Water Time

The water service in Guayaquil is not always the most reliable. There are often stretches of time when the city pumps are down, for one reason or another. When this happens you just have to make do.

We are one of the fortunates to have a cistern. This is a massive blue tank on the side coupled with a compression pump. We keep about 1000 liters in it for emergencies.

So this morning I wake up and find that there is no water. In fact, the bathrooms where household members have done their late night business have empty tanks and smelly/full bowls. So I head out and switch over from Guayaquil service to cistern. It is nice to have, since thousands in this city do not have cisterns, and when something like this happens they need to find another way.

The down side to this is the compression pump kicks on every 5-10 seconds when water is flowing through it. This is a high, shrieking electric motor kind of racket that would be horrible if it was at night. It definitely gave everybody in the house a resounding wake up call.