The practical detail
How the house actually works.
Power, water, cooling, and an honest account of sharing a hillside with the rainforest. The things worth knowing before you book, rather than after you arrive.
Power
When the power goes out, your holiday does not.
The rainforest is part of what makes this coast extraordinary. It also means tropical weather, falling trees and a developing electrical grid, so interruptions are a fact of life here. In our area outages happen several times in a week — usually ten minutes, occasionally several hours.
ICE, the national utility, is genuinely responsive when a tree takes down a line. But restoring power is only half the problem. After a long outage, every house with conventional backup batteries starts recharging the moment the grid returns, which loads the local system all over again.
Casa Rosa Blanca was built differently. The house runs a Sol-Ark hybrid solar system with roughly 20 kWh of battery storage. In normal operation solar powers the house and charges the batteries, with utility power available automatically when it is needed.
When the grid drops, the switch is automatic. No generator to start, and normally nothing for you to do at all. The backed-up circuits keep running — lights, refrigerator, internet, televisions, outlets and the rest of the ordinary 120V household load. That capacity will typically carry the house through a full day and night depending on use, and when the sun comes up the panels start supplying the house and recharging the batteries, even if the outage is still going.
There is also a second solar installation on the roof that has nothing to do with the first. Hot water runs on its own dedicated panels and its own supply, independent of both the grid and the battery system. It does not run out, and an outage does not touch it.
The cooktop and oven are propane, so the kitchen works regardless. Between gas for cooking, solar thermal for hot water and the battery for everything else, an outage here mostly means the air conditioning stops.
Keeps running
- Lights
- Refrigerator
- Internet, both connections
- Televisions
- Wall outlets
- Ceiling fans
- Hot water — its own solar array
- Cooktop and oven — propane
Waits for the grid
- Air conditioning
- Washer and dryer
- Pool pump
- Microwave
Count what that leaves you in a power cut: hot showers, a working kitchen, cold food, light, and the internet. The air conditioning stops and the laundry waits. It is an investment most holiday homes do not make, and it is the difference between an evening that continues and one spent sitting in the dark.
Air and cooling
The house is built to breathe.
This is not a sealed building, and it was never meant to be. It was designed around airflow — the layout, the openings and the ceiling fans work together, and most of the year that is all you need. Open it up in the morning, leave the fans going, and the house cools itself.
Every bedroom also has air conditioning for the nights when you want it. Electricity is genuinely expensive in Costa Rica, so the one thing we ask is that you use it deliberately: run it in a room somebody is actually in, and close the doors and windows while it is on. An air conditioner cooling the rainforest through an open door is the single fastest way to run up a bill.
Most guests find they use it far less than they expected, and a good many stop using it at all after the first few nights.
Water and gas
Spring water, filtered again on the way to the tap.
The water here is natural spring water and perfectly good to drink. We added a whole-house filtration system feeding every faucet anyway, as a precaution rather than a necessity. Drink from the tap, fill your bottle, make the coffee — there is no need to buy bottled water for the house.
Hot water comes from its own solar array on the roof, separate from the electrical system, which is why it keeps going through a power cut and why you will not run it out.
The cooktop, the oven and the barbecue all run on propane. The grill is plumbed in, so there is no tank to swap and nothing to light but the burner.
The roof
Those blue shingles are doing something.
They are a recycled plastic material, chosen specifically to damp the sound of heavy rain. In a part of the world where a downpour on a metal roof can stop a conversation, it makes a difference you notice the first time it rains hard at night.
It is a small, unglamorous detail, and it is one of the things guests remark on without quite knowing why the house feels calm in a storm.
Insects, honestly
You are in the jungle, and the jungle has insects.
The single most useful thing to know: bugs come to light. Use the outdoor lights sparingly after dark and you will have very few of them. Light up the whole terrace every evening and you will have company. Guests who learn this in the first day or two barely think about insects for the rest of the stay.
There is a large screen between the house and the terrace, which lets you sit with everything open and the breeze coming through while keeping most of them out. It is the best of both and it is how we live in the house ourselves.
Being straight with you: the house is not sealed, so you will find a few insects on the white marble floors in the morning. That is the trade for a house that breathes. You will also see lizards and geckos, which are harmless, extremely good at eating the insects, and — this surprises people — occasionally bark.
The geckos are on your side. Leave them be and they will work through the night on your behalf.
Birds and animals
What turns up, and where to look.
The terrace sits level with the canopy, so you look across at the birds rather than up at them. These are the regulars — the full guide has which tree and roughly what time.
Birds
- Toucan
- Scarlet macaw
- Parrots
- Common potoo
- Road hawk
- Tanagers and honeycreepers
Monkeys and mammals
- Howler monkey
- Capuchin monkey
- Coati
- Sloth
- Squirrel monkey
The grounds
A hundred and fifty kinds of plant, give or take.
The property runs to 1.75 acres of secondary rainforest, from the road down past the pool and into the trees below. The managed part of it holds well over a hundred species, planted and tended over years. A few worth knowing by name:
- Plumeria
- The frangipani. Scent arrives before you see it.
- Ylang ylang
- Heavy and sweet after dark. Used in perfume.
- Vanilla vine
- A climbing orchid. The pods are the vanilla.
- Black pepper vine
- Yes, that black pepper.
- Banana
- Fruiting, and visited by most things with wings.
- Elephant ears
- The enormous leaves along the lower path.
Ask us about anything you cannot identify. If we do not know, Jan and Sonia almost certainly will.
Anything we have not covered?
Ask before you book rather than after. We would rather tell you this house is wrong for your trip than take a booking that ends badly for both of us.