Well, it has been several days now... well weeks actally since we started to try and set up our bathroom. You see, we moved into this uncompleted house and thought it would be a great thing to have a working bathroom.
What we inherited was a small room with an elevated floor and a toilet base sitting loosely on the sewage pipe. A tap out of the wall should have supplied the water for our bucket flushing system, but it was broken so we retrieved our water from the kitchen sink - which just happens to be a concrete washing tub.
So, after finding and extracting an old hand basin from the rubbish, and buying lots of other bits and pieces, we now are close to having a working bathroom.
Most showers here consist of something like a toilet cistern with a kettle heating element in it. This is plugged into the nearest power socket and heats up the water that you have in there. When it is hot enough, you mix some more cold water to get the temperature you want and then stand under the shower head that protrudes from the base of the side. Pressure is not great, but it works.
Our shower is the next level up, where we have a powerhead attached to the head of the pipe that sits above our head. Two big fat electric wires carry the current needed by this device to heat the water instantly, so it hits our bodies below at a lovely warm or hot temperaure. This is called the "Super" shower, and is quite a luxury. Ours will be the first of its kind on the YWAM base here.
Now, as it is with every job like this, we went and bought all the bits that we needed only to discover when we tried to use them that half of them don't work or are missing bits. So our hopes of having the shower ready today did not work. Of course, with the hopes of getting a "Super" shower a number of us are holding off on having a shower amongst the crowds in the old bathrooms... but this has been going on for about three days so far. Some of us are getting a little smelly. If we don't get this shower working tomorrow then there will be a few more people in line for the next shower under the old kettles.
Putting a shower into a house with brick and concrete walls is not all that simple. It involves chiselling out a channel for the pipes to go, and then covering it all back over with concrete... and hoping that it never leaks. The bricks we use here are thin walled at least and so once we are through the first layer of concrete it gets a little easier to make the holes. There is a great mess of concrete and brick on the floor however. Demolition is always a lot of fun.
As it stands now, we have a bathroom with a hand basin, a toilet with a cistern, and a "Super" shower, all sitting on the wall and ready to be connected. There is no water or pipes running to them yet. Tomorrow should sort out all of those minor problems.
Tonight, I wired up the shower and bathroom light. This involves simply running the thick wires from the shower to the nearest other thick wires. Once there, you cut through the insulation and wrap the wires together and seal them off with electrical tape. Nothing more. Couldn't be easier really.
So tomorrow we plan to have a bathroom. Working, that is. Our toilet is sealed, and our hand basin mounted and plumbed. With the water pipes connected and in place, we throw some concrete around on the wall and it is finished. Three days of work, and three weeks of procrastination. Supa Ducha (Super shower) here we come!