One of our priorities for the start of the summer was to get more rainwater collection and storage capacity in place. We figured that with a garden, we'd need a lot more water than before. Before the garden, we were using about 5 gallons/day for all of our drinking, cooking, dishwater, and shower needs (I know, we probably don't bathe enough!)
So, we added another 500 gallon storage tank, purchased used from a friend, and tied it into a homemade gutter added to the 200 square foot roof we'd built last fall over our old leaky storage camper trailer.
This brings us up to about 2500 gallons of cistern capacity, with 700 square feet of collection area. We get between 1 and 2 inches of rain/month here. With 1" of rain, we collect somewhere around 500 gallons of water. We use close to 15 gallons/day of water now, and it all goes onto the garden eventually, either as first use water, or as graywater. Nothing is wasted! So, unless we get a severe drought, we have already achieved water self-sufficiency from rainwater alone, at least until we make a bigger garden. This feels really good. When it rains out, we feel wealthy, watching water pour into our various cisterns, and watering the garden. When the sun comes out, we feel wealthy again, because the plants are growing and our solar electric batteries are charging. It's nice!
This last picture is the High Tech Simple Living Home Laundry System. This system will clean your clothes like you wouldn't believe, really! OK, here's the secret. Take one cooler (does multiple duty as a yogurt making container, food cooler, and now, as a clothes washer!) Fill it halfway with hot water (heated for free on your wood cookstove of course), add clothes and biodegradeable soap, plunge a few times with your toilet plunger (which is clean as a whistle because you hopefully are using a composting toilet instead of one of those nasty things that flushes human fertilizer down a hole in the ground with drinking water), and close the lid. Let is sit for the day (plunge a couple of times as you walk by if you think of it). After a few hours of soaking, open it up, plunge for a minute, pour out the water (save it for the garden), lightly ring the clothes, add cold water, plunge to rinse, and repeat once more if necessary. Wring your clothes lightly. Your cooler now becomes a laundry basket! Carry your clothes to the outdoor clothes line, and hang em up. I hung mine in the evening, and they were dry by morning, but we live in dry Colorado. This is so much quicker and cheaper and environmentally less harmful than driving to a laundromat and paying $7 or so to wash your clothes, or even paying for the electricity to wash them in your own machine. Best simple sustainable living invention we've come up with yet (although I'm sure hundreds of other people have already thought of this)!
One of our priorities for the start of the summer was to get more rainwater collection and storage capacity in place. We figured that with a garden, we'd need a lot more water than before. Before the garden, we were using about 5 gallons/day for all of our drinking, cooking, dishwater, and shower needs (I know, we probably don't bathe enough!)
So, we added another 500 gallon storage tank, purchased used from a friend, and tied it into a homemade gutter added to the 200 square foot roof we'd built last fall over our old leaky storage camper trailer.
This brings us up to about 2500 gallons of cistern capacity, with 700 square feet of collection area. We get between 1 and 2 inches of rain/month here. With 1" of rain, we collect somewhere around 500 gallons of water. We use close to 15 gallons/day of water now, and it all goes onto the garden eventually, either as first use water, or as graywater. Nothing is wasted! So, unless we get a severe drought, we have already achieved water self-sufficiency from rainwater alone, at least until we make a bigger garden. This feels really good. When it rains out, we feel wealthy, watching water pour into our various cisterns, and watering the garden. When the sun comes out, we feel wealthy again, because the plants are growing and our solar electric batteries are charging. It's nice!
This last picture is the High Tech Simple Living Home Laundry System. This system will clean your clothes like you wouldn't believe, really! OK, here's the secret. Take one cooler (does multiple duty as a yogurt making container, food cooler, and now, as a clothes washer!) Fill it halfway with hot water (heated for free on your wood cookstove of course), add clothes and biodegradeable soap, plunge a few times with your toilet plunger (which is clean as a whistle because you hopefully are using a composting toilet instead of one of those nasty things that flushes human fertilizer down a hole in the ground with drinking water), and close the lid. Let is sit for the day (plunge a couple of times as you walk by if you think of it). After a few hours of soaking, open it up, plunge for a minute, pour out the water (save it for the garden), lightly ring the clothes, add cold water, plunge to rinse, and repeat once more if necessary. Wring your clothes lightly. Your cooler now becomes a laundry basket! Carry your clothes to the outdoor clothes line, and hang em up. I hung mine in the evening, and they were dry by morning, but we live in dry Colorado. This is so much quicker and cheaper and environmentally less harmful than driving to a laundromat and paying $7 or so to wash your clothes, or even paying for the electricity to wash them in your own machine. Best simple sustainable living invention we've come up with yet (although I'm sure hundreds of other people have already thought of this)!
1 comment:
i'm building a pipe to send you all the wealth that's been falling in New England for the past month! i hung out my laundry (yes, washed with electricity & drinking water) and it took a week to dry!
Post a Comment