We have been busy doing that for the last few weeks and finally the other day were able to fill those babies up. It took us about 4 days to get them full, his setup uses two 5000 gallon tanks, and another 2000 gallon as a standby.

We are talking about possibly running a small PVC line between our two properties in order to use one or the other as a backup should it be required.  One of my projects this year is to run about 500 ft of 1.5 inch PVC down from our tank positions to feed a couple of valves to use for fire suppression.

Too bad the weather here is on the cold side, otherwise we may have invested in one of those above ground or preformed fiberglass in ground pools.  Besides with the climate being what it is here, no sweaty clothes, no three times a day showers, and the ice is plentiful too.