Back to the Grind: Etseri

How would you like to return from fabled, fairy-tale-chimneyed Cappadocia to the severe mountains of Svaneti, dear reader? The aforementioned hot air balloon? Nice and quiet, peaceful. But also both expensive, starting at US$100/hour, and unpredictable for direction, dependent on the wind. Small or large plane? There’s nothing not going through either Ankara or Istanbul, far out of our way, and flights to Mestia itself can be so weather-capricious too, if there are any clouds en route! Train, as far as it’ll go? The high-speed network Turkey’s working on will eventually get that far east, but it’s not there yet, though the Kars-Akhalkalaki Tr-Ge rail link should be active by now for the first time in history.

We chose bus to Hopa, at the border, through the night but managed some sleep; and another bus from the other side to Batumi, where our car was waiting. A night with friends there, then home through Zugdidi, loading up with shopping for our village shop on the way.

And… soon after our return, it was time to focus our attention on the house’s ailing water system, while we have good summer weather. We need to overhaul the whole thing, after several painful years trying this and that to cope instead of flourishing. No more winter freeze, please!

I brought three highly recommended repairmen from near Zugdidi, and Lali and I discussed our list of needs with them. This was quite a complicated process. The water reaches the house, even upstairs, by its own pressure from about 160 meters uphill. BUT it freezes at the house first, sometimes even if we leave a tap running full bore through the winter night, as people here do! Then the freeze backs up to the starting point, and the pipe stays frozen from some time in December or January until… April.

We’d prefer not to rely on electricity as it’s both variable in voltage, and unreliable for being there at all, more so in the winter when water would need it most. But… we can buy a voltage regulator for water pumps, and we do have a petrol-powered generator, seldom used but certainly available, for when the electricity’s gone altogether.

The pipes we turn to next. These will be insulated ones, joined together in 4m lengths, for the whole length of the pipe run if necessary. Dug deeper into the ground, below the actual, real, existing frost line, a concept little heard of in warmer climes such as Samegrelo. These pipes will be insulated with their own foam sleeves, further wrapped with fiberglass “wool” to keep them snug near the problem area, the house. That 1000 liter plastic tank I have? Time to press it back into service as well! We had just had the garage floor finished with truckloads of rock, gravel, and a top layer of cement, so the tank can go nicely in there, along with a separate pump for good pressure on each floor.

It turned into an engineering feat, all by hand. Bypasses, water inside and out, upstairs and down, thinking of every possible contingency and our bitter experiences in dealing with them or not being able to. So much hand-heat-welding of plastic pipes into… more than three dimensions, or do my eyes deceive me? Digging, talking, re-iterating, rethinking.

They’re still working as I write, but their guarantee stands with what they do, so, come winter, we HOPE we won’t have to call them in disappointment and rage and desperation. The tank filled in a neat hour, so (quick calculation) that means 16.67 liters per minute of flow, without the pumps, an interesting fact to know. We expect everything will be fine, as it needs to be. There are five bathrooms and two kitchens in the guest house, after all…

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 nearly 1500 members, at www.facebook.com/groups/SvanetiRenaissance/

Tony Hanmer