here at home, we turn our tap on and presto, there is water!! . . . it's not as easy as that at commodore (rex's place) . . . he has 1000 gal tank, which costs anywhere between $2500-$3000 to fill . . . never realized i could be so creative with water saving techniques . . .

even though there is piped water into the community, the water commission only turns it on at whim, there is no schedule, so ppl might get 4 hours of water on monday and nothing until friday again. kind of pointless to have a metered water system since one still has to truck in the water . . .

wonder what it's like in the rest of jamaican communtities???

2300 gal/5000 jmd in the boondocks......

Where I live in Canada the water rate is about $3.30 CDn for a cubic meter of water.
I did some math, a cubic meter is about 220 imperial gallons (or 1000 litres). So that is about 1.5 cents cdn. or $1.25 JA for a gallon out of the tap. That includes sewage treatment fee.
$5000J for 2300 gallons is about $2.17 JA for a gallon. (almost double the cost of my water bill) Not cheap, BUT just think what people are paying for a bottle of water!
How do they get away with it?

wonder what it's like in the rest of jamaican communtities???

On our newest house we have a concrete tank built on the roof to capture water. It's filled by rain, pipes when they are turned on, but we also pay to get it filled.

Before we had a concrete water tank, still do, but not used on the newest house

We also use water drums to capture rain water.

This water (drums and tanks) is not treated but I have never gotten sick. I am a bit more careful with my kids.

Blues- do you have septic tank? If so don't you have to empty it on occasion? That wouldn't be free.