When you move into a new home, usually your connections to water, gas and electricity can be arranged easily in The Netherlands. You simply announce your move to one organization and at the same time you arrange that everything is converted. Ready and done.
Not quite how it works here in Portugal. When you want running water and there is no water supply connection in front of your house, you can do this:
Our old ruin has never been connected to water and electricity.
No bathroom, toilet or sink: not even one tap!
In the past, the residents took water from an open cistern next to our house. The water came from a spring, a few hundred meters away from us. Through a hose the water ran to various households, including ours.
Many neighbors still have such a solution, with the difference that the hose is now connected to a reservoir in the attic.
After our bore hole had been drilled, we had to wait a long time to have running water. Because we still had no electricity, no pump could be connected. We’ll tell you later how that got sorted.
Useful Portuguese words
| water | água |
| well | poço |
| bore hole | furo |
| water supply network | água da rede pública |
| a spring | uma nascente/ uma fonte |
| hose | mangueira |
| tube | tubo |
| drilling a water bore hole | perfuração de um furo |
| license | licença |
| pump | bomba |