The Mexico Diaries: Plumbers arrive

A fish out of water on the Bucerias beach. Photo by David Lansing.

I had so many different workers at my house today that it looked like a construction site. First there was the electrician sent by Señor Rivera. He examined the utility panel in the garage and came back up to my house holding a two-inch piece of copper pipe in front of his face. “Mira,” he said, holding the piece of pipe out to me. I looked. “This is the problem,” he said. Someone (no doubt the air-conditioner repairman) had replaced the breaker in the utility box, which kept going off because there was a problem with the compressor, with a piece of copper pipe. And so much electricity had surged through the circuit that it had melted the heavy wires in the utility panel. Everything would have to be replaced. But before it could be replaced, the Comisión Federal de Electricidad, CFE, would have to be notified and they’d have to examine the utility panel as well. I asked the electrician if he couldn’t just repair the panel now and have CFE come out later. No, he said. This is not the way it was done. First CFE must come out and see things for themselves. So he would call them.

An hour later, three or four electricians from CFE were probing my utility panel. The leader of the group, after much examination, came to my door to tell me that someone had replaced the breaker with a two-inch piece of copper pipe. That is why your electricity went out, he told me. Now the whole thing would need to be replaced.

The electrician Señor Rivera had sent out was standing next to the electrician from CFE nodding. “See, I told you,” he said. And he had. Hours ago. And yet I was still no closer to getting my electricity.

Meanwhile, Bulmaro had also showed up. As well as the plumber sent by Señor Rivera. They were both poking around at the pipes and hoses beneath by sink. “You have a leak in your pipes,” said the plumber, pointing at the puddle of water under my sink. I told him I thought that was correct and asked him if he knew where it was coming from.

“This is difficult to say,” he told me. “It could be one pipe or it could be another.”

While he and Bulmaro were poking at my pipes, Miss Vicky’s plumber appeared. There was some discussion as to who was going to fix my leak, Bulmaro and Señor Rivera’s plumber or Miss Vicky’s plumber. After some heated words and discussions about family history and the like, it was decided that Miss Vicky’s plumber would fix the leak. And connect a new line from the water purifier to the ice maker on the back of my refrigerator. Which wasn’t working at the moment because I had no electricity.

Bulmaro and the plumber left. Miss Vicky’s plumber carefully looked things over and then asked for a pencil and a piece of paper. He wrote down a list of parts he would need to do his work and told me that it would cost about 1,800 pesos. Would I like him to get the parts? I told him I would. Bueno, he said. He would go to the plumbing store (which, fortunately, was not in Guadalajara) and when he knew exactly how much the parts would cost, he would call me for my approval to purchase them. But, I said, I have just given you the approval to buy the parts. No, he said, you gave me the approval to order the parts. But then you must give me the approval to pay for them. That is the proper way it should be done.

So Miss Vicky’s plumber just left. And now I am waiting for him to call me from the plumbing supply store to tell me how much a certain washer and a piece of flexible pipe will cost so that he can then purchase them. Because that’s the way it is done in Mexico.