Owning a Home in the Virgin Islands - Pool

A few months ago our pool pump started making a loud screeching noise. Two missed attempts by the pool service company to come out and take a look failed (did they forget about me? Who knows). The noise eventually subsided.

Then a few weeks ago, the pool turned a yellow green! Yellow algae infestation, treated by Yellow Out and Shock along with running the pump for 24 hours.

Well, for this pump, a 24 hour run meant death. The noise started again, getting to the point that even sitting inside the house, the noise was unbearable. I went to the pump closet and shut it off. Gave it an hour went back and all it did was hum. Great, and this just when the boat low unit had issues.

Called the pool service company again, he is too busy right now and not taking on any new customers until September. He told me to take the pump in Poly Caribe, a pump company on island.

Oh ok, well the plumbing in the closet is a series of cut and patch PVC. Ahh, but I figured out that I could disassemble the pump right behind the filter basket and just take the motor in after I un-wired it.

Off to Poly Caribe. They were great they had me a new motor with the old impeller done in 24 hours.

I re-installed it myself and turned it back on, all for only $425!

Moral of the story here;

A) If you are not a handy person here, owning a home can be frustrating as finding good help is a challenge. If you are not handy, nor patient and subsequently suffer from both, I would not recommend living here.

B) If you are a pool pump person in the US and have thought about moving here, I can't see why you wouldn't do well? You can always certainly buy a house from me too!

Owning a Home in the Virgin Islands - Repairs - Cistern

As you may remember, we recently painted our pool and filled it from our cistern which needed to be drained as we had several cracks in the cistern and who knows how long ago it was cleaned and re-sealed. We were originally told we would be without water for about 10 days. In anticipation of having no water, we stocked up with buckets of water to make it through that time and luckily at our marina, we were able to rent showers for the time.

So the day came, water shut off and cistern was almost drained!

Once they have the cistern drained (ours is underneath our entire living and kitchen area and is about 26,000 gallons) they need to power wash it and drain out the remains. This process took about 2 days. At that point they fill in the cracks with quick drying cement. 24 hours to let that dry. Then the painting of the new sealer, Thermaseal. That takes about 2 days as they do two coats. Problem was, we had rain one night and had to postpone the 2nd coat as water leaked through our downspout plugs. Once all the coating is done you are to wait 7 days for it to cure and let the sealer leach out the minerals. Most of the cistern companies down here go ahead right away in fill it. Shannon checked out the manufacturer's website and once again, island mentality with just get it done. The real issue with filling it right away is you will have a salt like, smelly substance in the cistern.

After letting the sealer cure for a week, it was time to get back down there and replace the foot valve as the old one was dirty and whomever put it in the last time left at at the bottom of the cistern which would then suck up and the crap from the bottom. A little cutting with a hacksaw, some PVC glue and viola, new foot valve. One of the final steps to the cistern is to come back after cure time and spray salt water rinse and get that out of the bottom. Many companies don't do this either.

Now the time has come, after two weeks of no water, I was given the OK to order the water truck! We ordered 5250 gallons for $370. Because our cistern is so big, this filled it up about a foot or halfway up the picture above on the foot valve pipe. Regardless, to have running water again!!!!

So, now is the time we had been waiting for, getting the pump going again and have running water! Not so fast, as with everything here, nothing is easy! The pump would run but never shut off, which is bad as the pump will get hot and burn out! On the phone with a plumber, oh he can't come out for another 3 days. To hell with the plumber, it is time for "Water Pumps, this is Ken!" On the phone with Larry the Water Guy, we diagnose the problem (after many attempts and getting sprayed in the face) it is a bad pressure switch. Good news is we can still use the water, just have to unplug the pump until I can install a new pressure switch.

The next day off to Home Depot for a 20/40 PSI switch. Nope they don't carry them, even though most of the homes here have cisterns. Off to East End Lumber and purchase a new one for $19. Installed in less than an hour and no problems since! More good news, we are moving into our rainy season now and just had about an inch of new rain which translated into about 3 more inches in the cistern!

Here was the old switch!

Owning a Home in St Thomas, USVI - Home Repairs - Pool Update

In my last update with the pool, we had left off with the pool being painted. After a successful week without rain, we let the new pool paint to dry and cure. Next step was to get the spaceship skimmer up and running. Apparently with the former owner, there was a line break in the original pool plumbing and in order to find that break, my guess is the entire deck would have to come up and the bottom of the pool jackhammered. So to avoid those costs the just cut and capped off the old plumbing and ran PVC to the old skimmer with 1.5 inch for the filter intake and two 3/4 inch return lines. The new skimmer is this floating spaceship skimmer which is attached to the 1.5 inch PVC with a hose. Unfortunately after an extensive Internet search there is no real replacement for this contraption.

So we found the correct adaptor for the hose at Budget Marine. Ok, now to install it, simply just screw on the adapter, right? Well yes, but the hose that was on there was so old in just snapped and cracked! We were supposed to be filling the pool that morning as the painters were to begin on repairing, cleaning and re-coating our cistern the next day (another blog post in of itself!). Off to Home Depot, they have hose but not another adaptor, so off to the other side of the island to Budget Marine! We got back around 3 PM and sorted the hose. Now time to start filling the pool!

As I mentioned before, this pool had been empty for 2+ years with a sump pump at the bottom. Well the pump will always leave about 3 inches of water in the bottom. This water became a tadpole sanctuary, which we didn't mind as they ate the mosquito larvae. As luck would have it the frogs returned as soon as we had water in the pool. The first night we counted 16 Cuban Tree Frogs in the pool having an orgy!

Come to find out these frogs are not native and an invasive species and if you can catch them you should kill them. After their first night return for their orgy, we went down to the pool in the morning and found the entire top of the water surface filled with eggs!



The next night we went on a hunt and caught seven of them and put them in a plastic ziplock. The most humane way to kill these frogs is to put them in your freezer. Yes the next morning we had frozen frogs in our freezer, anyone have a recipe for frog legs? Just kidding....after doing that one time, we decided that we are not good at that. We found if you just pour salt on them, they seem to go away, plus the chlorine in the pool seems to deter them.

Now after a day and a half of filling the pool from the cistern, it was time to take our first EVER swim in this pool that we have looked at all these years!

Ahhh! A nice 82 degree temperature to escape the heat of the day! A few more adjustments to the spaceship, string seems to be working. Chemicals, the water was low in alkalinity, so I raised that to acceptable standards, but the PH also went up. I took my time, by adding a little bit a day for the alkalinity and eventually the PH came down on its own. So far, so good! What a welcome addition to the house!



What to do in the Virgin Islands.... Play the local Lottery!

(guest blog by Shannon Wiseman)

So, yup, we won the lottery!  Not just a figure of speech about how we just moved to Paradise and all.... I mean it literally. We won $1,600 in the Virgin Islands Lottery about a month ago.

Not enough money to change our lives, but more than we have ever won in any drawing before.  We were psyched!  $1600 bucks is $1600 bucks! 

(if you are wondering how we will ever be able to spend it, please see Ken's previous entries regarding the pool;))

Winning the local lottery made me curious about it, so here is the deal:

Fact: The lottery tickets here are strange.

I used to give Ken a hard time about buying the sheets of stamp-like lottery tickets that are sold all over the island.  There are some pretty sketchy dealers loitering all over at stores, street corners, parking lots, etc. selling these wierd lotto tix, strung up on clothes lines. We bought our winning ticket from a woman outside of the auto parts store.

I figured the drawing had to be rigged or something, seemed kind of sketchy.

Each ticket features a different local art design, which is kind of neat, and all proceeds stay local, which is really good. They cost $30 per sheet of 25 tickets and several of the prizes are only available to you if you buy the whole sheet, so that seems to be what everyone does. Not worth buying only one stamp. Ken always said he likes it because even though the prizes aren't big, the odds are good.

I never expected we would win, so it seemed out of the blue when Ken called me over to his computer one morning and had me double check the numbers online --- YES, WE WERE WINNERS!

So then... I got more curious about his comment that the "odds are good"...  we won once, but what are the chances we will ever win again?

I am sorry, by the way, but I was a statistics geek in college - I am intrigued by the small print of anything.

The VI Lottery "Traditional Game" is what is lotto is called.  There are 34,000 sheets sold and 4,744 prizes ranging from $30 to $175,000 and many different ways to win.  The total jackpot pool is $330,000.  So, hoping my basic math is correct....  You have a 14% chance of winning a prize, at least winning your money back.  Not bad!  Drawings are usually every two weeks, but sometimes they double up when they do a "big one" (aka EX drawing, like they are having TODAY here, first prize is $500k and there are many more bonus prizes, sheets of tickets are $50 though).

Compare to multi-state Powerball where each ticket only costs $2 and the first prize is sometimes $100 million or more... BUT your odds of winning at least your $2 money back are only 3% there and odds are 1 in 175 million that you will win the jackpot. Never gonna happen for me (especially since I don't buy tickets?:))

Ok, so I am convinced, it might be more fun to play the local Traditional lotto and win maybe less, but more often!

   

Collecting our prize money was another VI experience. If you win over $1200, you have to go to the main lottery office to get your money.

Ken bought the ticket without my encouragement, so really he won, not me - I guess that is why I volunteered to do the goose chase to redeem the prize and get the check? :)

I got the office address from their website.  I went there after finding downtown parking (not easy!), guess what? they have moved!  Walked another few blocks (of course, that is after revealing to several random people in the dealer's office lobby that I had a winning ticket in my bag before being re-directed down a narrow alley!) and then located their new office.  I was dripping with sweat at that point and the A/C was so cold in their office, I would have welcomed a typical St. Thomas wait, but alas... I was the only one there and was helped right away. 

It was a multi-day process from there with lots of paperwork and a couple more trips back and forth downtown through the sketchy alley way and into the freezing cold office (that must be where the lotto profits go?? To WAPA for the A/C?:)), I finally got the check!

Nothing is easy here, but it was well worth the $1,600.

ANYWAY -  we have our sheet of tickets for the Extra-Ordinary Drawing for today June 21st.  We bought them from a different dealer this time, he hangs his tickets outside of the Cost U Less store. 

Wish us luck!

Owning a Home in St Thomas, USVI - Landscaping - Part II

Just thought I would give a quick update on the progress of our landscaping here.

Big useless banana (plantain) tree has more leaves no bananas. Lime tree is still in the foreground, still no limes.

Little banana tree has some new leaves.

Mango tree has a bunch of new leaves!

Front hibiscus wants to do well, but with the recent dry spell, the iguanas having been making it lunch. The other hibiscus I planted in January has passed away. When I went to through it in the bush, it got stuck on some vine and is now hanging. Death by hanging, no, no cause for death other than it was bought from Home Depot.

To replace the dead and now hanging hibiscus, we have a new addition to our family, meet Papaya!

I had some seeds that got packed from stateside, zucchini and jalapenos (glad to have fresh jalapenos, when I was making my turkey crockpot chili when we went to Soggy Dollar, I went to three stores with no fresh jalapenos, finally found them at a small grocery store, Marina Market).

I also brought down in my suitcase some snips of my house plants since they couldn't make the trip. I have a spider plant that I had since college, yes 21 years ago, and a Christmas Cactus that was my late mother's. I put them in a Tupperware with a wet paper towel and replanted them here. They are really growing well!

Since the jalapeno and zucchini were doing so well, why not try some more. So now we have pablano peppers, lettuce (produce here sucks, they really don't grow anything here.), and basil. Not much too look at with those, waiting for them to sprout!

Here is the zucchini two weeks later, see the one leaf is turning silver? Read on-line that it is nutrient deficiency, so added some fertilizer. Jalapenos are doing well!



Fresh Vegetables and fruit soon come?



Owning a Home in St Thomas USVI - Home Repairs Part III - Pool

One of the reasons we bought the home we did was it was one of the few that had a pool. What better way to spend a lazy summer afternoon Sunday relaxing in your own pool, not to mention our Labrador retrievers love the water.

When we bought the home in 2009 the pool seemed to be working, although it always appeared to be a white cloudiness to it.

We had hired a pool maintenance person as the home was fully rented. Well after much to do about the pool person saying it was the tenants not running the filter enough to the tenants saying the pool person was showing up, I decided that when I came down in March of 2010 I would investigate this further. Turns out the pool needed to be painted. Our upstairs tenants had moved out, and being that we would only be down part time, we decided to just drain the pool. This was during when we found out the breezeway above the pool was sinking, so we were going to have to drain the pool anyway to start re-hab work.

We had the deck painted and a railing put up.

Now that we live here full time, it is time to get this pool up and running! Problems though, the old filtration system is rigged with a floating skimmer and two 3/4 inch pvc return lines. Power here is 42 cents a KWH (look at your own power bill and you will see what I mean) so we were thinking of re-doing the filtration system.

First check was looking into a newer pool company on island. Well he wanted to sell me a variable speed pump for $1600 along with sconces and waterfalls and an intake box with holes in it so no one gets sucked into the floating skimmer (um really? If you get sucked into 1.5" pvc you have some issues.). Well after more research on variable speed pumps, there is a large computer board on these along with LCD displays, not the ideal place for those due to the power spikes we get from our power company, coupled with the tropical air and humidity and yes, only a 1 year warranty. The website had new motherboards in case yours goes south for only $1100. This idea is OUT!

Ok, what would be next, hmmm, solar, right?  We have lots of sun here and a huge flatter roof. I call and get an estimate for that. Well since all of the tax rebates have been used up, only $6500. That would be a payoff in 4.1 years baring the electronic controller on that didn't short out. This idea is OUT!

We had Larry the Water guy here and he asked, "Why don't you just use what is there if it already worked in the past?". Um yea, that is what we are going to do. He took a look at the issue of the tube to the spaceship skimmer and it used to leak. Well, Larry said you can't glue tube to PVC which was what had been done. So he told me the part to get (yes I went to 3 hardware stores, and where do I find this part? The boat parts store?).

So, now the next big decision, to plaster (Diamond Bright) or re-paint the pool. Well the plaster will be about $8000 - $12,000.  That idea is OUT! Painting will run us about $1200.

We have another issue now. Our cistern, the big tank that holds our household rain water, is cracking in several places.

Every several years you need to fill in the cracks and re-seal the cement tank as concrete is always settling and we are on a fault line here and we get some tremors.

My brilliant idea was to have the pool painted, drain the water from the cistern into the pool and then repair the cistern!

So we have hired our painter Steve to do the work.

First thing we need to do is clean out the frog and tadpole sanctuary. Yes we will miss our nightly frog orgy, but it is time to reclaim the pool for human/canine use.

Steve began last Thursday with pressure washing the pool. He then used an acid to wash the pool. Now, we are waiting for the next phase after the pool drys out hopefully Wednesday with the actual painting.

We are hoping this all gets done sooner than later, as it is getting hot here, 92 today with 54% humidity. The dogs with their fur coats are waiting too!

Before I go, here is the next installment in "St Thomas, You Can't Make This Shit Up!"

Please describe what a pineapple looks like?