Gringos de Marimán

I know, I know, a site that doesn't get updated is pretty boring. You'd think I'd have learned this in my previous incarnation. No apologies though. We've been too busy enjoying ourselves. Our schedule has changed a bit since our friends at Language Pucón approached Cyn with the idea of resurrecting her teaching career. Now she's a profesora of Ingles, teaching the advanced class and helping to develop material for the school. She's received some great benefits too, such as the opportunity to practice her castellaño and socialize with real Pucoñinos.

For my part, I've been sidetracked since we received a delivery of 30+ bare root fruit trees and berries which needed to go in the ground asap. Meanwhile we've seen a lot of great progress in the casa, but I'm going to force you to watch week by week. Hopefully I'll get caught up very shortly. As we seem to say every day, poco a poco. During week 28 we witnessed a volcanita eruption as drywall started going up all over. But first, the crew started packing, stuffing, and cramming fisiterm in every pared and cielo, as you can see here in the dormitorio.

Soon the first volcanita appeared in the lavadero cielo. Uh-oh, lots of nails, how long is this going to take?

With our equipo we shouldn't have worried, the volcanita started flowing onto the walls and they had the lavadero covered by the next morning.

The crew moved through the house from the dormitorio side, where you can see the future home of the wedding toaster, . . .

into the workroom and cocina, and by week's end . . .

through to the sala formal.

The baños received special treatment, a lovely shade of blue volcanita.

By Friday the crew had nearly covered both sides of the master baño, leaving open only a small section near the bath, waiting for plumbing fixtures.

In the midst of the volcanita eruption, the clouds disappeared allowing Jorge and Juan to enjoy the blue skies and finish off the last section of siding on the front facade.

Let's not forget all those tubes laid under the piso. The gasfiters arrived with some nifty válvulas to connect the floor tubes to the main supply tubes.

They installed one pair of tri-tube válvulas in the dormitorio closet and a pair of quad-tube válvulas in the cocina. As you've probably guessed, a pump feeds the válvulas with hot water which circulates through the floor and back through the other matching válvula. Each floor tube can be controlled separately, allowing us to adjust the heat in each room.

All tubes lead to the enclosure over top of the entryway which will house a pair of tanks (one is shown in the foreground below). One tank will hold hot water, heated by the wood burning stove, for warming the tubes in the pisos. The other tank also stores hot water, heated by the solar paneles on the terazza, for use in the baños and cocina. The tanks themselves should also add a little warmth to the kitchen area.

Worried about leaks? The gasfiters have all the answers. Connecting this device to the válvulas, they pumped water through each of the tubes to test the water pressure. No leaks. They also promised that these plastic tubes would easily outlast copper pipes by many lifetimes.

With the pressure testing complete and great weather outdoors, the gasfiters moved outside to pour a concrete cap over the septic tank, just in case some wayward tractor veered off-course.

With the gasfiters out of the way, Valdovino and Leo added the door frames to the lavadero and the baño in the entryway.

Let's close this week with a couple of shots of the finished pirca wall outside the dormitorio. Hasta la proxima, I hope to get week 29 out very soon!!