Category Archives: Rincon

Our House in Rincon Circa 1990

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When we closed on our house in Rincon, the owner gave us an envelope with some pictures of the wood house during its construction and when it was just finished. We think it was built around 1990 based on what we’ve heard and a diary we found left in the house written by the previous owner. These pictures are pretty cool, so I thought I would share them with you so you can get an idea of what it looked like fresh and new.


Unpainted and no windows but pretty much the same otherwise


The house during construction from the road


Look how fresh the deck was! (And the cute puppy!)


Upstairs bedroom during construction


Living room area during construction


Looking toward the kitchen and back bedroom


The house shortly after it first went for sale (2001)

What’s really surprising is how well it has lasted over 20+ years! It does need a new roof and a new deck for sure, but otherwise, everything that was protected from the rain has stayed remarkably well-preserved. It definitely could look at least this good again, and I think Britton and I have pretty good “vision” for properties, so we could make it even cooler. It’s kind of fun looking at old pictures like this and thinking about what we were doing in elementary school at that time. And how our life paths merged to this point. Kind of neat.

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Rincon House Considerations and Updates

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Well Cassie and I are still in the afterglow of our time in Rincon especially since we are in the depths of winter here in Colorado. Lately we have been going over plans on how to remodel the wood house.  If we move a bathroom, pour some concrete and redo the interior and roof we think we could make something pretty cool.  We would save quite a bit of money and make something special.  Saving money would put us a lot closer to moving, which is the goal.


The house from the road in (with the ocean view as a backdrop)

We haven’t seen a whole lot of wood houses in PR.  In Rincon however, they do exist throughout Puntas so it is do-able, possible and not entirely crazy.  Our first thoughts about keeping the wood house revolved around the idea that, wood houses in tropical areas don’t last.  After seeing the current wood house that has been there 20+ years and the wood that has been protected still looks fresh, we are starting to change our opinion.

Not a whole lot going on here.  It’s winter and most people are staying inside.  We had a good time with friends watching the super bowl and having get togethers, but we are ready for spring already!

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Our Dur-O-matic Shower Water Heater

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We had some questions from some friends about our electric shower water heater that we installed in our house in Rincon, Puerto Rico, so I thought I’d write a more in-depth post. Please feel free to add anything you may know about these types of heaters or other ways to heat water in the tropics.

To be honest, the first time I saw a Super Ducha I was afraid.  The thing you hear all the time in the states is never use electricity and baths / showers. When we were trying to buy the property in Lares, the cabana had a Super Ducha. This thing was anything but to safe: no GFI, no real grounding, it was wrapped with electrical tape and the outlet was really close to the shower head.   We hesitated to use it at first, but given the choice between a cold shower or a slightly warm one, we took the risk. Then we slowly became accustomed to it. We stayed and showered there for about two weeks.  By the time we left for Colorado, I was pretty comfortable with it.


The Super Ducha at the property in Lares, Puerto Rico

Flash forward to now and our property in Rincon, Puerto Rico. We decided on our last trip that taking a shower shouldn’t be like jumping in a swimming pool.  It was ok during the hot and humid summer, we could put up with it, but in January everything cools down by a good 10 degrees and it was pretty chilly to hop in a cold shower.

Here in Colorado every house that I can think of is plumbed for a gas powered hot water heater, but there is no natural gas “utility” that automatically comes with a house in Puerto Rico.  So there were only a few options to getting hot water for your shower and elsewhere.  Put in an instant-on water heater, put in a tank on the roof (solar heater) or just get an electric shower head.

We were only going to be there for a week and didn’t want to turn the hot water into much of a project.  So we opted for the electric shower head. We couldn’t find the Super Ducha brand, but we did find Dur-o-matic.  They actually sell them at Home Depot in Mayaguez which is where we ended up going.  Home Depot has an easy return policy which worked out well.  There are 3 variations of the Dur-o-Matic.   Green (15A), blue (22A) and red(25A).


Dur-O-Matic Green Box

The more water pressure you have, the higher you want to go.  We started with Green because I wasn’t sure what the circuit breaker was rated for in the cabana.  It went fine and the shower was warmer, but it was still pretty cold unless you turned the pressure way down, or ran the water in the bathroom sink while showering (Cassie’s trick).   Our circuit breaker is 20A.  We took the green one back and tried a blue one.  This one was warmer and the circuit breaker still didn’t pop.   We might have been able to use a red one, but we didn’t try. They run about $60 and are very simple to install. All you have to do is get some teflon tape, unscrew the shower head, attach the Dur-O-Matic using the tape, and plug it in. It heats the water before it reaches you. It never gets super hot, but it creates a nice warm shower.

Dur-O-Matic Electric Shower Water Heater Installed!

They also sell them at the Do it Best in Rincon.   Had I known about this store earlier, I might not have made the trip to Mayaguez.  In either case it warms the water up about 30 degrees.  It made it much nicer to be able to shower and for Cassie she was able to take more time to wash her long hair.  However, it is inherently more dangerous to have an electric anything in the shower, so next trip I’ll try to fit a GFI circuit in for  peace of mind. Everything in Puerto Rico is just a little bit different. We’ve learned a lot about what’s really necessary in life, what is just a “want” and all those little in-betweens like a warm shower.

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Rincon Trip Goal Outcome

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Don’t worry, we did spend some time at the beach too! 🙂

Well we had a list of things we wanted to do on this trip; some for fun, some for utility. Of course, we often put off the fun and do the work first, but I think we did pretty good overall.

Here were our goals: what we didn’t get to are in red, and what we accomplished are in green.

* Plant banana trees (BK)
* Visit with ARC ENG -the architecture/engineering business in Rincon (CK)
* Visit the Rincon Treehouse place to talk about specifics (BK)
* Visit Mangosteen person in Mayaguez if we have enough time (CK)
* CRIM? We haven’t done this yet and probably should (neither really want to)
* Fix up kitchenette to have running water (BK)
* Get estimate for cost of our property ideas by local contractor
* Get hot running water rigged if possible (CK)
* Buy a heavy duty weed-wacker at Home Depot, as the property is probably very overgrown by now (BK)
*Take a surf lesson – if we have time (CK)
* Have a small little fire at night on the property (BK) (A reminder to be careful what you wish for!!)
*Walk to the beach from property (CK)
* Get rest of bees removed from walls if possible (BK)
* Find closest hospital (just in case-ha) -CK
*Find thrift or 2nd hand stores in the area (CK)

So as you can see, we got quite a lot of the major items taken care of in the time we were there. In addition to these things we also:

*Found our trees that we had planted last time and cleared away the vines and growth from around them
*Weed-wacked the whole fenced area and a little beyond the fence line
*Met with a variety of friends in Rincon/Moca for dinners and poker
*Tried new restaurants
*Planted more sprouted coconut palms
*Planted our avocado pits from the Avocado Party (we’ll see what happens!)
*Found a nearby hardware store in Rincon with prices better than Home Depot and a discount day (10% off on Saturdays) for women!

We still haven’t quite made a decision one way or the other about the wood house. We go back and forth and forth and back, sometimes in the same conversation. There are so many pros and cons to either decision. Getting the bees out of the house really helped us feel more comfortable in it and around it. We could see more potential, and less of a desire to “just get rid of it”. Still not sure though. We would have a long way to go to make it feel like home. Next up for it will be bat removal!! Yikes.

I think we have a pretty decent plan to get the cabana very livable and then we can make our big decision on the wood house. It is definitely cool to have a wood house, as it makes it seem more like Hawaii-style housing: warm and inviting and less like concrete storm bunkers, but as we have seen with all the animals in the house it may be a little TOO inviting.  As you can tell we’re still in limbo on that one.


The wood house from the roof of the cabana

In addition to the bats and the bees, we also had some unexpected canine visitors on our last day there, but they were friendly:

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