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utilitus

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Posts posted by utilitus

  1. 21 hours ago, Mostlylost said:

    I installed a 22,000 liter white plastic aljibe in Ajijic about 5 years ago. It is under my garage.  

    My future neighbor in SJC has this installation, and it seems like a logical location (so long as automotive oozing don't contaminate anything).  It would be expensive overkill from a water/sewer management perspective, but if local zoning lakeside limits homes to two stories, can well-engineered structures add full basements below grade (which is kind of hard to define at a 25 degree slope), suitable for both general use and facility location and operation.  My lot is so small that a fancy cantilevered foundation is planned anyway...   TIA 

  2. 2 hours ago, lcscats said:

    Largest round underground plastic tank is 30,000 liters. Its about 8 ft diameter and 8 ft tall.  

    Lest someone fixate on such figures, my dark green 2600 gal (@ roughly 10k lt) US style Rotonics water tank is just about 8 x 8 ft. 

     V = π r^2 h

    They make these quality tanks in various formats, and at least 50% more voluminous, such as my neighbors' @ 12 ft tall, a freestanding specimen, on a pad foundation - cost about US$3k.  Don't know if these branded products are available in Mexico, but I think I once saw a small one in a hardware store in Ajijic.

     

    5000 Gallon Green Plastic Water Tank

     

     
  3. 32 minutes ago, cedros said:

    10 K isn't much. I had about 50,000. And a neighbour had a 60,000 and a 70,000 lliter. The latter two weas collected rainwater from roofs. 

    That's good general advice, but my situation is based on my current experience here in Mendocino, even now in the middle of a draught.  In SJC I have a small, steep view lot and all the other buried tanks and hardware previously mentioned have to be configured carefully.  This is the point, to integrate into and supplement the function of municipal utilities and, in the case of water harvested from a 150 sq mt roof with a lot of plants forming a serious rooftop view garden, to have the ability, if necessary, to buy water off a truck using concealed, built in ports and pipes, to pump water back up, for example, such energy expenditure ideally involving intermittent municipal pressure.  

    Rooftop water harvesting and ambitious storage are obviously key features that should almost always be design defaults .

    @ 100/gal day p/p, typical of the US, storage of over 400k lt/yr would be required for three persons, unless they resorted to the combo sombrero-bidet involving wash cloths described above, a perfectly reasonable solution if you only have a liter a day.

  4. 37 minutes ago, Yo1 said:

    Another really good idea would be to make any new house built to have two septic tanks: one for black water as usual and one for grey water with a pump to use this water for garden use.  A little more expensive but such a good use of grey water.

    Am in the process of designing a house in SJC which will have city water and sewer, but supplemented with such systems on a small scale, should city facilities fail, plus a 10k lt water tank also connected to rooftop rain capture.  Carefully positioned solar panels designed in, rather than pasted on.

    • Like 1
  5. On 8/13/2020 at 6:55 PM, Zeb said:

     Do check their web site.  They also have excellent customer service, so you can click on the box to message them and they will respond quickly.  It is a back and forth instant message.  I do not send have any packages sent there as it makes no sense.  If I have a package, I have it sent directly to the General Mailbox at Ishop as a private box is not required for that.  For paper mail, you request a scan and print on your own home computer.  I ask credit card companies to send those UPS directly to my home in Mexico.  So far, this has worked well.

    Z - www.travelingmailbox.com looks excellent - shipping packages seems to involve a monthly fee and other related reasonable charges which maybe could be switched on/off as needed - thanks for the recommendation.

  6. Again thanks to earlyretirement for the comprehensive treatment of the PR process two years ago.  Contacting Mexican consulates here in northern California appears to be impossible, and if one visits without an appointment, you might be turned away, so I read with interest that Santa Ana once upon a time was accessible.  Reviewing their website, I noticed that over the intervening two years that the financial requirements for PR have increased over 50%, as below.  Perfectly reasonable, except that most financially competent persons would not keep $130k cash in savings accounts at no interest.  So do the Mexican authorities include CDs, brokerage or forex accounts representing cash and other financial asset positions, particularly if the aggregated total is multiples of the minimal figure they require?  Thanks.

    Per https://consulmex.sre.gob.mx/santaana/index.php/extranjeros2020-2/visas2020-2 :

    "• Proof of economic solvency:
    a) Original and a photocopy of the last twelve bank statements (the complete official statement month by month, with full name and address – NO P.O. Box), showing a monthly ending balance of over $129,705.00 dollars; OR
    b) Original and a photocopy of documents showing that the applicant has a pension with a monthly income of over $3,242.00 dollars during the last six months (pension statement and bank statements, the complete official statement month by month, with full name and address – NO P.O. Box)."

  7. A couple of years ago, I took a pair of spectacular classic rayon tropical shirts to Rosy to be first repaired and then copied in terms of cut with cotton fabric I had brought with me from California.  It turns out that rayon somehow disintegrates just as if it had been attacked by moths, and I asked Rosy to patch the holes, for which she quoted a reasonable price, and to pattern match a new shirt with ample an amount of printed fabric with dinosaurs in a rich jungle setting.  For this, custom job, I think she quoted US$23, and I had to go scare up some buttons.  The final product of this project was excellent, but as I understood her, she found it difficult and might have changed more.  The patching repairs, which certainly arrested further disintegration, were quite crude and in no way resembled proper 'reweaving', which she never promised and I lacked the Spanish to discuss, and which would have been quite expensive if even possible.

    There may be a sort of 'tailors' justice' at play here.  Once in Bangkok I picked up a 3-piece suit-length of Italian 150s pinstripe (superfine fabric, hard to work with) and the very friendly and suspiciously handsome Kashmiri salesman of the sort you see in the better tailor shops in BKK quoted me a good price and away we went.  For two fittings, they had to bring in the foreman from the Chinese workshops where the real work gets done, very hip guy, and they explained how the salesman had quoted way too low for the expert work involved.  They did a beautiful job, except for certain interior panels that they usually shower with handwork, the point being that they had to cut back on work somehow to lose less on what for them was a substandard deal.

  8. 3 hours ago, AngusMactavish said:

    I would not invest in good video unless it used OLED technology. It is so good it made all the LED people use QLED to describe their older screens. See one OLED, you deserve the best.

     For a discussion of certain issues re OLED burn-in, Pl. see: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/oled-screen-burn-in-what-you-need-to-know-now/ 

    I use large HDMI screens driven by networked laptops for both computer monitors and entertainment video, and the static Windows interface at least seems as if it would probably scar an OLED display for life because I sometimes leave the things on for months at a time.  This site seems to take reviewing seriously: https://www.rtings.com/tv/reviews/best/by-size/65-inch - look around the reviews and become familiar with the relevant issues. Modern screens are spectacular.

    I attended the seminar at Berkeley maybe twenty years ago when somebody announced the results of a big study of the viability of OLED for displays, and they knew the technology had limitations, including mainly the possibly that their lifespan might be limited due to organic oxidation.  A superior new technology, MicroLED, is being hyped but it so far has manufacturing issues and is absurdly expensive. See: https://www.cnet.com/news/microled-could-soon-replace-oled-screens-samsung-first-line-try/

  9. "French demographer Alfred Sauvy wrote of "Three worlds, one planet" in an article published in L'Observateur in 1952.  The First World consisted of the U.S., Western Europe and their allies. The Second World was the so-called Communist Bloc: the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and friends. The remaining nations, which aligned with neither group, were assigned to the Third World."  The poshest and most efficient hospital I've ever seen was thus '3rd world', Bumrungrad in Bangkok, one of the inventors of 'medical tourism'.  See: https://www.bumrungrad.com/en

    And, yes, millions of patients die and suffer needlessly world-wide every year due to primitive practices and seemingly willful ignorance, despite the ministrations of real healers such as Dr. Gawande.   See: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/atul-gawande , or historically, Semmelweis. 

  10. Over the last seven hours, the peso has gained back almost 3% against the USD.  The Banco de Mexico cut rates to 4.25% from 4.50%. This was a generally expected move.  Of course, this being forex, it was front run and the peso counter-intuitively rose while earning less interest.

  11. 2 hours ago, John Shrall said:

    There are many restrictions on the books regarding adding a structure to an existing property. There's height, boundaries of adjoining properties and the percent of the new footprint to the total lot size. To do it properly you need to apply and get approval for a building permit.

    You should also consider consulting with neighbors that might be affected by a new structure especially if a view will be compromised. I went through a long process last year with a neighbor that started building a casita right up to our adjoining walls and boasted to a another neighbor it was going up 5 stories. The end product turned out to be marginally invasive but only after involving a lawyer and the department of transparency in Chapala to finally produce public record drawings and the permit. 

    JS, would you care to share the name and type of contribution made by those professionals who assisted you?  I'm getting ready to build on a very small (1600 sf ft) view lot in SJC early next year, and need to know how in detail how to best balance the 'viewshed' interests of all who might be impacted, and to understand the sort of restrictions you detail above.  Also, I hope to engineer the place for an elaborate roof garden and solar array, and want to do everything to an unusually high technical standard, as well as within conventional code.  It would be great to engage an expert English speaking advisor asap. Thanks.

  12. Don't remember littering as a prominent feature of CR (especially compared to, say, Bali), but the lack of both (tax-expensive) police services and road maintenance did result in a different kind of environment than gringos are accustomed to.  At night, a sort of petty-criminal demimonde seemed to emerge, and several years ago anyway, the law sanctioned 'squatters rights' to the point that house invasions and appropriations could and did happen (after a few years of owner neglect), compelling foreign owners to employ caretakers.  My overall impression of the Ticos was very favorable - went out to the very edges of different cities and towns (looking at real estate), and even shacks seemed to have all the basic utilities, and bespoke a modest but decent and casual sub-tropical lifestyle.

  13. Gallo Pinto, CRs' national dish, even when made with good L&P Worcestershire sauce rather than fresh spices, is so simple and delicious.  See https://hispanickitchen.com/recipes/gallo-pinto/

    It's said that CR was very thinly populated with indigenous communities when it was colonized, resulting in more European genes per customer.  So maybe bland taste is genetic, though I once participated in a poll on a bus in the Bolivian Andes that determined that white kids from around the world favored Mexican. Here in California, that was certainly true 50 years ago, but as Asian influences jumped the border, Thai, Indian, Sichuan, Hunan and all manner of hot stuff has been easily assimilated.

     

     

     

  14. Jack, inferring that you have established a household already, I'd guess that the greatest opportunity for the development of specific then broadening opportunities in any category of education, but particularly technology, would involve a fast and dependable net connection at home.  There is a universe of resources online, and immersion in the real thing is the real thing.  

    I don't know anything about it, but there is a technical school of some sort on the Libramiento Chapala Ajijic Highway at # 202.   See: https://conalepjalisco.edu.mx/web/index.php/conocenos/planteles-jalisco/planteles-metropolitanos-2/plantel-chapala 

    A few years ago, the U. of Guadalajara was supposed to be remade along with the city into a digital media oasis;  AFAIK, they sponsored one class in Python.  See: https://ciudadcreativadigital.mx/en_US/ .  Welcome to Mexico.

  15. 8 hours ago, gringohombre said:

    I would highly recommend a lady named Rosario. She is right in the heart of Ajijic. When i first got here full time 12 years ago i needed window dressings for my house. I wanted a very Mexican look and not full drapes but top and half sides. She does not drive but you can pick her up and she will gladly look at your house and listen to what you want. Her shop/workshop is on Ocampo west of Colon on the North side almost to the next block. You will see an open front and counter and she will be on her sewing machine in the corner. Sorry, I do not have a phone number, but you cannot go wrong with her and tell her Dennis sent you!  

    (Reading from her card from two years ago here) - Rosario Marquez at 15 B Ocampo, again, west of Colon about half a block, and on the north side of the street.  No sign, just a small open storefront. Pretty busy in 2018.

  16. As happyj seems to describe and as I was told by a professional licensed 'termite inspector' in California, the posthole beetle class of infestation of a wooden structure requires expensive pressurized tenting which penetrates far deeper than the tent fumigation required for drywood termites.  I had such beetles in a unpainted garage structure, but they eventually went away on their own. I found it worthwhile to secure a professional diagnosis.  Lakeside, brick construction might obviate serious structural concerns, but I'm consciously designing a new house down there without wood as far as possible, and only where exposed and not structurally critical...

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