In my salad days, I was a backpacker.  I liked backpacking because it's honest -- i.e. you get what you pay for.  If you want something on the top of a mountain, like a GPS monitor or a six pack of Coors, you have to pack it up there.  Equality, eh?

The other reason I liked it was that it made me appreciate a lot of basics that we often take for granted.  A warm dry place to sleep, cold clear water to drink, a full belly after dinner, hot coffee in the morning, a little nap after lunch; all things that you might take for granted in the everyday grind, but that seem special when you're up there at 10,000 feet in the high lonesome.

Belize isn't high, and it certainly isn't lonesome, but I'm learning to appreciate some things that we took for granted in the States.  In the US, everybody has certain minimum standards for a house, and one of these is hot water.  (If you tried to rent out a house without hot water, you'd probably get arrested!)   In Belize, a hot water heater is a luxury.  Not as non-existent as an automatic dishwasher, but still a luxury.  (After all, running water is a luxury. . . HOT running water . . . holy moly!!)

Since I got here in February, I've been taking cold showers.  Not too bad when it was hot during the day, and the pipes warmed up, but now that it's cooling down (to the 70's) a cold shower gets pretty daunting.  With my faint heart, I started seriously thinking about a hot water heater. 

In the daytime, the water in our black garden hose gets really hot, and that adds some support to the idea that you might be able to put some black PVC pipe up on the roof, and run it into the house to provide hot shower water.  Catch-22; when you need hot water, in the winter, it is not always that sunny, and everything cools down pretty quickly at night.  If you want a late night or early morning shower, you're back to "pipe water," at ground temperature. 

I had heard some conflicting reports -- that you might have to have a special permit to bring a hot water heater in from Mexico; that water heaters cost from $500-600 US in Belize City, that you may have trouble hooking it up because the Mexican fittings are metric.   The truth is:

1.  You don't need a permit.  You just have to pay the duty, which is 25% on the purchase price, plus 8% sales tax. 

2.  Belize City is just marking the item up because it's a luxury item.  i.e. GTG (gouge the gringo) may be in effect.

3.  The fittings are standard.  Many of the parts on the heater are Made in USA. 

So, we went to Chetumal, found a 40 litre  (11.4 gal)  gas heater at Boxitos and bought it.  It was 850 pesos, and they discounted it 100 pesos for cash and carry!   We paid $55 dollah duty, so it cost about $110 US. 

Earlier, I bought a 40 pound butane tank from Debbie, a girl who was selling everything out in order to go back to the states.  I bought this for $35 dollah, and it turned out to be full of butane, so that was a wonderful bargain, we thought.  Then, I begain to find out more about butane tanks.  This tank was set up to deliver liquid butane.  (I don't know why you would want that, but the outlet pipe runs down to the bottom of the tank and picks up liquid, rather than gas butane.)  After some consultation with the local gas distributor, we decided to fit it up to run upside down, thus delivering gaseous butane, until we use up what's in the tank. 

  I began to outfit the shower for hot water.  Hot water pipe here is hot PVC, rated differently than regular PVC, and actually a different diameter from regular PVC.  Hot water is normally carried in a little 1/2" OD pipe.  I build up a whole set of pipe, with two valves (hot & cold), a mixer T which fed the shower pipe.  The shower pipe is cold water pipe, so I need an adapter to hook it to the hot water mixer.  The cold water coming into the house is larger than the hot water pipe (both are nominally 1/2" ID, but they don't couple.  You have to have a converter coupler.  So we have all that outfit on the wall, where we originally had a single pipe going up to the shower head.  Oh.  You can't use regular PVC cement to hook this stuff up -- you have to have HOT PVC cement. 

I put the hot water heater outside of the house, so that venting is not a problem.  I built a little shed for it.  Using Coreldraw, I drew detailed plans, put a detailed parts list into Excel, printed it out and took it over to the lumber yard.  They cut all of the pieces to order out of mahogany.  (Green mahogany, but mahogany just the same.)  I had presumed that when I asked for 1x10 I would get a 1 x 9.5.  In fact, everything was exactly to measure -- which messed up my calculations a little, but I adjusted -- took a piece back to get it recut, and put the whole thing together.  It cost 90 dollah. (Pictures at 11.)  When we get the door cut to size, we will put it on the shed, and chain the shed to the house so that somebody doesn't decide to carry the heater and gas tank off.  (It happens.)  

We hooked it all up, and took our first showers.  It was WONDERFUL.  We also ran a line over to the kitchen, so that we now have hot water for dishes. (Up till now, we've been boiling water on the stove to wash the dishes.)  The next morning, I had to relight the pilot, and heat the water again.   We went through several mornings of lighting the pilot & the heater, and waiting 21 minutes for the tank to heat up.  (One advantage of a 40 litre tank; it only takes 21 minutes to recover.)

I decided to fix the pilot.  I took it apart, sanded down the internal beads and couplings, and put it back together again.  I thought I'd fixed it, until it blew up in my face, burning off my eyebrows and hair in the front, and giving me second degree burns on my lighting hand.  Live and learn.  (Better than "die and learn", eh?) 

My fishing friend Lester is a gas heater expert, having installed them for several wussy female members of his family.  <grin>  Throwing pride to the wind, I asked him for help. 

  "There's a little bead on the end of the pilot pipe, and it has a tiny, tiny hole in it.  You can't see it unless you really look for it.  You have to enlarge that hole."   I took the assembly apart again, and looked at the bead.  Sure enough, it has a little hole in it, smaller than .001".  I poked it with a fine needle on both sides, and ran a strand of copper wire through it.  That made it big enough that the pilot remains lighted now.  In fact, we had to turn the adjustment down, because the pilot was so hot it was making everything in there glow red.  (The adjustment is a little screw, inside of a screw cover, on  the front of the thermostat.  It turns in -- clockwise -- to close.) 

It's Thanksgiving.  As you take your hot shower this evening or tomorrow morning, I hope you will realize just how lucky you are, compared to the millions of people who live in 3rd world countries. 

Sr. ric  

New:  Further reflections on Cold Weather and Hot Water can be found here. 

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