DIY: Etseri, Svaneti
It has occurred to me that, living in a rural setting, one has certain possibilities which do not feature in cities.
Did you know... that I can go to where my house's water pipe joins the main village pipe, 150 m away above the house, and disconnect it for maintenance? That if I need to, I can add salt (to try to thaw it out if necessary), or anything else I feel like adding, good or bad? Not only to my pipe, but to anyone's, if I know whose is whose? Or that if someone disconnects my pipe in winter, the whole line to my house will freeze- a calamity? What dastardly sabotage!
If I wanted to know if shenanigans were being perpetrated (as has been rumored: "People are jealous..."), I could hook up a small, unobtrusive, battery powered, outdoor-rated, day-night, motion-sensing spy-cam, to see if anyone was playing with the water system. It would show me who was doing what up there, maybe even alert me in real-time.
Why is this a big deal? Because consistent running water in this place, frozen half the year, is not easy to achieve. Ironic, given that we usually have vastly more snow than we could ever cope with, sort of the meteorological equivalent of a Georgian supra, or feast. Every winter since we moved here our water in its underground pipe has, indeed, frozen (not ever to my knowledge, I rush to add, by the aforementioned sabotage), starting right at the house and working its way backward; necessitating the laying of a new, temporary, overland winter pipe, which at least has the advantage of being accessible for maintenance during those long cold months. These pipes, by the way, are black plastic, which means that 1) they don't burst when they freeze, most mercifully, and 2) they can be thawed out in direct sunlight, warming up quickly. Every night I disconnect this pipe from the house entirely, let it run downhill at full pressure, and every morning reconnect it.
I tell myself and my longsuffering wife that THIS year it will be different. Tweak things, try things, hope for the best. But so far the best remains a dream. In December, after the pipe-freeze came early, I admitted failure and suggested, seriously, upping and moving to one of our two possible other locations for the whole winter: one near (Tbilisi), one far (Canada). I just couldn't face the pipe-laying expedition yet again. She gave me the courage to face things, bless her, and we did what we always do: we coped.
I also promised her that I would deal with the likely source problem this summer, no matter what it took. (Assuming that the local government doesn't overhaul the whole system, which I need to know in advance, so as not to waste my time.) This seems to require re-laying an entirely new pipe in the ground, deeper than the possible frost-line, and also insulated with sections of slip-on foam sleeve which didn't seem to be available when I laid that first pipe. I must somehow also address why the freeze always starts at the house. I know that it's the corner which gets the least sunlight, and thus natural heat, year round; but the bathroom heater's on 24/7 at that location, all winter long!
You see, that original pipe-laying operation was carried out when I first arrived here, some three weeks before my wife joined me. Some kindly neighbors helped me, with much of the digging using a pair of oxen and a plough; the rest I did myself, in the bovine-inaccessible areas, by hand, with pick and shovel. THIS time, this spring, I'll pay someone else much better than me to do this properly. We have to get it right, no matter what. This major source of winter struggles has to be eliminated once and for all. It CANNOT go on!
Tony Hanmer has lived in Georgia since 1999, in Svaneti since 2007, and been a weekly writer for GT since early 2011. He runs the “Svaneti Renaissance” Facebook group, now with over 1350 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/
He and his wife also run their own guest house in Etseri:
www.facebook.com/hanmer.house.svaneti
Tony Hanmer