#158 – The Expat Files: Water Damage, Plumbing Woes, and Living in Latin America

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, if you stick around a while, you'll find out. So let's get started. If you remember, I mentioned that I was doing a very special teleconference on the morning of June 2nd. So any of you who want to get in on that teleconference call, just go to expatwisdom.com and sign up for my report on those 17 undiscovered Latin American places that are tops on my list.

[00:48] And you'll get all the teleconference information sent to you by email. And remember, there's only so many phone and Skype lines that can be connected at a teleconference. So sign up as soon as you can to make sure you can get in on the call. And here's something really practical I'd like to mention. This is for anyone living or renting in a condo apartment or a house or even a property that they purchased. Now, I can't tell you how many times I've heard expats talk about the water damage that they often have in their houses and apartments. And I'm not just talking about water that seeps through structural defects, the kind of water that often gushes through those defects in the rainy season. That's another subject altogether that we'll talk about later, like the rain that comes through your walls, your windows, or your roof, even when you think your building is nicely sealed up. Nearly all those problems are due to half-assed third world construction techniques.

[01:35] That's why you have to keep a good eye on anyone who's building your house and you have to hold those contractors and builders to first world standards. And you know that's not going to happen when you buy a pre-existing structure, because it's already done. And all those deficient building techniques are invisible to the casual observer. What they don't want you to see is always nicely plastered, cemented over, and painted. And believe me, no one can plaster as nice and as fine as a Latin American. They're the best and the cheapest in the world. And it's a lost art where we come from. Which is why for the first six months or a year or so, after you buy a new structure down here that's already built, those water and moisture problems that weren't there in the dry season all of a sudden rear their ugly heads. And I tell you, there's probably not a single house or apartment in Latin America that's over three or four years old that you can't walk around and in about five minutes find

[02:24] some kind of water damage, whether it's mildew, actual water stains on ceilings and walls and or ugly stretches of paint or plaster damage. All specifically caused by inattention to detail by the architect and contractor. And you know, Latins don't even have excuses for it, they just tolerate it. And when the dry season comes, which lasts about half of the year, it's out of sight and out of mind because during the dry season there's not long penetrating rains. And that's why the painting companies down here do such big business. Because you see, every time the dry season comes around, people with a little extra culture and a little extra money will set their gardener to work painting over all those water damage spots that popped up during the last rainy season. And they rarely get down to fixing the root of the problem unless it's a real gusher. And even then almost everything's a band-aid approach.

[03:11] And some homeowners would just repeat that process ad infinitum since paint is so very cheap down here and a gardener gets 250 to 300 bucks a month. And those gardeners on dry season paint patrol, you only see that happen with the upper middle classes and the rich. And even then, not too often at that. But when you talk strictly about the middle classes and lower, a couple of 10 or 15 dollar gallons of paint is a pretty hefty expense for a guy making 250 to 300 bucks a month. So the middle and lower classes just give up on their house or apartment's water damage altogether and end up looking the other way and ignoring those big patches of mold and plaster deterioration and wood rot. And that's one bad Latin American tradition that happens with every house. Every house that is, that's not built, designed or supervised closely by a gringo or a European.

[03:59] And I'll talk about that a lot more in a future show, so stay tuned. And by the way, when I ask architects and builders and homeowners about those water problems and why they just can't fix them permanently, they forever blame it on the rainy season, not their construction techniques. Even though you and I know if we went to Florida or Louisiana or Hawaii or the Mediterranean, anywhere where first world construction techniques are used in places that have a heavy rainy season, well you and I know it's a very rare first world house that has consistent water damage year after year. In the first world, we have inspectors and contractors that make sure we do it right. Which is why first world houses, new houses, often carry a 5 or even 10 year performance guarantee against that kind of thing. And by the way, that's why in the first world, insurance companies specifically cover water

[04:47] damage like that in their policies. And that's why so few first world people make claims on their policy against water damage. Unless of course they're actually in a floodplain or they've been hit by a hurricane or a tornado. And then of course all bets are off. And the thing is, down here, almost no one carries homeowners insurance anyway. Rich or poor, and it's been estimated that less than 2% of the population of Latin America carries that kind of insurance. And personally, in a straw poll that I've taken, I think it's less than 1% myself. Anyway, even if you do get an insurance policy down here, a homeowners insurance, which basically I don't recommend anyway and I'll get into that in another program. But even if you do get a policy and there's some kind of water damage coverage, you'll find a ton of exclusions and that the deductibles are so high, you'll almost never be able

[05:35] to collect and I've never known anyone who has. Because remember, almost all the middle and upper class houses throughout Latin America are made with block and concrete and rebar and tile these days. With the occasional nice hardwood trim that's so beautiful and cheap down here. Anyway, when your house is made of concrete and block, if you have water damage, after it's all dried out, it's an ugly side alright, but it's not usually structurally damaged. Generally, concrete and block don't get permanently ruined unless they've been assaulted year after year with constant water saturation and penetration and insurance companies will never pay for long term damage like that because they figure it's the homeowner's responsibility to do a certain amount of required repair and maintenance on any building structure and not just let the thing deteriorate year after year and go to seed.

[06:23] But down here in Latin America, that's just the way homeowners treat, or I should say mistreat their houses. But right now I want to talk about the water damage that's a direct effect of the way contractors install plumbing tubes and fixtures in houses and apartments. A large percentage of plumbing installations are very poorly done, even in the houses of the very wealthy. Their plumbing fixtures like toilets, showers, sinks, bathtubs, as well as their appliances that use water like washing machines and such, often are haphazardly installed with the wrong size pipe, flimsily mounted or at the wrong height to the floor, and a good majority of even brand new installations would never pass code in the first world. But since there are virtually no building inspections down here, and when you turn on the water or flush the toilet or flick on the shower, water actually pours out and things

[07:11] seem to work, then even if the installation's a bit ugly and kind of hacked together, people almost never complain because hell, the toilet flushes and the sink works, right? They perform their basic functions. Now to give you an example of just how substandard some of these plumbing installations are. A while back when I was building a house, one day the plumber flagged me down and said hey, you told me to let you know when I installed the first toilet so you could take a look at it. I just installed the first one and you shouldn't use it for a couple days because the silicone has to cure. And then you know I thought, in the United States when you build a house, they bolt the toilet to the floor with two gigantic bolts down at the base, and you could use the thing right away, so you didn't have to wait for the silicone caulk at the base and the floor to cure because that's just to make it look nice, for appearances sake. You just don't want to touch that silicone bead for a while around the base and ruin

[08:00] the nice smooth appearance of it. To tell you the truth, I was a bit confused. Immediately I went over and had a look for myself. And the first thing I noticed that it wasn't centered in its space. It was shifted too close to one of the walls and didn't look symmetrical at all. So I said to the guy, wait a minute, wait a minute, you gotta take this thing up. You have to center it in the room and move it over about three inches, about seven or eight centimeters. And he said, okay, but I'm gonna have to redo the silicone around the border and that's pretty messy. I said, do it. And I stood there and looked as he turned off the water and disconnected the water line, pulled the toilet right off the floor with his bare hands and started wiping off the clear silicone that was around the perimeter. And he was right, it was messy. But lo and behold, I looked at it and saw there was no bolts at all holding that toilet to the floor. Normally, you have a little ring in the floor, a plastic ring and two bolts stick out of

[08:50] it. You drop the toilet on, you screw them down and put two little plastic caps, one on each bolt, that match the color of the toilet. You've seen those on the base of the toilet. Two little plastic bubbles, about as big as a half a ping pong ball. Well, those things are there cosmetically to cover up the bolts so you don't see them. Anyway, this toilet was not fastened down with bolts at all. It was glued to the floor with just silicone caulk, which is why he said no one should sit on it till the next day. So I said, man, where are the bolts? And then he said I could go get some in the city at the big hardware store. But you know, it's gonna cost about $4 for each toilet. And only a few of the big hardware stores carry them. Then I said, by all means, $4 a toilet, go get them. All the while I was thinking, why didn't he bolt it down in the first place? That's standard procedure. Then I found out after I quizzed him a little more that that's not standard procedure in

[09:39] Latin America. I asked him, and by the way, why don't the local hardware stores have them? I mean, that's a normal plumbing supply item. And then he said, well, no one really uses them that much because silicone caulk really does the trick. And then I said, well, silicone hasn't been around forever, what did you use before that like 20 years ago? And he said, well, we used to use mortar and cement like you use when you mortar bricks together. And then I asked him, what if you have trouble with the toilet then, if you have to take it off and run a snake down the drain or something? Then he said, in that case, well, you'd buy another toilet because you can't get the toilet off the floor unless you break it because it's porcelain, you know. I said, yeah, I know. And then he said, since we have silicone caulk these days and glue it down to the floor with that, we just have to rock the toilet back and forth and back and forth. And that breaks the seal.

[10:25] And that's how we can get it off if we need to without breaking the porcelain base. And all the while I'm rolling my eyes knowing that a toilet set up like that up in the first world would never pass inspection. A first world plumber would lose his license if he set up a toilet like that. And then the plumber on his way out the door turned back to me and said, then I suppose you want one of those wax toilet gaskets then too. Those cost about $2 each. So I'll need the money. And I said, what? You mean you don't use toilet gasket seals here? Thinking that's another big cold violation that would never pass. And for those of you who don't know, when you set a toilet on a floor, any floor, there's a drain hole the toilet sits right on top of and that drain hole connects to the sewer system, right? Now that hole has to be sealed very tightly to the toilet or sewer gases will escape into

[11:12] the bathroom giving a permanent stinky smell, a sewer smell. Well, let me tell you that about one in five bathrooms in private homes, and it's even worse in public places, have that stinky sewer smell when you walk into a bathroom. That's because the drain pipe under the toilet is not sealed with one of those $2 wax gasket seals that you can buy in any hardware store up north. But down here, they're kind of hard to find except in first world franchise hardware stores like Ace Hardware. And why don't people use them? That's because they cut corners everywhere they can. And that's just one of those little hidden corners that they'll cut that you'll never know about until your bathroom starts stinking like sewer gas someday. So here the plumber is saving six bucks on every toilet installation by not using special toilet bolts and the ring that goes with them attached to the floor and omitting the wax

[12:00] toilet ring seal that's a solid requirement when you install any toilet in the first world. Now you might have seen those little $2 toilet seal rings I'm talking about. They look just like a ring in a ring toss game, though they're made out of a kind of pure soft flexible wax that you can bend with your bare hands and shaped like sculptors putty, which makes a very good airtight seal when it's placed on the floor in between the toilet and the drain pipe. But down here in Latin America, wherever they can, they save that six bucks. And instead of mounting the toilet the prescribed way, the right way, they expect a bead of silicone caulk around the base will do all three things. Glue the toilet to the floor instead of using $4 worth of bolts. Seal off the drain below so the sewer gases don't escape into the room. And thirdly, to make that nice finished look at the bottom of your toilet.

[12:45] And that, by the way, is the only legitimate reason to use the caulk to make a nice finished trimmed look at the bottom of your toilet. So anyway, after a while, using that technique, using the caulk only, eventually after enough years go by and enough people have accommodated themselves on that toilet, that little caulk bead fails, the toilet gets a little bit loose and the sewer gases from below waved through that bathroom whenever conditions are ripe. Just know for a fact that if you buy a ready made house, there have been some shortcuts taken that are hidden to the naked eye. Like that toilet thing I just told you about. Which will I guarantee come back to haunt you. Now in Latin America, like I said, one out of four or maybe five houses have that stinky sewer smell in their bathrooms. It's such a common smell to run into down here that the locals are just immune to it.

[13:32] But to first world people like us, it's an olfactory insult. And nobody, I mean nobody, ever seems to mention it. I mean it's like if you run into a parish priest and he's got a big booger hanging off his nose. Just mentioning it would be embarrassing to both of you so you just let it slide, right? Well maybe slide isn't the right word, anyway you get the point. I mean down here in Latin America it's kind of a tradition to compliment someone who's invited you over to their house, you know, tell them how good the dinner was, how nice their living room is set up, what an excellent garden they have or whatever. And because they are such a polite people, and like I said before, because of that gringo advantage they really really value the friendships and opinions of gringos and first world expats. Because of that fact, if you want to crush a Latin person to the core, especially the lady of the house, as you're leaving the house and making your goodbyes, tell her how good

[14:20] the food was and then tell her how disgusting and stinky her bathroom is. It's a hypothetical but you get the idea. And I tell you, 95% of all the stinky sewer smells are all about the contractors cutting corners like in the case of the toilet. And they cut corners on the carpentry, with the electrical stuff, on the concrete, you name it. These guys are the masters at skimping. And silicone caulk, well it's the Latin version of duct tape, though duct tape itself is quite the rage down here too. And to give you just one more example of this, I've talked to so many people who've built houses who've had skylights installed, because obviously you get so much sun down here it's a great thing so you don't have to use electric lights all the time, right? It's a very smart move, at least in theory. But you see down here in Latin America because they skimp on the thickness and the material

[15:05] in the skylights themselves, and often they just screw up on the measurements so from the get go they just don't fit quite right. And they even skimp on the number of fasteners when they screw the things down, so after two or three years. It seems like every house that's ever used a skylight, and they call them domos or domes down here, anyway they end up with a perpetual leak in the rainy season. And you see that in restaurants all over Latin America too. During the rainy season, when you're sitting at a table in a restaurant, don't be surprised if you see a bowl or a bucket or two, placed strategically on the floor to catch the water drops, and sometimes they're not drips, but gushers. And then of course the dry season comes and the drips go away for six months and it's out of sight and out of mind. Or if it's a really bad or bothersome leak, you lay down some silicone caulk, on top another

[15:52] layer of silicone caulk, and then next year another and another, until the skylight repair job looks like a stalactite. Yet nobody seems to care or even notice, except us expats. Which is part of that gringo advantage, where we spot all those little defects, and when we end up opening a business, we do our damnedest to make sure that kind of stuff never happens in our establishment. Now expat Eddie has a story like this all his own. When he built his house in Salvador, he insisted that he wanted a central hot water heater, like everyone has up in the first world, you know, where you have hot water not only at the showers and the bathtubs, but you have hot water at all the sinks in the house too. And you can only have that when you have a hot water heater in a utility room somewhere that's piped to every one of your hot water faucets on your sinks and bathrooms and showers.

[16:39] The way plumbers routinely pipe things in the states. But you see down here in Latin America, about 95% of all residential housing and apartments do not have a central hot water heater. They just have a hot water point of use unit it's called at the shower head. It's a little plastic unit about as big as a softball that's part of the shower head itself that electrically heats the water with a heating element inside as soon as you turn the water on. And in a lot of these installations, the wires are hanging out everywhere. And is it dangerous sitting in the shower with all that water and electrical wires hanging every which way and sometimes even getting wet? Well it sure looks positively dangerous. And I for one have had my share of electric shocks when I've used this system myself. I'd never have one of those in one of my houses of course, but they're in virtually

[17:24] all residential homes in a lot of medium scale hotels. And believe me, they're scary things to look at. Though surprisingly, with such a close proximity of electricity and water, you'd think there'd be a steady stream of electrocutions and deaths with people who have these things. Because a lot of the guys who install these things aren't electricians at all, they're just do it yourself neighborhood handyman types. Who do things by the seat of their pants. But surprisingly, I've never once read in any Latin American paper of anyone ever being electrocuted that way. In the first world, we've heard it a thousand times about someone being electrocuted in the bathtub with a hair dryer or an electric razor or the usual suspect of radio falling in. There's been at least a hundred Hollywood movies where someone's met his end that way. When you're in the bathtub, you are grounded. You're terrifically grounded. But when you're in the shower, you're not at a solid ground connection.

[18:11] Especially if you're standing on a rubber or a vinyl mat and the water and vapor mist coming out of the shower head is mixed with air, which is a terrific insulator. So it's very rare for the electricity to have a direct path through your body, even if your electric hot water heater is badly wired. Which is why when you do get the occasional shock from one of those units, and believe me, I've had plenty of them like I said. And when that happens, you're really looking to get out of that shower stall in a hurry, believe me. Man, I just hate those things. And you know, since about 95% of Latin Americans don't have bathtubs, just showers, that my friends is why you rarely ever read of electrocution in a bathroom. Though I guarantee ya. In the future, as bathtub purchases pick up, so will electrocutions. Though these days with all the plastic PVC plumbing everywhere and plastic and fiberglass

[18:58] bathtubs, there'll be fewer electrocution deaths than you might imagine. And why, you might ask, don't 95% of Latin Americans have bathtubs? The obvious reason would be that they're expensive and you have to have a bigger, wider bathroom to install the thing, extra space that most Latin American humble families just don't have. And don't think that they don't all want a bathtub, they sure do, but the real reason is this. About 98% or more do not have central hot water heating. They just have cold water piped to all their sinks and bathrooms. And you know what, no one likes to take a cold bath. And a bathtub takes a lot of water. A lot of hot water. And again, over 50% of the population of Latin America do not even have water 24 hours a day. It's rationed and cut off about 8 or 12 hours a day in most countries in Latin America. Because the vast majority of people are on municipal water supplies and municipal water

[19:47] companies are corrupt, the system is badly designed, the pipes are old and leaky, and the municipal plants themselves are vastly underrated and under designed for the size of the population that they're supposed to serve. And that's why all expats and expat wannabes are advised to rent or buy a house or move into a colony that has its own water supply or well, independent from the local municipal water company. I rate that as a must for living down here in Latin America. And by the way, if you're in a big city, sometimes you're stuck with municipal water. Suppose you bought an old colonial building you want to restore, if it's going to be a residence or a house, many times you're allowed to dig your own well too. Just look in the yellow pages or on the internet for someone in the area who digs posos, p-o-z-o, which means well. And in the other case, if you're buying or restoring a building for simply business purposes

[20:37] where you're stuck connected to the municipal water supply, which you usually are in older parts of any big Latin American city, well in that case, you don't really have to dig well because you're not going to live there and you're not going to need a lot of water, unless of course your business is water intensive, like a manufacturing plant that might use a lot of water by design. Well, in the case of an office space or a regular retail business, just make sure you buy an oversized cistern for the roof. That way, when the water is on that eight or ten hours a day, you can fill that cistern to the brim and always have enough water for the sinks and the toilets and that basic stuff. And for that matter, you can do what a lot of people in the boonies do, collect the rainwater off your roof, because when it rains, man, it pours and that's no joke, especially in the rainy season. If you're from up north and have never been down in the tropics and you think you've

[21:24] seen some bad storms up in Cleveland, man, I'm telling you, you ain't seen nothing yet. Anyway, it doesn't take but a few hundred dollars to rework your downspouts and gutters to collect as much rainwater as you can possibly handle. And why more people in the city don't do that? I don't know. It's not that they're lazy, they just don't have a creative bone in their body. Because here they are suffering with water only eight or ten hours a day and paying big money for it too. Big money by Latin standards anyway. Not to mention you'd never really want to drink this stuff because it's so murky. The point is I just don't get it. The average people down here on municipal water complain about it all the time, yet if they use their brains they could be collecting that water every time it rains and have no shortage of water at all. Not to mention the water would be much purer than any of the stuff that comes out of the tap. And it's free.

[22:10] And you see, the families out in the boonies have it right, the farmers and stuff. The ones that aren't close to a well or a river collect rainwater all the time. You notice a lot of 55-gallon drums and barrels when you're way out in the compo. When speaking of toilets, that's how I started to show out anyway. And I know it's not a subject very near and dear to anyone's hearts, but you gotta have them right? Well, here's something else about toilets in Latin America, as if you didn't hear enough already. You see, if you look at a toilet, even a brand new one, if you look at their brand names, you'll notice that about 90% of the toilets, and sinks for that matter, are some off-label funky brand that you've never heard of before. You'll see that they're usually made in Brazil or Mexico or Argentina or Costa Rica or Colombia, and only very, very rarely will you actually see a toilet or a sink that's made in the

[22:55] U.S. Though you will see familiar U.S. brand names, like American Standard and Moen Faucets, for example. But they're not coming down from the United States, they have manufacturing plants down here. And not many people have American brand names like that. Even if they're coming, let's say, from a Mexican or a Colombian manufacturing plant. Because you see American and First World brand names, even if they're made down here, are more expensive than those off brands from Brazil or Costa Rica or Colombia that I've been talking about. But if you go into any of the higher level restaurants or hotels or even expensive homes, often you'll find First World brand names like American Standard and even Kohler. Kohler has distributors down here too, so you can get a Kohler sink if you want. All the major First World brands are down here now. They have distributorships, even though they might not be made in the States anymore, and

[23:42] they probably aren't. So you can have American First World style plumbing fixtures if you want them. And they are about 20-50% more expensive than the local brands. But in that case, you do get what you pay for, and I'll tell you why. It's a common disturbing theme amongst expats. That when we come home from a short vacation, often we've got some standing water sitting in our kitchen or our living room. And luckily, most of us have ceramic tile floors, which are also dirt cheap down here. So although a minor flood might be a headache, there's usually no real damage done. Unless you have carpets or rugs, which I never recommend down in Latin America, because down here we've got the tropics, the land of the bugs and insects. And there's pretty much no way of stopping insects and bugs if they want to set up housekeeping in or under your rugs. It's just impossible to stop that from happening.

[24:28] In fact, expat Eddie, who has a few shag throw rugs, sentimental things left over from his white trash disco days, well he told me that his cleaning lady killed a couple of scorpions that had set up camp under one of his more gaudy ones, and that he had to throw the thing away because the scorpions laid eggs. Yuck. That's a revolting development now, isn't it? But expat Eddie clings on to that old nostalgic stuff, like his mummy, werewolf and Frankenstein models from the 60s, and his Beatles bubblegum cards. And that one remaining shag carpet, with a million and one whiskey stains and cigarette burns in it. Ah, that's why the bugs haven't invaded that one yet. Anyway, the point is you should forget about having carpets down here. So like I said, every one of us expats has experienced a small flood in our houses when we come back from a vacation. And that my friends is going to happen to you too, if you don't have an American brand

[25:16] name toilet. Because you see, the shut off mechanism in American toilets, you know the float system, is a pretty good quality item and lasts a long long time. However, in those off brand toilets, like 95% of the toilets down here, that float mechanism is nothing more than a cheap plastic piece of junk. So what do you do then? Well you got two choices. You go to a big hardware store that carries some first world products, like Ace Hardware or Walmart, and you buy one of those high end toilet float mechanisms for each toilet. Pick one that's got a 5 or 10 or lifetime guarantee. And those will set you back about 10 or 15 bucks each. And then either you or a plumber set aside a couple of hours one day and change all your toilets over with the new mechanisms. Then you can be sure that your toilets won't leak when you're on vacation. And your second option of course is before you go on vacation, shut off the water supply

[26:03] valve to your house. Then you're absolutely sure nothing's going to leak. And I suggest you do this anyway if you're leaving for more than a couple of days. Because you see, in Latin America, like in the first world, for water lines to toilets and sinks, they use those flexible supply hoses. Do you ever see those? They're either a braided metal or plastic hose that supply your toilet or sink through a shut off valve. Now the problem down here in Latin America is that when you go to the hardware store, you'll find the price and quality of these things varies all over the place. And what do you think 99% of the plumbers do down here? They buy not the best, but the cheapest ones. And if it's not a metal braided one, just a plastic braided one, eventually after a couple of years, those things harden up, crack and then they blow. But you can't go around the house changing all of those things like you change the guts in your toilet. Well I guess you can, but I don't know anybody who does that, not even me.

[26:50] So you just wait for them to start leaking and you change them to the metal braided ones when you got a little puddle starting under your sink. But little puddles turn into big ones and you don't want to be on a month's vacation when that starts to happen. And my friend Expat Eddie learned that the hard way. His house has beautiful parquet hardwood teak flooring throughout the first floor. And last year when he came back from a two week vacation, he called me up and said Johnny with a few choice swear words thrown in. You're not going to believe this. My parquet floor in the living room is completely under water, it's turned black and it smells like my gym bag. I think I'm going to call NASA. And I said what, you're going to call NASA? Yeah, NASA. I think some kind of alien life form has taken over my living room. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America, coming to you each

[27:42] week from somewhere south of the border. And don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America, The Expat Files at gmail.com. Once again, The Expat Files at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos vemos.