Yalbac Redux

Since Yalbac was the driving reason for our return to Belize this time around, it doesn't seem inappropriate to post another entry on this topic.
After talking with Myrna yesterday afternoon in the carless carport area under her house where we negotiated our covenant a little more than a year ago, we decided a return trip was in order to watch her (them) actually run the system and make clean water. Chuck and I decided we'd go, while the rest of the team could pursue other objectives.
When we arrived at Midas, I struck up a conversation with Mike Preston, 27 year old son of the owner. He asked where we'd been, and then said he'd never seen Yalbac. On a whim, I invited him to join us in the morning. Sure enough, at 8 AM he was ready to go. Before we were.
We arrived at the water building a few minutes late, and Myrna was already there sweeping and tidying up. I greeted Myrna and looked around for one of her children to translate. I felt a little bit of panic when none were visible. Until Mike started chatting amiably in Spanish. God is good!
We asked Myrna to explain the system to Mike and walk through the paces of making clean water. She got a bit flustered when water started pouring down the drain because we had left some valves mispositioned the day before. When she recovered from this, she forgot to open the valve to let the water through the filters, so the pump was pushing against a closed system. Once we got this sorted out, she regained her composure and performed flawlessly from that point forward.
At her request we showed her how to check the functioning of the UV bulbs in the ozonator, but not without some fumbling around on our part. Dave, where are you when we need you?
We had replaced a gauge with a low pressure equivalent the day before to measure the depth of the finished water tank and showed Myrna how to use it. As a final step, we decided to insert a second low pressure gauge ahead of the filters to measure raw water depth, too. We cut into the pvc pipe just after the inlet valve and checked all the pieces for a good fit. The we decided to open the pvc cleaner to prepare to glue everything together. No luck. The can was frozen tight. Mike tried. Myrna tried. Chuck tried. I tried. Still no luck. I got out my Gerber knife. We were preparing to use the can opener feature when Mike used it as a hammer and pounded on the rim and finally broke it loose. Finally. The gluing took only a minute or two and everything was set.
We took a brief side trip to Victor Tut's Emerald Paradise while waiting for the glue to cure. When we returned and tested, everything worked as expected. We said our goodbyes and shared our hugs and promised to return next year.
- dan