Wanted: A Garden Guru

We’ve been on the hunt for someone here in Mérida who can help us flesh out our landscape/garden design. Who knew this would be such a chore.

Our initial search for expertise came up with a few smatterings of viveros (or nurseries) who were quite happy to show us the plants they sold, but didn’t seem terribly interested in our overarching landscape ideas.  It felt like they were just looking to sell us their plants instead of create us the garden we wanted.

To make things more complex, we are looking to develop a fairly edible garden, rich in species that will fill our kitchen with fruits, spices, salad greens, and vegetables year round. No one we met really seemed to fully get this idea. Instead, we had people laugh at us as if we’re crazy for even considering growing our own food in the tropics.

We don’t imagine that this task is easy, but do believe that it’s possible.  All we have to do is look to Cuba, where it’s happening on a massive scale, to know it can be done. This video clip from a fantastic BBC series Around the World in 80 Gardens, illustrates this point perfectly.

So here’s the bottom line. We have a base design for our gardens that details the existing conditions, overall goals, general layout, pathways, and other important features. What we need is to partner with someone who knows about the local conditions and can help us with our planting scheme. We need someone who can say, “You want a big tree here? This is what I recommend, and why.”

Such assistance will be invaluable to creating a healthy garden where plants thrive in conditions that favor them rather than their predators. We also need someone with an understanding of composition to ensure the plants being recommended create a space with a good balance of color, density and texture.

If you know of anyone who can help with this, please leave a comment or email us directly.

Locking Up More Details

We’ve been MIA planning our latest remixto brunch (we have some photos posted and even a video), but after a couple days rest, we’re back and ready to go.

Today we swung by Galeria Tataya, a fantastic art gallery located on Calle 72 between 53 and 55 near Plaza Santiago. Our friends François and Gerardo travel around the country in pursuit of the best arts and crafts, and lovingly ship them back to Mérida for all of us to purchase and enjoy.

The reason for our visit was to photograph the door lock pictured below.

Hand made from wrought iron, our plan is to order modified versions of the lock and install them on most of our colonial and steel-screened doors throughout the house. They will be a simple yet elegant solution to keeping our doors closed and secured.

Best of all, because they are made of a solid piece of metal, we won’t have to deal with those annoying chains found on typical door locks here in Mérida that swing to and fro, getting in the way of doors closing properly.

And Now We Wait

After what seems like ages of planning and designing, we are now at the mercy of INAH, the government agency responsible for doling out building permits. Our contractor estimates it will take about two weeks to get the green light (or find out there’s a problem). Until then, thank goodness we have our next brunch to take our mind off things.

Getting Ourselves into Hot Water

We are planning to install a tankless hot water system in our house. This has not been an easy decision as we have heard many comments and horror stories about how these systems don’t work and that we should avoid them. This of course made us wonder, why don’t they work in Mérida? After six months of pondering and researching over the topic, we are now ready to share our thoughts.

In general, the problem seems to be getting the tankless hot water systems to stay on. They turn on and run for a bit, then for no apparent reason, turn off again. Frustratingly, the water is hot, then cold, then hot again as if the unit can’t make up its mind.

The issue is really one of achieving adequate water flow. Tankless water heaters require a minimum flow rate of water to start up and stay on - around 1 gallon per minute (gpm) is typical. Achieving this much flow in Mérida is totally possible, but not always desirable.

For most of the year, you really want a fairly cool shower - which means the amount of hot water needed is far less than what is required in colder climates. To complicate things even further, in spring and summer the “cold” water is already pretty warm, so you need even less hot water to get your shower to a comfortable temperature.

In terms of numbers, here’s how it works:

1. For a strong shower with good water pressure, you need a total flow rate of about 2 gpm. Some of this comes from the cold side and some from the hot;

2. At peak annual temperatures in Mérida, where the city hits a balmy 100+ degrees, the temperature of cold water sits around 90° F. That is only about 12 degrees cooler than what a comfortable hot shower needs to be (assuming we actually wanted one at such times); and

3. In our summer scenario, 2gpm of water translates to 1.2 gallons of cold water and only 0.8 gallons of hot water. 0.8 is less than the 1 gpm minimum, and thus the tankless hot water heater never turns on. This results in a cold shower.

How to resolve this? One obvious way is to increase the amount of hot water flowing to your shower. Turn the shower mixer towards “Caliente” and your water heater kicks into gear. The problem is, your shower is now scorching hot.

A second solution is to turn on other hot taps in other bathrooms to keep the flow of hot water up without having it directed to your shower. This is an effective solution except for the fact that you are now wasting a lot of water (and gas).

The preferable solution is to ensure that you install a tankless water heater that has a low minimum flow, one rated at 0.5gpm (or even less if you can find one). Although these units tend to be a bit more expensive, they use significantly less energy in the long term and so are worth the initial investment.

A low-minimum flow water heater is the solution for us. We are choosing between two models, either a 0.4gpm model from Rheem, or a 0.1gpm model from Navien. The second unit achieves an incredibly low flow rate by employing a small 0.5 gallon buffer tank that’s built into the unit. Although not technically tankless, water is still heated on demand, so it achieves our overall objective.

Details Up the Wazoo

We mentioned in our last post that aside from preparing documents for permitting, our on-going task is to flesh out the architectural details and finishes that are going to make our house shine.

Recently, we started to tackle one part of this list by focusing on hardware, which includes everything from hinges, screws, faucets, and drain covers. The list is exhaustive.

Normally, decisions such as what hinges to use on our doors would be left to our contractor. Well, like all architects, Stan is a control freak. He’ll sweat and fuss over every part of the project with zero relativism. For him, an unfortunately placed screw is just as big a deal as the color of the doors or the number of bedrooms.

So, we are now sweating over it all. As you can see from this partial list, it’s all a bit overwhelming. Just looking at it makes us tired.

• 8 Broom hooks
• 3 Toilet roll holders
• 22 Door handles (salvaged)
• 31 Screen door handles (salvaged)
• 11 Deadbolts and locks (salvaged)
• 20 Kitchen cabinet door handles (salvaged)
• 60 Colonial door hinges (salvaged)
• 8 Pairs of wooden hammock hooks (salvaged)
• 5 Bathroom basins and taps
• 2 Kitchen basins
• 2 Service room basins
• 10 Floor-to-ceiling door bolts (bespoke)
• 2 Tankless water heaters
• 1 Reverse osmosis water filtration system
• 2 Large bath towel rails
• 4 Hand towel rails
• 3 Towel hooks
• 12 Window hinges (salvaged)
• 15 Non-colonial door hinges
• 30 Kitchen cabinet door hinges
• 3 Mirrors
• 35 Electrical outlets
• 28 Light switches and dimmers
• 4 Ethernet ports
• 1 Doorbell
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

From the Archives

Along with days preparing the menu and test cooking some of the dishes for this Sunday’s launch of our underground restaurant, remixto, we have been frantically trying to polish off key drawings to send to INAH, the government agency in charge of approving renovation projects. We won’t bore you with the details of this process.

Rather, as we were rummaging (virtually, of course) through our ever-expanding project folder, we stumbled upon some renders we did of our house that we never posted on our blog.

Here are some additional perspectives taken of one of the bedrooms upstairs and our media room. We must warn you that the images are a bit rough and tumble as they were captured hastily to show our builder the basic idea of materials and finishes in each room.

In addition, we updated the render of our living room to include our diorama-style gardens so you can start to see how the green of the garden really begins to take on a starring role in our design.

Oh, and ignore how the stairs are configured in the first image, as we’ve reconfigured them yet again. You can see how they are (currently) on our latest plans.

Updated Drawings, Long Overdue

We recently scoured our site looking for floor plans and sections to email to a friend. After a fair bit of digging, it came as quite a shock (and point of embarrassment) when we discovered the last time we posted drawings was August of last year. Yikes!

The drawings below represent not only the latest, but also what we are considering “final” versions.  ”Final”, such a bold world in architecture, should of course be taken to mean solid enough to base a budget on and submit for permitting. Such are the caveats of being a perfectionist architect.

FYI, we have adjusted our nav on the right of the page to provide easy links to the latest plans, sections and 3D images (to save us all time digging for them).

Anyway, here are the plans…

…and two sections.

We Got Tile!

A few days before leaving for vacation, we took a walk to a fantastic second-hand vendor called Antiguedades: El Mamey (located near San Sebastian on the corner of Calles 75 and 72). Impressively stocked, the place is a ramshackled treasure trove of furniture, old stone and building materials from Mérida’s colonial past. Always keen for a look, we fell in love with a stack of reclaimed terracotta tiles, probably manufactured a century or so ago in Marseilles, France.

As with many building materials used in houses of the time, these tiles were employed as ballast on ships sailing to Mérida as part of the international henequen trade. Upon arrival, the ballast (our fantastic tile) was generally dumped at the port before being salvaged for use in the city’s colonial building trade.

We have been hoping to reclaim old tiles for our house, but never did we image we would hit the jackpot. After a few hours picking through the large stack for the choice tiles, we had 1200 - enough for our kitchen floor.

Each tile has a rough, slightly-chipped patina on them that will make for a textured, non-slip surface underfoot. Reflecting the terracotta roof tiles overhead in our kitchen (also from the same company in Marseilles), our kitchen should take on a lot of character when completed.

Being reclaimed, the tiles are covered in mortar, which means we have many days of cleaning them up ahead of us. Lucky for us, the mortar is rich with lime, so a simple acid wash will do most of the grunt work for us.

Cooking Al Fresco

Last year, having just moved into our “ruin of a house” for a few months (see here, here and here), we stupidly decided to inaugurate our makeshift kitchen by making some carnitas. It was over 100 degrees outside, and after three hours of boiling, the kitchen felt like a sauna gone wild - and it was only April.

After a few experiences like this, we became resolved to move everything in the kitchen that produced heat, outside. Enter the outdoor kitchen.

What did we want our outdoor kitchen to have? A large Argentinean-style charcoal grill for steaks, two gas burners for slow braises that won’t heat up the kitchen and an oven for all that baking. Ample counter space for prepping and a sink for washing hands, chopping boards, etc. were also on the list.

Our checklist complete, we placed the outdoor kitchen just off the main kitchen opposite the formal dining table. We thought this would be a great way to connect the person boiling carnitas (that would be Brent) with the people sitting around the dining table drinking cocktails (that would be Stan and guests).

As the plan progressed, however, we found that having one person inside the screen doors and one person outside didn’t seem very conducive to entertaining. We also found that when not cooking, the rather large outdoor kitchen took up a lot of precious garden space in our courtyard. Instead of gazing over at lush plants, you would instead see a dusty counter top and a soot-stained barbecue. It just wasn’t right.

Time for a rethink. We know what we want, but what do we actually need? We can do most of our prep inside, so we could probably cope with less counter space. And how much baking do we really do? Perhaps we could usher the oven back inside. As for the sink, it’s a nice thing to have, but it doesn’t have to sit so prominently in the space.

Above is the latest iteration. Instead of sitting north of the kitchen building in the central courtyard, it resides in our rear garden to the south - conveniently in the space designated for our kitchen garden. Its new location allows it to be shared with gardening and other services, thus saving precious space.

Like the theme we are using in our kitchen, we have re-conceived the cook top as a stand-alone piece of furniture. When not in use, it will fold up and look like a work table in the garden. We have basically the same equipment, but it now blends much better with the garden and will be cheaper to construct (as we near the start of construction, trimming the budget is a recurring theme).

We’ve also added a sink to our service building out back (the white building on the right). Not only does it allow access to water when cooking outside, but it does double duty as a sink for gardening and other such activities.

All in all, we like our new design. We get to cook outside and in the garden. It’s really all we ever wanted.

Optimism, Redux

People sometimes say you have to be mad to want to build your own house. Such thoughts are often uttered, with exasperation, just when things are going terribly wrong. Well, now it’s our turn to emote.

We hired our general contractor way back in September of last year. Since then we have been working on finalizing the design with him. We say “working”, but it would more accurately be described as “waiting”. Waiting for information, waiting for construction details, waiting for answers.

There wasn’t that much we were asking our contractor to do, but after four months we could wait no longer. So we fired his non-delivering ass!

Where does that leave us now? With someone new of course. Granted, this will set us back another couple of months as we re-introduce the project to our “new guy”, wait for a build estimate and work to finish the final drawing set. But hey, it feels good to be moving forward again.

We are, lest we jinx ourselves, finally optimistic ground will soon be broken.