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el blanco barba

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Everything posted by el blanco barba

  1. Familiar with Dengue. Was just hoping that the country hadn't gotten sucked into the Zika scam perpetrated by the pesticide manufacturers. As with most modern atrocities of public health, they use a public misinformation campaign to allow them to sell all sorts of inappropriate "economic poisons", especially outside of the U.S. and E.U. The recent news about vacationers to the Dominican Republic dying mysterious deaths is beginning to, not surprisingly, unfold, and it's looking more and more like the victims succumbed to pesticide poisoning. Things like organophosphates are horribly poisonous, and outlawed in many countries, but that doesn't stop Monsanto/Bayer, DuPont, et al, from aggressively marketing them everywhere else. The creation of false panics like the encephalitis being attributed to mosquitoes is one such obfuscation in the name of quarterly profits, and it's worth billions to them, so you know where we count in that math. Turns out the most likely cause of the health problems blamed on Zika is actually the chemicals, not the bugs. Of course that is not the case with Dengue, so thanks. So holding ponds will likely not be an issue as long as the water is say, kept circulating and populated with insect eating fish. Sounds perfect.
  2. Sorta good to hear. Unfortunately, if they've adopted anything resembling the irresponsible BS exercised in much of the U.S., waivers and inadequate facility capacity reviews often lead to systems being approved that are woefully inadequate and ultimately fail, sometimes right from the start. While it certainly is possible to build in a way that creates no additional waste or storm water loads for existing infrastructure, even if they did, that still leaves the issue of how to move those additional people in and about town, as well as supplying their new construct. Ultimately, is there actually a "need" for such a development? I mean are hotel rooms in the area that hard to come by? The hospitality industry on the whole has struggled, and a lot of their past profits were derived through real estate ownership and acquisitions, but generally an organization like Wyndham isn't in the habit of building new facilities in places where they will likely stay vacant. I'm a Luddite at heart, one who generally eschews change, particularly regarding development of sensitive areas, but if not them then who. Also, somebody sold them the land to start all of this, so it doesn't seem that they somehow used gov't influence the way they do it in the States, to simply steal private property through eminent domain. Guess I need to do some more reading...
  3. It would seem that my days of political activism would best be left at the border. Not suggesting it would necessarily make a dent, but perhaps appealing to the clients' shareholders? Beyond which, both Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE:WH) and Wyndham Worldwide Corp (NYSE:WYN) are headquartered in the U.S., and while that doesn't necessarily mean that that is their home country (Apple for instance maintains itself as an Irish corporation, while many others rely on tax & banking havens rooted in the old British empire), there are laws that supposedly have effect over U.S. businesses acting abroad. Many of them dal specifically with respecting local environmental & planning regulations while also making fraud and bribery illegal on some level. Not up on all of the legalese, but there might be some additional leverage to be had there. That or perhaps some sort of outreach campaign through social media to try and shame the company for being so nonchalant about literally crapping all over a body of water that is recognized as being internationally significant? Just a thought... All of course in conjunction with the already engaged/planned legal challenges. Lastly, if the politicos are that crooked and unresponsive, what are the chances of running someone in opposition who is more reasonable and perhaps willing to do the right thing? Mr. Smith goes to Chapala?
  4. Not being rhetorical, but how can anyone simply build a development near any body of water without having a means of dealing with the waste, generated by a facility that will likely end up housing over 200 residents plus support staff, to say nothing of the electricity and domestic water needs? This boggles the mind. It seems that they must have SOME sort of accommodations for these issues included somewhere in their development plan. So once plans for this sort of project are approved and given permits, does the local jurisdiction maintain any sort of record version on file for public review?
  5. I always enjoy alternative solutions, but having been involved in post quake clean-up, I'm phobic enough about those barrel vault ceilings resting on adobe brick walls. The idea of tens of thousands of gallons water with it would never let me sleep. lol
  6. Sounds great. I wasn't really interested in sinking a well, but good to know. Regarding the pool vs. pond scenario, are you aware of why they're seen or treated differently? Seems the lake itself would provide all of the habitat necessary to keep a healthy population of skeeters thriving. Certainly covered tanks or cisterns don't pose any issues (assuming that they're properly constructed), but how serious is the mosquito borne illness reality there?
  7. Sounds like a business opportunity for someone with a grout pump. Once had a realtor try to sell me a waterfront property that was half on shore and half over the water. The water had a bacteria with an affinity for wood pilings, and they had caused the far end of the three story building to settle over a foot relative to the front door on shore. Speaking of bowling, if you had let go of a bowling ball at the front door it would have easily crashed through the patio doors facing the water and kept on flying. None of the windows could close, but the realtor still had the nerve to blather on about what a great bargain was to be had and fast it was going to sell. We passed. lol Like politicians and preachers, some people can say almost anything with a straight face.
  8. Jreboll, a bit O.T., but I have several good friends here in the States who are originally from the Guadalajara area, and I am constantly shamed by the crap that they silently endure. Getting back to the O.P., interesting dynamic being described here. We had a vacation place at the beach here, where we had zero input on issues that effected our property rights, use and enjoyment, even though our taxes supported the local gov't and infrastructure. I'm wondering how being a permanent resident of Mexico, who is still a citizen of another country, would be much different?
  9. Was once involved in demolishing one of the oldest steel reinforced buildings on the eastern seaboard, and it was impressive. Even after over a hundred years down on the waterfront, it was still a bugger to take down. Implosion had been considered, but quickly dismissed because by the time there would be enough material removed to weaken the structure for a proper implosion, it would just fall down on its own. On a much smaller scale, where seismic base isolation may not be economically feasible, the continuous load path provided by a steel reinforced structure where the walls and roof are all integrated with a structural slab has proven extremely quake resistant, so that and the temperature buffering characteristics of the resultant thermal mass seem that they'd be well suited to the area. I don't require a big box, so mine can affordably be built to basically shake, rattle and roll as one contiguous element.
  10. Eh... it's only money, right? Besides, ya can't take it with you! (still a favorite play)
  11. Thanks. These guys appear to have a couple of plants in the area, so good to know.
  12. Yeah, brilliant me took 7 years of French. Later worked in Port Cartier, Quebec for a bit, but other than that, it has mostly proven a useless. Still, it's fun learning new things as I get older. If the concrete and steel aren't too severe I'd prefer to avoid the brick altogether. Haven't really evaluated the seismic challenges there, but I much prefer the higher ductility of steel reinforced concrete for my application.
  13. So the average area precipitation is a bit over 94% of three feet, which equals 2,820 cubic feet per year on a given 1,000 sq. ft. area. A cubic foot of water equals 7.48 U.S. fluid gallons, so a little over 21,000 gallons each year, which if you could capture every drop, would provide over 55 gallons of water per day. If you eliminate the most wasteful uses, 55 gallons of water can keep a family of four quite comfortable, with enough left over for a couple of chickens ta boot. There's 144 square inches in a square foot, and 1,728 cu. inches in a cubic foot, so an inch across 1,000 sq. ft. would equal 144,000 sq. inches. At a depth of one inch that would be 144,000 cubic inches, or 83-1/3 cu. ft. of water per inch of rainfall on that area. At 7.48 gallons per cu. ft. you get just under 625 gallons, so pretty close.
  14. Ha ha, spoken like a true optimist, a label which I do not embrace. So I guess the next step is to do whatever you want to do in a stealthy manner...
  15. I mean, if you happened to be blessed with accommodating topography, gravity can be a wonderful thing, and there are a multitude of ways to avoid having to rely on an unreliable electrical grid to keep you watered. I've built all sorts of ponds, cisterns, tanks, and impoundments over the years, for a wide variety of uses. My concerns with the Lake area are more about not wanting to plan on doing anything that might put me at odds with the local gov't or possibly my surrounding neighbors. I'm a big fan of the Golden Rule and folks respecting my attempts at pursuing happiness without impinging on theirs. Also realize that making one's life their argument goes a lot further than anything else at changing people's minds and habits. Especially where environmental issues are concerned, people look right at the problems and then turn the other way when it comes down to them having to make a change or sacrifice, so providing an example of just how much sense that can make can be a powerful inspiration. Who doesn't like not having bills, and what's not to love about having abundant pure sine-wave power 24/7? There's no place left in the U.S. where I'd risk drinking any of the tap water, so we adapted to hyper filtering and treating our own a long time ago. Our commercially available food is all contaminated with various herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, bacteriacides, and poisonous surficants, so we also long ago got used to feeding ourselves. I'm a veteran, so health care, of a sort, is available to me here, but for my friends and family, the future on that front is pretty dire. The U.S. is no place to grow old or be poor, and it's gotten so that their pharmaceutic-ally based reactive "care" system is destined to force you into poverty no matter how well you may have prepared, so whatever it takes, we figure to get while the gettin' is good. I'll hand pump water from a hand dug well if I have to, but we need to get out of here before Mexico wakes up and decides to build that wall that the chimp is always ranting about.
  16. Sounds very much what I'm already used to having to include on site plans for permit applications here. I used to specialize in building near environmentally sensitive areas, from back before it was considered cool or required, so I generally approach every project from a zero impact design objective. Obviously the earth would be better off if none of us were here, but such are the challenges of modern life as we know it.
  17. We also grow most of our own food, so soil fertility and climate are driving a great deal of this, that and the fact that I enjoy the Mexican people, cuisine, and general approach to life, so the North Shore was an obvious choice. The unfortunate impact of greed, corruption, and wide spread public apathy seems ubiquitous wherever you look, unless it's an area that has already completely crashed and is in some stage of recovery. Obviously we cannot get away with that kind of crap forever as a species, but we continue trying to skate on that very fine razor's edge. Urban sprawl destroyed our first Utopia, so we moved successively further and further out into the country, but here in the States that means deeper and deeper into the industrial agriculture nightmare. Right now, in the U.S. it is less dangerous to your health to live in a city than the country. How through the looking glass is that? Thanks to unfettered use and continuing proliferation of ever more and more economic poisons (the actual term that the gov't uses for all of the pesticides that are sprayed here) our remote rural county is one of those leading the nation in cancer deaths per capita, so paradise is not only lost, but polluted to the point of being deadly. Attended a meeting the other day where we learned that the combination of ignored regulations regarding well drilling and water use has resulted in a situation where the combined pumping of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO's) and center pivot boom irrigation of these asininely delicate GMO crops is drawing our aquifers down at a rate that exceeds their ability to recharge by about 5% per year. That's right folks, we may have 20 years before the aquifer that supports life in our area is completely exhausted, collapsed, and or completely infiltrated by salt water, so move over third world countries, the U.S. is trying to be made "Great Again", whatever the hell that means. In answer to gringal, no I have not, yet, but my bestie (she's a biologist who is also considering the move) and I are planning a trip for the very near future, hence my joining this forum as a part of our overall due diligence. I realize that no place any longer exists that doesn't suffer its own problems, so I suppose we're basically just trying to size up which ones we're most able and willing to try and tolerate or mitigate. We're exhausted from fighting the good fight around here to effect any kind of reasonable change, and our current POTUS has simply made that exponentially worse, so forgive the political snipes, but his impact is a fact in its negative reality. We've just had enough. Our local, and State politicians are just as corrupt and self serving as any, but we're also dealing with on-going industrial polluting from things like DuPont's PLAS's, on top of regular over-spray and drift from all sorts of deadly "'cides" used to grow all of this so-called "food". It's literally so out of control that cognitive dissonance now rules the day. You can either spend you days fighting it (akin to shoveling sand against the tide) or simply retreat into your home and self medicate in hopes of making it all go away. Neither of these two was ever a part of my retirement plan, so I figure if I'm going to have to suffer these types of indignities, at least I still possess the means of choosing better weather and nicer people to do it around. Beyond that, we're just hoping to find a place where we can respectfully do our own thing without bothering anyone and where they might respect that enough to just leave us alone. The prospects for most of that here in the States continues to degrade daily.
  18. OSHA nightmare! lol I grew up working in a family owned construction biz, so my cousin and I were the usual "cost savers". No need to hire a pump truck or crane... yeah, I don't miss it. Later, when I was running my own company, we found ways of using machines and mechanical advantage in places people had never thought of, so apparently the impact of all of that fun stuck with me. We did a lot of renovation and demolition work and one time dismantled a small skid steer loader and transported the parts to the 14th floor of a building over a weekend. Removed all of the interior improvements down to the core in a day and had it all gone before the following Monday morning. Client was overjoyed with our early completion, til a security guard inadvertently ratted us out. Then the guy almost had a heart attack, but it all ended well. As long as I can get a hold of SCC admix I won't really need a crew. I've built what I'm planning before, so most trucks have enough elevation to pour what and where I need as they creep by. Still have no idea of the material costs though.
  19. Any ideas on how the local gov't views the construction of storm water sediment holding ponds? Again, haven't visited there yet, but from what I can see, my other concerns in all of this would be erosion and sedimentation of the lake. Concentrated heavy rains and a lack of soil holding plant roots can wreak havoc on surrounding waterways. I've built permaculture holding ponds in severely sloped terrain before where we were able to mitigate unchecked erosion and create fertile micro-climes that better resisted drought and flood, but the challenges of the Lake Chapala area will all be new to me. Also, I have a long history of working with environmental conservation groups and look forward to doing whatever I can to help reclaim and protect the lake. We have the technology to minimize our environmental impact on such areas, but unfortunately, we typically lack ethical leadership with the vision or desire to steer in that direction. Too many temptations for politicos to stuff money in their pockets and feed "The Tragedy of The Commons" cycle.
  20. Didn't catch this when I recently posted asking about development in the area. Sounds disturbingly similar to the States; crooked politicians generally have never met a developer that they don't love. Earlier comments regarding the plight of Chapala also ring a bell. We were never successful in publicly shaming the crooks (they are beyond that), but they do respect the legal hammer. Disturbing to read that Chapala City Hall is that unresponsive. What sorts of options are available when your local gov't there gives the majority of its citizens a giant middle finger? Is there any sort of ground swell of concern or outrage from the general populace, or is this just being paid attention to by a select few? I don't live there (yet) and I'm not looking to end up in jail when I do, but what's the scene on public protest? Can the city officials simply go all Bull Connor on you and unleash the figurative or literal dogs? For that matter, as property owners in the jurisdiction, do you have any legal say in anything, or is that strictly reserved for Mexican citizens?
  21. That's great to hear. Sounds Orwellian, I know, but gov't intrusions seem to know no bounds these days, so nothing any longer surprises me. It often upsets and enrages me, but lived too long and seen to much for them to shock me any more.
  22. So, I've done this before, but admittedly with higher annual precipitation that was more evenly dispersed throughout the year. The best way to get a handle on it all is to simply begin by eliminating and conserving use. From there it gets a whole lot simpler. I've worked with all sorts of water quality issues over the years (off-grid, third world, aquaculture, industrial contamination, etc.) and have a fairly high competency in dealing with making raw water potable. From a conservation perspective, we practice usage that is not what most people are accustomed to here in the water wasting United States of America. We do not, for example, use potable water to flush toilets, wash cars, or irrigate crops and gardens. We in fact use incinerating toilets that require no water, recycle grey water to irrigate gardens and crops, and have better things to do with our time and water than waste it washing vehicular conveyances, so what we actually require to live comfortably is substantially less per person than the average bear(s). A cistern capable of storing about 12,000 gallons is way more than sufficient to allow us all of the water that we need (assuming we start with a full or near full tank). While admittedly large, that cistern would be roughly 18' in diameter, and about 7' tall overall, filled to a little over 6' high, or about the equivalent size of two 18' round above ground swimming pools stacked on top of each other. With fairly modest collection capacity that level of storage will actually provide significantly more water than we typically use, and even if our replenishment is limited to operating at or near full for three consecutive months followed by 9 months of an inch or less, we'll still have much more than we need, so even without a well, we should be relatively drought proof. I just don't want to run afould of any governmental meddling. In a lot of areas in the U.S. the government has laid claim to the water that falls on our roof and land, and they've actually made it illegal to harvest rain water. I know that that sounds rather absurd, but then again, look at who we have running the country...
  23. Yeah, so not introducing what is considered environmentally sourced water into public sewers is a pretty universal thing since the sewage is carried to a treatment plant that is typically undersized already, so adding storm water to the mix just exacerbates the problem and contributes to overflows and releases of untreated contaminated water into the surrounding environment. Air conditioner condensate is also usually included with rain/storm water in that requirement. What I'm specifically concerned with is whether or not there are any restrictions or regulations that would prevent me from harvesting the rain water that would fall on my own property? My desired intent is to capture, treat and filter it for my own use, as opposed to having to buy in water or connect to the public system. My resultant grey water would be recycled, treated, and filtered again before being used for irrigating gardens, and the toilets that I use are an electrically operated incinerating type that eliminate all of what is commonly referred to as black water, so cumulatively I would have no need of the public sewer and water systems.
  24. Tried to PM you but received a message saying that you cannot receive messages.
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