No (Potable) Water for the New Year - A Dry Run

Last evening, a water main in town broke, sending a flood of water down the hill into neighbor's homes and flooding the streets, creating a skating rink of ice. When I initially heard about this, I filled a ton of water bottles and glasses on the off-chance that we'd lose access to water. I didn't want to have to dip into our emergency water stores.

Not too long afterwards, we got the warning that the City of Roslyn was under a Boil Advisory. Twenty-four hours later, the water main has been fixed, but we still can't use the water without boiling. We are definitely lucky in that we never lost water or water pressure, most likely because we are above the break. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for many people in town where they had no water or very little water pressure. Or were flooded. A neighboring town offered a water fill-up station for those impacted more than we were.  

All that said, we are still able to run the dishwasher with the "Sanitizing" setting on, run the washing machine and take showers. Although, I felt like we could lose water access at any moment.

I considered this a bit of a dry run, with pretty minimal impact. Others were not so fortunate. But, even just having to boil water to use for drinking water, brushing teeth and cooking was still a reminder that we are always mere minutes away from losing a very valuable and precious resource.

Since we have a ton of snow outside, I took advantage of the fast cooling by putting our pots of boiled water outside on the deck to make the turnaround from boiling to using very quick! Once the water was cooled, I ran it through our pitcher water filter (for good measure) and also to make it easier to pour out of than the pots. 

Worse case scenario if we ran out of water for a more extended period of time? Well, we would have used the water filling station for potable water. Cooking would have been limited to things that needed minimal rinsing. And, if bathing were an issue, I have access at the gym in another town and a ton of body wipes that I have on-hand for use after bike races. 

We do have a year-round natural spring a few miles away with drinkable water if things get super dire. Between that and the water filter (and a more turbo hiking-style water filter) and at least we would have drinkable water. And, that's only if the grocery stores ran dry.

It's not a bad idea to run through the mental exercise of this sort. Because you never know when and/if the SHTF. Hopefully, everything will be back to normal soon, as local businesses had to shut down during this holiday weekend. And, after the water clears, I'm hoping that those impacted by the water running through their properties dry out quickly.

Replacing the 55-year-old Toilet

Our house was built in 1956. We still have a lot of the original elements - tile, cabinets, plumbing fixtures, hardwoods, etc. In spite of the dated look, I like to keep the mid-century modern look going. Which means that the pink tile stays. And some other details that scream, "1950s!" This is all coming back in style so I'm glad we kept them.

One thing we've been meaning to replace since we bought the house 6 years ago was the toilet in the kids bathroom. On one hand, I didn't want to replace it because it was the original toilet (see date stamp on right: October 29, 1956). On the other hand, it was a water hog. Since the kids don't ever remember to flush the toilet, it hasn't been much of a problem. But over the last few years, we've had more problems with it running continuously. Constant fiddling with the handle and replacement of a few parts haven't fixed the problem.

Last week the thing started running constantly, forcing us to just turn off the water supply to it. And, as a result, we went on a hunt for a dual flush water saving toilet. My friend (who owns several rentals) counseled us that Home Depot had a dual flush toilet for less than $100.

Between that and the $30 rebate from the City of Seattle, we were sold. I seriously doubt that it will last 55 years like the last one, but in the meantime we'll be saving money on water.

And the novelty of the pee versus poop button hasn't quite yet worn off. For any of us.

Do you have dual flush toilets? Or do you have water tanks with fillers or just low flow toilets? Anyone want an "antique" toilet?

Flushing the toilet with greywater

When we first moved into our house almost 5 years ago we were told the shower in the master bathroom had a leak, but that it had been fixed. The inspector checked it out and it looked good. For a while. Slowly, over the course of months and years, the drip returned.

We tried a number of different solutions to slow the drip, some more successful than others. Short of tearing out all the tile and replacing 50-year-old plumbing, we chose to ignore it as we had other, scarier stuff completely eclipsing our lives. The little drip (along with other home projects) went unattended.

Things around here have since stabilized, more or less, and in order to avoid expensive repairs we started collecting the dripped water in a bucket. During the summer months, this collected water gets dumped into the rain barrel. It's clean drinking water and can be used for whatever needs watering. During the wet season which, in Seattle, is most of the year, the collected water is used for flushing the toilet.

We don't flush the toilet a tremendous amount of times during the day since we off and on use cloth wipes and practice the mellowing yellow mantra. But, when it's time to flush, using saved water makes me feel like it's canceling out the drip.

For those who haven't tried using greywater (saved shower water or bath water or, really, any used water) for flushing your toilet, you just lift the toilet seats and pour it in. The volume of water causes the toilet to flush. It's like freaking magic, I tell you. But, then again, I'm easily amused by all things related to the potty.

Anyway, over the last month or so, that slow drip has increased to a more moderately paced drip. And now we are collecting far too much water to sanely ignore this issue any longer. I'll be calling a plumber this week to see what damage is required to resolve the problem and, in the meantime, I've been sort of feeling forlorn about not having as much water for flushing the toilet.

So, this morning I tried an experiment. Instead of just collecting the shower warm-up water (which I'm more apt to do during the dry summer), I took a shower with the bucket in there with me. It doesn't take up much space, but it does collect quite a bit more water. Since we use biodegradable soap, anything that splashes into the collection would be relatively harmless. As a result, I'm thinking that once the shower is fixed, I can still have a goodly amount of greywater for flushing or watering plants or whatever.

Do you use saved water or greywater for flushing your toilets?

The not so ugly rain barrel

Most rain barrels are hideously ugly. They either look like giant plastic oil drums or huge pickle barrels and come in exciting colors like black or red, attempting to look like terracotta. I've always wanted to get one that looked a little more like a garden sculpture rather than a garden eyesore.

It's been years that I've been planning on buying one, but never really got around to doing it mostly because I've been deterred on the idea of rain barrels ever since learning that, with an asphalt roof, you really shouldn't use the water on food crops. The issue has a lot to do with the composite roof deteriorating and collecting in the water. I've seen this happen in our downspouts and drainage and it's really not something I want to put on my food.

Anyway, the other week I had a brilliant idea. Well, at least I thought so. Instead of using the roof run-off, I could use a rain barrel as a giant collection tank for my clean, drinkable shower warm-up water that I save. Water that I have no where to store if it's raining out and can't use immediately (which is far too often around here). Water that I could use not only on my flowering plants, but also on my edibles. So, I done got myself a rain barrel. But, not any average rain barrel - one that isn't as ugly as the standard kind.

It looks like a large clay urn from afar. Up close, you can tell it's plastic, but the cool thing is that it has a planter on top. If you leave the receptacle as is, it can double as a bird bath, but I drilled holes in it, layered it with cloth barrier and planted a cyclamin and two alpine strawberry plants. As you can see from the picture, it's not hooked up to the downspout, but it is right next to the deck and I have it placed where I can lean over the deck to dump the water without too much effort.

Of course, I can always hook it up to the downspout if I decide to use it for that purpose one of these days. Or, if we replace our roof with something that doesn't leach zinc or other petroleum products into the water.

However, the better looks and fancy planter action will cost your more. Mine is an Algreen 81001 Cascata 65-Gallon Rain Water Collection and Storage System that I got through Amazon*, but at least I got free shipping. I didn't think I'd enjoy having a rain barrel so much, but it's been incredibly satisfying so far saving all that water. And, the box it came in has been turned into a rather well-used castle.

Note for the FTC: I am an Amazon Affiliate, so clicking on the product link and buying something from Amazon may just result in a referral kick-back for me to buy more rain barrels :)