A Beverage to Build Houses

We would like to take a moment to thank the Coca-Cola Corporation for all material support they have provided during our renovation.

Coco-Cola is the drink behind the man. Our workers valiantly empty gallons of Coke into their bodies every day so as to provide us with free building materials.

The empty bottles are refilled with water that are carried around the site to wash walls, thin concrete, etc. - all in neat two-liter increments. Cut in half, the bottles provide impromtu pails for mixing paint or for plugging up holes. This free product from Coke has literally saved us hundreds of pesos on buckets, tape and the like.

For the last few months, empties have piled up faster than they can be used. Their torn wrappers, waving brightly in the breeze like papel picado, lifted our spirits among all that drab concrete.

A few days back, however, things were different. Every little pile had been rounded up, cut into strips and dropped into the newly formed septic tank. Sitting in the last of three chambers, the plastic will knit together to form a floating barrier atop the greywater. Any unwanted solids beneath will thus be prevented from rising up and escaping down the outlet (pictured top left) and onwards into the well.

Coca-Cola makes their plastic bottles tough and we’re thrilled that this free building material will provide us hundreds of years of worry free operation. Keeping us cool. Building houses. Thanks Coca-Cola!

Where Water Flows

Before we started construction, our house had one well, one cistern, one tinaco (water tank), and one single-chamber septic tank.  

It’s a setup typical of houses in the Yucatán. Water is pumped up from the well (of which the well head is visible to the right of the pre-construction photo below) into the ground-level cistern (to the left of the well but overgrown with plants). From there, another pump pushes water up to the tinaco on the roof to provide water pressure for the house. Once used up, gray water returns to the ground via the septic tank.

Our renovation is an opportunity to improve, and some would argue, complicate the plumbing.

Our new setup starts on the street, where after 100 years, the house is now connected to city water. This water flows (more accurately trickles) into the house and is deposited into a new 1700 gallon (6800 liter) cistern being built under the rear garden.  

Above - the formed cistern. Below - the cistern again, covered with a concrete lid.

Instead of a tinaco on the roof, we’ll achieve pressure with a motorized water pressure system, which will sit in a service building being constructed atop the cistern (below). What we’ll do in the event of a hurricane-induced two day power outage, we have no idea, but we were drawing water by hand when we first camped out at our house, so no doubt we can do it again.

After water is pumped from the cistern, it flows through a water softener to remove excess calcium and, where appropriate, a reverse osmosis filtration system to render it drinkable.

Gray water is directed into a new three-chamber septic tank fashioned from the original cistern. Successively cleaned in each chamber, treated water is finally directed down the original well.

Where once a torrential downpour would flood the yard, storm water runoff is now collected in gutters and piped directly down the well.

We toyed with the idea of adding some kind of rain water catchment system for the garden, but it didn’t make sense. During the six month wet season, there’s so much water, we don’t need to store any. Saving enough to keep our plants growing during the non-rainy six would require that we dig a hole 2-3 times the size of our pool - a cost prohibitive proposition.

Instead, a new well (90 feet deep) was drilled in the rear garden next to the service room (pictured in the shot to the right). Besides feeding the drip irrigation for our garden, this well will also be used to fill the pool. 

Our new setup is a distinct improvement. Softer, potable water delivered with improved water pressure, free water for the garden and pool (the bulk of our usage) and a more responsible system for waste management. Despite all this however, the benefit we most look forward to is not having a name-branded 20 liter plastic water bottle sitting on the kitchen counter…except perhaps when the next hurricane arrives.