It’s time for me to write about water again.
In this provincial land of the free, with hardly a building or infrastructure code in sight, one can build a garage, renovate a home, install water or electricity, and more, all without clipboard-wielding bureaucratic oversight. Nice… if you know what you’re doing and have all the tools and materials to do what you want or need. If any of these is lacking… H2WOE.
Over the fence and just above our outhouse is a large metal pipe with one entry flow and about six outflow points. So this receives the water from higher up in the village, and distributes it to us and our neighbors. It’s a point of much heartache and contention, small, muddy, frustrating to get to and work at.
I hate the sight of it, though it’s vital to the lives of all of us.
Now, we have two outflow pipes there, one to the house (22 water points in five bathrooms and two kitchens) and the other to the separate building of the café (six points in a bathroom and kitchen). The house water can flow directly in, or go into a 1000L tank, and from there through a pump, to give sufficient water pressure for upstairs showers. (This system works, of course, only when there is electricity).
The café water is used primarily for dishwashing, and is all on the ground floor, so, no tank or pump.
When there is a problem at the main metal inflow/outflow pipe, it can affect only one outflow, or all of them, depending on the type of problem. Inflow issues affect us all, outflow ones typically relate only to one outflow pipe. But if you need to work on your outflow problem, you may need to turn off the entire inflow, without warning, affecting all your neighbors’ outflows. (The same thing happens if you have an electricity issue in your house: you may need to turn off the local transformer, depriving all neighbors connected to it of power while you do your thing). Everyone knows this and puts up with it. Be as quick as you can!
It’s important to have extra copies of all parts and materials to hand for these issues, plus preferably tools and know-how to repair or replace what is needed. Or you can call a neighbor to do it for you, either paying him (always a he) or accepting that you are now in his debt for a future favor. Best to know, or learn, what to do yourself. Lending out your tools is risky, too, as they may fail to come back without chasing, or may return damaged, in which case an argument may ensue.
ANYWAY… recently, I have had to work on an outflow leak problem from that hated big metal pipe to the café water pipe. This involves possibly getting filthy with mud, not having (or damaging) the necessary parts, jury-rigging something which will hopefully hold for 24 hours while still leaking, and carefully noting/documenting the parts to buy tomorrow at the big Knauf shop in Mestia. Further woes betide you if they don’t have what you need: then you scrounge around the town’s several other smaller such shops, or realize that you must get what you need in Zugdidi, 110 km away (four times as far as Mestia!). I will hope for the best tomorrow, allow the leak to continue unabated until then, and do what I must to solve the thing. It is no exaggeration to say that, aside from the odd murder or drunk person’s belligerence, non-handyman that I am, water is my main personal struggle living in such a remote place…
Blog by Tony Hanmer
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer and photographer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 2000 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri: www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
