Utilities - A Possible Nightmare!

Where are your utilities going to come from? When you do your visual inspection, as the owner or representative for the location of:

• Electricity
• Phone Lines
• Water
• Cable (Ha!)

Next - Verify what you were told with each of the agencies! If these utilities are not adjoining your property, you will have to pay to bring them to your lot.

Electricity:
If your lot is along a public road and it currently does not have electricity there, you will have to follow this EXPENSIVE process with ICE (the national monopoly for electricity and telephones.):

• Supply ICE with a copy of the total build out plans of your property.
• ICE will then prepare the plans and charge you for them
• ICE will have a topographical map prepared by their topographer and charge you for it.
• ICE will provide you with a list of materials to buy and a list of approved vendors from which you will have to buy the materials.
• ICE will provide you with a list of approved contractors to do the work.
• ICE them “manages” the installation and spending of your money.
• You cannot use your own engineer to draw up the plans nor can you use your own topographer.  You will have a very limited choice in both the suppliers and contractors.
• Make sure they include the telephone line at the same time.
• If there is no phone line nearby, you literally may have to wait years until ICE gets around to bringing phone service to your property.

The Gringo in Grecia is fond of saying that “Electricity should only cost $3,000 to bring in.”  Before you take that as gospel, verify it with an engineer.  You will be amazed at how expensive electrical cable is in Costa Rica!

Water:
If you do not have municipal water you have three choices.

• Hopefully you can pay to connect to the municipality.
• If there is a spring on the property, you can try to find out if it is year round and if you can get permission to use it.
• You might have to drill a well ($10K or more)

This process can be relatively inexpensive or it can cost a fortune! I can pretty much assure that the price the “Gringo in Grecia” quotes for water (normally $2,500) is inaccurate. 

Cable:
Cable is only available in limited parts of the country. If you are preparing a subdivision you should put in the conduit in the event they bring cable to the property in a decade or so.