Chile Forum

we achieved an important milestone yesterday....the installation of a new califont. the old one was hard to light, and on cold, rainy mornings it sometimes wouldn't start at all, so we would sometimes spend several minutes outside in a cold rain tryng to get hot water in the house....and we would finally give up and using the stove or the hervidor to make hot water so that we could clean up.

but those days are gone....now we have a shiny new Junkers califont with an automatic ignition system, so all we have to do is turn on the hot water valve and PRESTO we have hot water....same as in the US.

along the way, i learned a lot about califonts....the come in different sizes...7 liters, 10 liters, and 14 liters generally, which i assume is a reference to the amount of water the califont can heat up per second. i also learned that most of the califonts for sale at sodimac are for liquid gas, not natural gas, and the two systems are not compatible. as luck would have it...the ONLY model that sodimac carries for natural gas (metrogas) is also the most expensive one....200.000 pesos.

we hired a plumber who is a friend of the maestro who is doing most of the work, and he installed the califont on sunday, which included running a vent pipe through the roof of the new carport. he also moved the pipes for the washing machine and put in faucets for a utility sink and moved the electrical line for the washing machine....all for 45.000 pesos.....which is a higher hourly rate than the maestro has been charging us.....but the work is more technical, plus it was sunday and we are pushing to get the work finished....so we decided to just do it.

the patio tile should be finished within the next three or four days, then we can start on the bathroom.....

cali_chile48 wrote:the come in different sizes...7 liters, 10 liters, and 14 liters generally, which i assume is a reference to the amount of water the califont can heat up per second...

I am going to guess that it is litres per minute... not second. But from your pictures it looks like you found a good maestro... make sure you keep his contact information so you know where to find him should you need more work done.

oh...yeah...huh....14 liters per second would be a whole lotta hot water.....

we finally finished the patio floor....i haven't run the final numbers yet on how much it cost, but it is in the general neighborhood of 850.000 pesos.....330.000 for the labor, 340.000 for the tiles, a few bricks, a new door and lock, a new window, lots of tile adhesive (bekron) and grout.

we also installed a new califont and ran new copper pipes for the washing machine and utility sink, which cost another 250.000.

the maestro's work, overall, was quite good, but i can't give him a 7...there were a few problems along the way. the plumber he recommended was a bit sloppy, there is a section of the patio that doesn't drain well, there was an overrun on the cost of materials and the amount of time it took to finish the job, and...as often happens when people work together for a bit too long, there were some testy attitudes towards the end. we were all tired and just wanted the job to be finished.

i was tired of living with the dust and the noise and there's a rather high level of drama in the house due to health issues and personal conflicts amongst the females. the maestro was annoyed because his son didn't show up on time to help very much and he didn't like the work his plumber friend did. and of course...it was hot...again....still.

in the end, however, we are happy with the result....a beautiful, practical addition to the home that should last for many years.

see pics in photo gallery.

time to go to the feria....we need food in the house.

cali_chile48,

Thanks for sharing this story... and thanks to everyone else that kind of filled in the blanks in regards to how to deal with Chilean contractors and laborers... good for those of us that are still green!

John

we stripped down the bathroom yesterday....removed the toilet and the sink and all the fixtures...three of the walls are concrete and did not present a problem....but the fourth wall...omg...what crappy work we uncovered.....truly "third world" construction....a wall framed with 1x2, covered with a very thin wall board (3.5 mm internit) covered by a vinyl wall paper, then painted. what a mess. we decided to re-frame the whole wall....but the other side of the wall is the teenage girls bedroom with all her pictures and idols....i was willing to tear out the whole thing and re-frame with 2x3 or 2x4, but the maestro convinced me that 2x2 was sufficient and would not require messing with the kid's room very much.

the 2x2 is roughcut and fairly chunky...it's a true 2x2....not a 1.5x1.5 like in the US. we managed to find a few straight ones at sodimac and built a new wall, stronger, with the added benefit of now being able to run the electrical wiring inside the wall instead of in a channel outside the wall. we will be using a thicker wallboard, too...7 mm....so the wall will be much thicker and stronger than it was.

then the real fun began....chipping out the tile and the tile adhesive, down to the concrete floor. the good thing is...bathrooms are small and there isn't a lot of floor tile to chip out...less than 2 square meters. we now have a pile of rubble in front of the house, waiting for the escombros to pass by again.

we are going to install new faucets for the sink and the shower, and the walls will be thicker once we get the tile installed, so all of the pipes coming out of the wall need to be extended by about 3 cm, and then we will build the shower stall out of bricks. the shower stall will be like a mini-bathtub...about 140 cm long, about 70 cm wide and about 30 cm high. if we get all of the done today, we can start laying the floor tile tomorrow.

i bought the tile last week and it is sitting here in the living room. the toilet and the sink are grey....and the girls wanted a blue theme to the new bathroom. i found some very nice mexican tiles...cordillera brand...a smoky navy blue for the floor, a wispy sky blue for the walls with a band of tile with a seashell theme...all blue and grey and white... that will go around the room about shoulder high. we also found a shower curtain in the same colors with dolphins on it....it should be cute when it's finished....granny and the kid should be happy with their new bathroom in about five days.

the cost of the tile???? 2 square meters for the floor, 13 square meters for the walls, delivered for 83.000 pesos. the decorative tiles (fletches) were about 27.000 pesos for 7 meters. the maestro is charging 220.000 for the job....including reframing the wall, running the new wiring, extending the pipes, tearing out the old floor tile and shower stall, rebuilding the shower stall and installing the new tile. there are lots of other expenses....new faucets, sand, cement, grout, conduit, outlets, switches, curtains...and a new aluminum window....the whole job will probably cost just over 400.000 pesos.

based on my US wages.....that's about three days pay. not bad. based on my chilean wages it's a frickin fortune. well out of reach. i'm glad i saved my US wages, otherwise i'd be stuck living in conditions well below what i consider acceptable. i'm not that picky, i can tolerate a lot of "sub-standard" conditions, i don't care about being fashionable....but....i do have my limits, especially in the realm of bathroom/sanitation facilities. mismatched tiles are OK....but toilets that leak and moldy shower stalls and thin walls with exposed wires....i can't accept it. things are changing here in puente....

cali_chile48 wrote:we managed to find a few straight ones at sodimac

LOL, yes that's always fun.

My 2x2s from Sodimac seemed just slightly thinner than 2", but I haven't seen them in the US.

James.

Cali, any updated pics on the progress?

yeah...i got pics....more than the forum can hold...i'll post a few al tiro....and when i have the all the receipts tallied up, i'll post the results....