Digging for Information on Water

Posted August 7th, 2012 by kerri and filed in small house living
Tags: , ,
10 Comments

We keep the water dish full for the dogs, but try to con­serve in other areas

 

The win­ner of the book, “The Organized Kitchen,” by Brette Sember is (drum roll….) Theresa! Please email me at fivecoat@​ozarkmountains.​com with your snail mail address. We’ll have more fun at our vir­tual orga­niz­ing party this Thursday! Please check out Brette’s fab­u­lous blog Putting it all on the Table.

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As our extreme drought here enters the 4th month, Dale and I began won­der­ing about the health of our well.

We didn’t have any indi­ca­tions it might be run­ning low, but we won­dered what would hap­pen if we con­tin­ued on this no rain path.

We had been used to con­serv­ing water when we first moved to Our Little House. Before we had our well dug, we had a large hold­ing tank and had to have water trucked in.

While it wasn’t opti­mal, even when we just used Our Little House for week­ends and hol­i­days, it was what we could afford when we built.

After we moved here in 2007, we had the well dug and the com­pany had to go much deeper than any­one anticipated.

Would it hold dur­ing an extreme drought?

I did some dig­ging of my own and chances are that it will. The well is new enough and deep enough that it should be good for awhile any­way. I wish we had hooked up a gray water sys­tem, but we didn’t.

We did start re-employing our water con­ser­va­tion mea­sures how­ever, which include:

  • Running just enough water to wash and then rinse all of the dishes, with­out con­tin­u­ously run­ning the water or turn­ing the faucet back on for every rinse by plac­ing just enough water into two tubs.
  • Shortening show­ers.
  • Running water only when rins­ing off hands or rins­ing dur­ing brush­ing, instead of let­ting it run continuously.
  • Using the “if it’s yel­low….” flush­ing philosophy.
  • Limiting soak­ing of plants.
  • Only run­ning full loads of clothes.

In the mean­time, we have got­ten some sig­nif­i­cant rains this past week. Not enough, but we’ll take what we can get and hope that we don’t see our faucets start sput­ter­ing air or milky look­ing water (signs that the well is going dry).

Most of the United States is in some degree of drought right now. Whether you have a well or not, water sup­plies are a major con­cern in many areas. Have you thought about con­serv­ing water?

 

 

 

10 Responses to “Digging for Information on Water”

  1. Theresa says:
    August 10, 2012 at 7:23 am

    Last year, I had sev­eral neigh­bors who had wells that went dry. That scared me, and I started con­serv­ing. I used kitchen gray water for water­ing plants, and tried to con­serve in other ways. This year we have had a bit more rain, though still not enough. But, in my next remod­el­ing, I'll look at con­serv­ing toi­lets, and other ways to increase efficiency.

    • Kerri says:
      August 10, 2012 at 9:59 am

      Thanks for your com­ment, Theresa. I just real­ized I can use my dish's rinse water to water the plants. See how com­ments from oth­ers can make us think in a whole new way? :)

  2. Kim says:
    August 8, 2012 at 9:33 pm

    Our down­stairs bath have a sink on the back of our toi­let that pre-uses the flush­ing water to wash hands.

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​M​r​G​y​G​8pGFMo

    (That's hard to describe. You flush, and the faucet starts to run, so you wash your hands in that water before it drains down to fill the now-empty toi­let basin.)

    Problem is, it's an overly expen­sive lit­tle gad­get– about $100 for a lit­tle piece of plas­tic with a few tubes and a faucet on top. It kept peo­ple from wash­ing bath­room hands in my kitchen sink (old house issues), so it was worth it, but I'm not sure I'd have invested in it otherwise.

    It's a great way to con­found vis­i­tors, though. :)

  3. Kathleen Winn says:
    August 8, 2012 at 10:47 am

    We have an old well on our prop­erty, but haven't had some­one out to inspect it and tell us what needs to be done to get it oper­a­tional. At the very least it needs a new pump. The drought here in Missouri is awful. I am already look­ing for hay for the win­ter and I'm wor­ried about what I'm going (or not going) to find. You are lucky that you've had at least some rain. It's been dry here for at least two solid months, and what we had before that were just brief lit­tle rain showers.

    Cathy– your post makes me feel bet­ter about my lousy tomato crop– I just didn't pee on them enough!! :-)

    • Kerri says:
      August 8, 2012 at 3:08 pm

      I won­der how old the well is and what it would need, Kathleen? It might be worth check­ing out. It could be an emer­gency water sup­ply for you if some­thing went wrong with the "city" water line.

  4. Cathy Geary says:
    August 7, 2012 at 10:12 am

    Hmm, I grew up on a dug well. Hehe, you have not yet begun to scratch the sur­face of sav­ing water. We kept a wash­pan that was changed about twice a day for hand­wash­ing. We took a lot of sponge baths, which DO get you clean, that's what they use mostly in hos­pi­tals. You can take a bath and sham­poo and rinse hair in a gal­lon of water if you have shorter hair. Long hair takes a gal­lon and a half. If I lived in a long term drought area, I would cut my hair. If you will avoid fab­ric soft­ener, you can even dip the rinse water out of your auto­matic washer to water plants that are not edi­ble, hop­ing you don't use harsh deter­gents in the wash. Also, if you have a gar­den, real­ize that urine is very good for some plants, espe­cially, for some rea­son, male urine. So, uri­nat­ing in a bucket or bot­tle and using it on toma­toes, etc, helps con­serve in two ways.

    • Kerri says:
      August 7, 2012 at 10:43 am

      Hahahaha, Cathy. You're absolutely right. We have noth­ing on you when it comes to water con­ser­va­tion. Thanks for the tips!

  5. mat says:
    August 7, 2012 at 9:30 am

    I've lived in SEPA for about 30 years now and I don't think we've ever NOT been in a drought. Even if we weren't, I believe in water con­ser­va­tion regard­less. So we're care­ful with pres­sure and shower dura­tion, we let it mellow…as long as it isn't all day, we're care­ful with our dish­wash­ing, and we never do less than a full load of laundry…which with 3 peo­ple in the house, isn't exactly hard.
    The last few years, I've watered our pathetic veg­gie gar­den every day…this year…no gar­den, so no water­ing. I'm good with that. I also use our dehumidifier's water in the base­ment toi­let, so that's free water.

    When we build the lit­tle house I'd like to do a gray water recov­ery sys­tem to feed the toi­lets, but other than that, I'm not sure what else you can really use it for.

    • Kerri says:
      August 7, 2012 at 9:56 am

      I think you can use a gray water sys­tem for water­ing, Mat, as long as you don't use harsh chem­i­cals in the laun­dry and such. Besides wash­ing clothes, I would say most of our water gets used by flush­ing the toi­let, so hav­ing this type of a sys­tem would be good.