Pond lights hooked-up and showing my wiring job is working so far

I finished the wiring for the pond lights and tried them out with the bulbs they came with. Far too bright (as you can see in the photo). We want a subtle light that makes you want to walk out by the pond and enjoy the sound of the waterfall and not risk a migraine. We replaced those bulbs with some energy efficient tear-drop shaped bulbs that look pretty good. I had to do a lot of work on the wiring because the conduit I put in is below the liner where it’s raised up on the side there but the outlets were just at the waterline which I realized was not such a good idea. I put in waterproof covers (adding an extra coating of magic silicone/acrylic stuff and covering in waterproof clay before putting the liner back in place. This involved shifting a lot of dense heavy boulders and I had to fish in new wire in conduit and outlets that are now high enough to not risk electrocuting an inquisitive fish.

Laurie and Laurie are starting to plant around the pond. They put in my favorite, a sealing wax palm which you can see there to the right of the bio-filter tank. I wanted to plant the palm in the pond in a large pot because I read on the internet (see you’re not the only one) that sealing wax palms are swamp creatures and thrive in bogs. But I talked to a local pond expert and he told me that the container would have to be only partly submerged and we would have to disguise the upper part of the container with plants that drape over. Since we are having enough trouble moving rocks around and later planting plants to disguise the black liner my wife (one of the Laurie’s) vetoed that plan. But I don’t mind as I got my sealing wax palm and I think it is beautiful.  The palm was courtesy of Marina and Wally who own the nearby Villa Sevilla Vacation rentals. They also gave us some bromeliads and a couple of small palms equally as rare as the sealing wax palm which grow up to be dangerous thorn covered masterpieces. You can see that I’m testing the waterfall in this photo. There is still some work to make that look natural.

We have a huge ugly hole in our courtyard that’s big enough to bury a dinosaur,  thanks to an old visit from hurricane Georges. Like Bill said in the previous blog, sometimes even a much needed project to make the place beautiful for the guests has to wait it’s turn. We have looked at this hole for so long we hardly notice it anymore, kind of like the mother who ceases to hear her child screaming every day while the rest of the world wants to pull their hair out. I’m sure the guests notice it though.

For over a year now we have been telling our guests,”Please excuse the huge hole in the back that used to be a pool, as we are waiting for the perfect weather and to schedule the workers to repair it”. Ha! How long can we really get away with that one, before one of our returnining guests calls us on it? Finally we have agreed on my idea, which is one we had discussed during our first year of work here, of making a natural  pond with fish and beautiful aquatic plants in and around the water.

We will continue sending all of the bathing beauties to our natural swimming hole at the end of our hike for a swim and spa pedicure (by the shrimp), which is a  whole lot more private and romantic than any ordinary pool could ever be. I know our dogs will love the natural pond on a hot summer day. It will be a lot easier maintaining it if the frogs, bugs and leaves that might possibly fall in don’t have to be removed every day and are just part of the new aquatic ecosystem. Also at this high elevation in El Yunque the pool would have to be heated in the winter and we do not have our massive solar panel project going yet either and the pumps and filters would still burn lots of electricity belaying our eco-lodge green foot print.

We do plan on putting in a solar heated  hot tub outside beside the pond on the deck for the guests to soak after long hikes. It will have a view of the Caribbean on one side and the rainforest on the other. For our guests who enjoy swimming in a traditional swimming pool they have the option of renting Margarita’s 5 acre secluded estate home that we manage next door.

We plan to landscape our pond to achieve a serene and zen like effect. We will  be building a thatched gazebo beside it which will house the hot tub. One side of the pond will be used for a waterfall that is the outflow from the bio-natural filtration system. The  tranquil trickle of the waterfall with the solar outdoor lighting will give it a nice romantic feel and night blooming Jasmine will fill the air with a lovely scent. Outdoor lounge chairs will be scattered about for our guests to hang out there.

Most Inns and guests houses on the island have traditional swimming pools. We will be taking a risk by not having a pristine turquoise blue swimming pool on our web page as an advertisement like everyone else. Our Inn is a true eco-resort which shouldn’t have a pool with pumps, energy wasting heater and  chemicals. We would prefer to spend that money on really nice linens and other amenities for our guests’ comfort.

Not to be…. chlorinated, no! To be a new home for fish, frogs and beautiful aquatic plants.

Laurie hated that old porch railing from the day (four years ago) we started working on our rainforest bed and breakfast. She thought it looked like a horse corral (appropriate since there were horses on the property when we moved in that we had to find homes for). We’re a team but I convinced Laurie to give priority to jobs that didn’t involve tearing something down that was at least useable until some pretty major things were done first like hooking up the electricity, installing pumps in the cisterns, fixing the plumbing, and putting on a couple of roofs (it is the rainforest so roofs are important).

We have made the central part of our complex (where the chalet and the villa are) the priority — making it as nice as possible.  Laurie found a picture in one of our many design books and she told to make the railing just like that picture. I took a few liberties and came up with a design which looked, somewhat, like the picture and was fairly easy to do. We have a nail gun that shoots galvanized ring-shank nails that have a coating of hot melt glue on them so that is my weapon of choice. The new “balustrades” are treated pitch pine 2X2′s with the lower end cut at a 45 degree angle as a water “run-off” and an interesting detail.

The whole project came together very quickly. Laurie tore off the old 2X4′s and we fitted a top and a bottom 2X4 for attaching the new balustrades to. Then we marked out a good spacing (we chose 6.5 inches) which varied according to the space between the existing railing posts which like everything in this old house seems to be from a measurement system that didn’t depend on any crude instruments like levels or tape measures.

Then I cut all the 2X2′s on the cut-off saw, adding the 45 degree detail on each end. We nailed them in place with the gun and had most of the front railing finished in one day. The next day I put the rest in place with the help of a visiting friend (Julio – now a skilled carpenter) and Laurie painted everything a dark gray to match the cedar.

I think I better make a new paragraph. I didn’t realize that describing our quant farm house kitchen would take so many sentences. The worst part, the embarrassing part, is the bedroom which Laurie and I slept in for the first year of operations. So our bedroom was behind the wall of pantry cabinets, basically on the other side of our quant farmhouse kitchen. There were several things about this location for a bedroom that were annoying:

1. Whenever the commercial refrigerator’s compressor kicked-on you stopped being able to hear yourself think which would disturb my REM sleep patterns (Laurie was more annoyed by other things further down in this list but since I am writing this I will order the list with the things that most annoyed me first). The lesson to learn from this is that no matter how cool it is to have an expensive commercial refrigerator in your kitchen remember that the people who make the household units know a thing or two about what you might want in your home as opposed to your factory and being startled out a sound sleep by the jet-taking-off sound of a commercial refrigerator’s compressor kicking off is not a selling point.

2. The bathroom we used was not very close to our bedroom. For our first year the only working bathroom was under a tarp in the north wing of the main house (which became the villa). Running through the rain on the slippery tile floor was hard to get used to. Sometimes we would get stuck inside waiting for a rain to subside. Remember that we live in the rainforest. Later I built a bathroom in the south wing (we call it the Anderson wing after the volunteer who did most of the masonry work). But access to that bathroom still involved walking through the kitchen and then across the south breezeway. We decided that having a bathroom adjoining your bedroom is not a luxury.

3. The roof over our heads was the floor to the upstairs. That is a convoluted way of saying we were living downstairs. I know that lots of people live downstairs but I never was a very good apartment dweller (witness the fact that I moved a mile into the heart of the rainforest) so I didn’t suffer the pitter patter sound of feet upstairs very well. Sometimes in the middle of the night my imagination would take over and I would try to deduce what the sounds coming from upstairs were — perhaps heavy fishing boots and a game of musical chairs? I didn’t know but I laid awake anyway.

4. Occasionally guests would ask us where on the property we lived. Our place is a rambling mansion of five houses in various stages of repair so a wave in almost any general direction usually dismissed this question but Laurie was never comfortable with it. We certainly weren’t going to say: “Our bedroom is the squalid nine-by-nine room with the cement floor on the other side of the pantry.”

Laurie just came in — interrupted this writing — to tell me the dishwasher fell over. She bought some new cutlery that is very heavy stainless steel and you really can’t pull the drawer out all the way when it is loaded with that weight. She has already forgotten how bad our first couple of years were and wants me to mount the diswasher. Now that we live in the south “Anderson” wing of the house and have our own private bathroom and a front room with weight training equipment and all sorts of other luxuries but it is all in your expectations. Maybe if we had spent our first year staying in the stable down below with a straw floor and a mud path to an outhouse, maybe then the dishwasher falling over wouldn’t be so serious.

Laurie and I still have conflicting goals. I want to finish the jungle suite (it has a huge bedroom high in the tree tops with tree ferns and epiphytes at eye level). I want more rentals available for next season. Laurie wants me to finish repairing the swimming pool (like that isn’t a hole for throwing money in) and she spends hours working on the grounds tying orchids to trees and planting heliconia. The rainforest is so prolific that, lucky for me, she just concentrates on the paths between the buildings and the yard in front and is willing to let the rest of the acreage be wild. Sometimes she will be working on the grounds and forget about everything else, like dinner…