Trench for water and electricity

This trench, alongside the access track to the site is where the water pipe and electricity cable will be lain.
The municipality electricity cables reach as far as the gate to the property; Oren and Alex extended them a further 30m for their house. We needed to lay another 30m of cable to connect our house to the grid.

There is no municipality water where we are so we are having to find our own way of getting water.



Electricity Prices and ICE

Turns out that the Costa Rican national electricity supplier (ICE) has a very sensible tariff that means the more you use the higher the price you pay per kwh. I like this tariff - it should encourage people to use as little as possible of this scarce resource as possible. And though hydro-electric power may have less severe environmental consequences than other forms of power, that probably depends on who you ask. It's not much fun for the people displaced by the big damn.

But what this tariff means for us is that it kind of makes sense to extend the cable we are laying to the gate so that ICE will give us a separate meter. This way the two houses should receive lower electricity bills.