Water feed & Heating

The water from the taps comes both from the lake and from the Quinta's own boreholes and is pumped to the Charca, (the Quinta's water storage pond situated on the hill above the buildings), by a solar pump and also by the generator's two 3-phase pumps from where it is piped down the hill again, (giving the Quinta its pressure of 2 bar in the bathrooms).

The solar pump pumps from one of the Quinta's boreholes and is operational any time that the sun is shining on the pump’s photovoltaic array and is completely autonomous of the main electricity supply.

It is backed up by two 3-phase pumps running off the generator when needed. One small one pumps from the Quinta's second borehole while a large capacity pump hangs off the Pumps Pontoon floating in the lake.

By having three pumps operating off two separate power supplies, the water-feed system is rendered both more robust and cheaper to run, i.e. we hardly ever use the 3-phase pumps during the winter as, with no irrigation, we use far less water.

Water pumped up to the Charca falls into it from a height of 3 mts, thus aerating it and inhibiting algae growth. There are also several types of fish in the Charca to prohibit any mosquito problem.

The Charca level is checked first thing every morning with a phone-mounted camera app, and the fish fed every couple of days.

The Charca’s overflow is piped first into the stone bowl outside the kitchen window, from where it enters the drain and waters the garden below the West Wing, but it also has another four piped exits into four distribution points behind and above the main buildings thus watering the hillside behind the Quinta.

Between the Charca and any tap the water is passed through three types of filtration, firstly a solid mesh, followed by an advanced, self-cleaning Backwash Filter before finally passing by an Ultra-violet bulb which thoroughly cleans it so that it’s fit for human consumption.

There is, finally, one more filter for any water entering the dishwashers as these are pernickety machines and demand special treatment if the Quinta is to avoid expensive visits from the Miele engineers.

Once a year the whole system is flushed with a chlorine solution which cleans all remaining pipe-work.

Water that is solely intended for garden use bypasses the Backwash Filter and Ultraviolet filtration systems but has instead a series of solid mesh filters which are cleaned once a week on average. This cleaning takes 15 minutes.

Hot water is primarily made with the solar panels mounted behind the kitchen, and this system is backed up by a “Zero-loss” boiler. The vast majority of the time there is no need for the Zero-loss boiler to function at all, but with the Quinta full in inclement weather it is essential.

The boiler is fueled by propane gas fed off the same feed as supplies the gas cooker in the kitchen. One 45kg propane bottle lasts on average three weeks. There are two bottles always linked up and should one ever become empty the system automatically switches to the second bottle and a warning signal is generated thus ensuring that the empty bottle is replaced with a full one.

There is storage of 1,500 lts of piping-hot water.