For the last two years, until the autumn of 2016 the Dominican Republic has been a drought. Many homes and businesses were without city water for days, weeks and even months. Many of the rivers were almost dry. This created hardships for many locals who couldn’t afford to buy water from the water trucks. Many business owners and condo associations also were forced to purchase water. I didn’t want to have to rely on city water and definitely I don’t want to buy from the water trucks. I am lucky I have the space on my property to drill a water well. After a long talk with Roland Eberle owner of DomRep Transport we had the spot and the crew in place within a week,

We decided on a case well with a one horse pump, this would give us the volume of water we would need to service 10 unites, run a small laundry service, and fill the pool. I was happy with the choice we made I have plenty of water flowing into my cistern. The problem in had the water was very heavy with iron!! It was pink in color and and clogged any filter we installed. We knew this was normal in El Batey Sosua. I have to same issues in Southern New Jersey where I am from. So this didn’t faze me in the least. But what happened next created a large problem. We couldn’t get the iron completely out of the water . we tried everything we didn’t in the past. Nothing worked. I have a very good friend named Patrick Adams, who designs water filtration systems for Caribbean countries that filter 100.000 gallons of water per minute. yes I went to the ace card, thank God I did. After a long phone conversation and sending Patrick my water test, he filled in the missing information we needed. We had three issues to fight that all were iron based. The first is what we knew, iron particles in the water. the other two , were iron that was distilled in the water and a bacteria that lived off the iron. Filters alone would never fix this issue. What we needed was system that would filter the iron, then we had to add oxygen to water as it was being pumped into the cistern and chlorine at the same time. What this does it make the distilled iron separate from the water so it can be chlorinated and fall to the bottom of the tank to be removed at a later date. The chlorine also kills the any bacteria in the water. It wasn’t a simple system, it needs the right level of chemicals and timing and upkeep. But I can say, I am one of the few places in Sosua that have their own filtered water supply. The water in Casa De Compai is potable.

I would like to publicly say thank you very much to my good friend Patrick Adams for all of his help he has giving me. What I wrote about in the blog doesn’t even scratch the surface of the amount of help. He is part of the Casa De Compai family.

The new water filter system being installed.