Going solar

More news. First the bad news. Last week we were robbed for the 2nd time. This time it happened some time shortly after 2 in the afternoon. I had been home all morning, but had to leave at 2. Barb was out in front of the wall working in her flower gardens. As far as we can figure out, they came over the wall from the house behind. Our neighbour there has an electric security fence, but had been having some work done. Apparently, the fence was not on. The person who is living in the house left about 2 also. In any case, they came in, took money from Barb’s purse and found the money I kept in a drawer. I think that we lost about $400 - 500 dollars. We are going to get a bit more upgrading to the security. Again it seems evident that someone in the neighbourhood is watching and takes advantage of any opportunities.

We are in the midst of having a Mexican incident. On Saturday when we came home, the water pump was not working. I finally got it going briefly and decided to do a load in the dishwasher. However, while the timer worked, the pump inside didn’t. We began to notice other things; lights would dim, then brighten; the fan would slow down and then speed up. In fact, the power was fluctuating. I got the water pump and the dish washer going just before bed. However, Sunday we were back to no water pump and fluctuating power. I called Jose Luis and said we should get a new pump as this one had caused us a great deal of trouble. He came and thought that it wasn’t the pump malfunctioning again.He took it to check and he was correct. He had a voltage tester and sure enough the voltage was fluctuating massively; the juice was never enough to run the pump. He checked all our circuits; we then went next door to Steve’s house and the situation was the same there. Finally, he called the power company, CFE. They said that they were aware of the problem. Our street plus the next cross street were affected. Finally, at 5:40, I tried the pump and it worked; hallelujah. Altogether, it was over 50 hours.

The other news is that after talking about it for about 2 years, we have finally moved to have a solar hot water heater installed (the small photo is from the company site, but you get the idea). There are several different systems. Ours uses evacuated tubes (i.e., a vacuum) to collect the heat. The water circulates by convection up the tubes into the tank. Because we have a pressure system, this water is not connected to the domestic water system. Instead, there is a copper coil in the tank and the domestic water is pumped through the coil where it is heated.The unit was delivered last Friday and the plumber has done a bit of work already. It should be installed by the end of this week. In the end we decided to get the 280 litre tank. It cost $300 more than the 210 litre tank which is said to serve 4 people. However, this tank will give a bigger margin, not just when we have guests, but also on those rare occasions when we have several days in succession of rain and cloud. It has happened only once in 3 years. When we decided on the size, we weren’t sure that we would be able to keep the existing gas heater as backup. However, the plumber figured out a way to do that. The company says that during the hot weather especially, the heater can heat the water to 75º C (almost 170º F).

We have been spending 600 pesos a month (about $55) for propane. We recently discovered a small leak (now fixed) so that might not have been just our consumption, but the price of propane has been going up. Just last year it was about 4.75 pesos per litre. This year it is 5.6 pesos (about Can $0.49)--still pretty cheap as it is subsidized by the government. They say that heating water accounts for 75 - 80 % of power costs in a home. I figure that the payback on the water heater should be about 3 years, more or less. If so, that’s over 30% per annum as an investment--not too shabby. It will also make a small reduction in our carbon footprint. The heater is being installed on the flat roof over the bathrooms. Thus, an additional advantage will be that we won’t have to wait for 2 minutes running the hot water for a shower the way we do with the gas heater, being on the opposite side of the house. We will have to run the water longer for the kitchen, but the only time we use hot water there is to run the dishwasher, less than once a day. It has taken us a long time to take the plunge, but we are pretty excited.