California 2 Puerto Rico

Rincon gets hot in the summer, and although the upstairs of our house is quite nice regardless of the temperature outside, our offices downstairs needed Air Conditioning. So, sweating it out in front of my computer I started researching what brand I should buy as well as where I could buy split unit Air Conditioner units, have them installed professionally and have them maintained down the line as they get older. This ruled out many of the ‘handy man’ guys around town that are capable of doing the work because I want to be able to call a business and say “help!” instead of track down a ‘handy man’ that may or may not feel like dealing with a former job. I also wanted to get a warranty on both the installation work and the units themselves.

After calling around and asking around, I had the job narrowed down to a few local businesses. I narrowed my choice down even more by price point, brand names and professionalism.

The Air Conditioner Units I wanted were the new Inverter type units. They save over 30% in electricity than their predecessors and considering Rincons Electric Bills just went up 30% last month, that is quite a bit of savings. I also wanted to get units that were strong enough to cool all of downstairs when all three splits were run simultaneously.

After research and due diligence, I decided I wanted to buy the Daikin brand split units.

Our two offices and the spare bedroom/gym are about 12ft wide by 18ft long with 10ft ceilings. Our great room downstairs (between the offices) is 40 feet long by 20 feet wide. I decided that the 24,000 BTU split inverter units were the right ones for the job. Keep them turned low for the offices and once we finish up the media room and new entrance downstairs, we’ll be able to keep it all cool by cranking the units in the three rooms with our interior doors open.

The company we used for the job was Aguada Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. They were here when they said they would be, installed everything professionally (centered, sturdy etc) and gave us a 5 year warranty on the installation and the split units and compressors.

If you are researching for an Air Conditioning company that services Rincon, use the business I used, they were rock solid on all levels. Tell them Stefan from www.ca2pr.com sent you to them and they will give you a discount AND give me a finders fee.

Here is their contact information:
Aguada Regrigeration and A/C
• Office Telephone Number: (787) 868-3936
• Cell Phone Number: (787) 614-0412
• Alternate Cell Number: (939) 640-3693

A good writer would probably try to build up some sort of suspense right now. The title of this post is “Giant Centipede vs. Summer” so I could lead you to believe that Summer got stung / bit by one, but nope, she is fine, just a little shook up.

We were gardening in the back yard when Summer screamed for me to come over. She found a giant centipede under one of the potted palms we have in the back yard. So, here is what I did. I took a big shovel and chopped it into 4 pieces. I then threw the centipede pieces into the quebrada and held them under water until all of the life was suffocated out of it. I probably saved Summers life.

Fun Centipede Facts to help you sleep at night:

• Centipedes have existed for over 400 million years
• Two Curled Hallow Fangs Inject Venom
• Size ranges from a few millimeters to a foot long
• Found in soil, leaf litter, under stones, deadwood, and inside logs
• Elongated metameric animals with one pair of legs per body segment
• Poison claws or forcipules at the fist appendage unites this subterranean species
• They hunt humans for sport (just kidding)

Notice the Penny for Perspective on how big this Centipede is.

I was telling this story to some of the guys at poker the other night and they told me that I shouldn’t have thrown it away, that I should have put it in a jar full of alcohol and made an ‘anti-venom’ in case someone gets stung or bit. If a centipede gets you, you rub the alcohol (that has been marinating a centipede) on the spot and PRESTO, you have homemade Centipede Anti-venom.

As you guys know, we have been working on the yard like crazy. The fruits of our labor (no pun intended) are really starting to show their faces. The trees we planted are starting to flower a little, grow past the 2.5ft mark and we even have a little lime tree popping off its first lime (although, I think he is too young).

A few of our Flamboyon Trees have also really taken off. They are growing so fast, who would have thought? Well, now, Summer and I need your help! Does anyone know where we can find Blue Flamboyon Flamboyan trees?

Look how beautiful they are:

Right now, I should be at the hardware store buying the necessary components to repair our broken water main. But I figured, we don’t really need water today so I am in my office taking care of some business (just kidding about the water thing).

I wanted to finish listening to a song and started looking at our house pictures. Here is one that I marked up as a visual ‘to-do’ list.

Wow, I am learning so many things about construction these days, which is funny because we have slowed down so much lately. We are really just planning our next strike and what we are going to work on with the budget we have, but I am still learning construction lessons the hard way.

For example, I busted the water main planting a tree last week. Since then, I have dug up the pipe three times now because there have been leaks. Leaks!!!? What is going on? I am measuring the pipe, cutting the pipe, priming the PVC pipe and then gluing the PVC pipe and then giving it time to dry. When I turn the water back on at the street level, I always do it very slowly and with a spigot on so the air/water pressure doesn’t blow out the pipes.

Yesterday, after two trips to the hardware store (Ferreteria), I had all of the PVC elbows, PVC reducers and plumbing tape. By the time I had all the cuts and pieces ready to go, I realized that the glue I purchased at Home Depot two days ago had hardened in the can. Since I was so close and so sick of going to the store, I searched our little construction graveyard in the back and found another bottle of PVC glue, but this stuff was clear instead of the blue I have always worked with. I glued the pipes back together, gave them time to dry and fired up the water main.

Water was shooting out of the connection at the the 1/2 inch threaded spigot. I assumed the reason for this was that it was missing a gasket. I called Summer (she was at home depot buying plants and asked her to pick me up a couple of 1/2 inch gaskets. Well, that did the trick at the thread where the water was obviously leaking, but once that stopped, I saw that all of the couplings, elbows and reducers I installed had slow leaks. Aaaaaaaah! I can only guess that the glue I used was not good anymore because all the connection points were clean and smooth before I primed and glued them.

This morning, I am going back to the ferreteria (Hardware Store) to buy another set of 1/2 elbows, 1” to 3/4 reducers, 3/4 to 1/2 threaded reducers to try to fix our water main one last time. Rincon Construction Lesson Number 3,228: If the parts only cost $.89 each, buy extra, it can’t hurt to have them laying around the house in an emergency and it will save you $20 in gas and the embarrassment of buying the same 4 PVC components 4 times at the local hardware store.

Home depot just got in a shipment from the local nursery and they have all sorts of small plants/vegetables/herbs available for $0.99 each. I didn’t know what most of them were, but I bought 10 of them anyways.

I got a tomate, ruda, oregano, mejorana, limoncillo, habichuela, curis and albahaca de cocinar. Tomorrow they will make there way into the new garden bed :).

I’ve been working on Garden 2.0, and it has now become Garden 2.2:

I have transplanted 3 healthy Tigerella tomato plants, 3 purple bell pepper plants, one spicy pepper and 6 spicy mesculin lettuces from the small backyard garden (Lucky, the seeds I planted produced enough plants for the front and back gardens!). I have also planted a row of lemon cucumbers, edamame and red oak leaf lettuce from seed. In the corners of the planter I planted 4 small rosemary plants and I also planted some marigolds around the edges (to ward away pests).

I also want to plant two more rows of heirloom tomatoes and one more row of lettuce. That should fill up the planter completely and give us a good variety of vegetables to use :).

I have been through more hurricanes than I can count: New Jersey, North Carolina, Florida, Rhode Island…I have sat through them everywhere. I have to admit though, I was either renting, at my folks house or at someone else’s house. The only thing I really had to worry about was my car and that I was stupid enough to park it in a low area of town.

I know I am going to jinx myself here, but I kind of want to get the hurricane thing over with. Like a band aid, just rip it off quick!

No Atlantic Storms or Hurricanes | 7-28-08

It doesn’t look like that is going to happen over the next two weeks, the warm Atlantic Ocean hasn’t kicked up any activity lately and the Cape Verde islands don’t have any African low pressure systems pushing off. I guess for now, it’s just business as usual.

As Stefan mentioned, for whatever reason, where ever we decide to dig on our entire 3 acres, ends up being the wrong place to dig…

Four months ago, we were planting a palm in the backyard. The “perfect place” we decided to put it, just happened to be exactly where our septic line ran through the yard. Seriously? The one place I told Stefan to plant the tree had to be smack dab in the center of the septic line?! Stefan didn’t graze the septic line with the pickaxe, he busted right through the center of it!

Well, we decided to plant a Beach Grape tree in the front yard the other day and Stefan asked for my opinion on where to put it. I choose to put it across for the other Beach Grape I planted a couple of weeks ago and Stefan went to work on digging the hole. Dig, dig, dig, THUNK. SPEWWWWWWWWW. Less than a foot into it, Stefan hit the water main. A 1″ PVC pipe. We couldn’t have hit it if we tried. WTF. So, any who, we went for a day without water, worked through a torrential downpour, took 4 trips to the hardware store and Home Depot and now we have a new spigot for the front of the property (and water for the house):

Stefan went above and beyond and poured a bit of quickcrete (concrete) for the splash-down spot and layed it with blue stone. It looks great!

It’s actually the best spot for it. I guess it was meant to be :D!

There are many, many, many things that I never considered when I would day dream about the ‘pride of ownership’ and owning our own place. I simply wanted to surf, work and not pay someone else’s mortgage in doing so. Those three things helped direct us to the Caribbean and Rincon (all though there isn’t much surf here in the summer months).

Now that the pride of ownership has worn off a little, I am realizing that ‘maintenance cost of ownership’ is what the Real Estate Agents don’t tell you about. The biggest maintenance project we have, which is ongoing, is our yard. We have it sectioned off (in our heads) and certain areas get more priority than the others. For example, the right hillside to stream area is going to be fenced off for the Mini Donkeys. Therefore, we aren’t mowing the grass in there…so it is 10ft tall after 3 months of no-love.

The front yard is probably getting the most attention. It had been excavated so many times during construction that it had nothing living on it at all and is filled with rocky veins.

A few days ago, Summer and I decided to plant a Beach Grape that Mark gave us up at the top of the driveway. After about 4 swings into the rocky dirt, I heard a familiar sound. The pick (which I swung) hit some sort of PVC which echoed up under the ground in both directions for about 40ft and then began to spew water everywhere. Wow, finding a water source to dig a well was going to easier than I thought! No, just kidding. I hit the main water pipe running from the city water up the hill down to our house.

Here is the hole I dug around the pipe getting it ready for repair. Do you remember me busting the septic pipe just a couple of months ago?

Our plan has always been to put a spigot at the top of the hill so we wouldn’t have to drag 125ft of house all around the yard every time we want to water something. The hole in the water main is a little lower than we were planning on putting the spigot, but since the pipe is exposed and the hole is already dug, we are going to make the best of a bad situation and add a spigot. Heck, we probably couldn’t have hit that pipe if we tried to put the spicket any where else. Stay tuned for the finished product!

FYI: Spigot is not spelled spickat