How NOT to use 2500 Gallons of Water per Month

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country life, country living, homestead, homesteading, rural life, saving money, saving water, water, water conservation

I starting writing this awesome post on all the water conservation efforts I’ve made this month, and how it’s really made a difference.  On Friday, Earth Day, I realized that the old toilet in the spare bath didn’t have a milk jug in the tank, which is a great way to cut down on the amount of water the toilet uses to flush.  Well, I have an empty milk jug, and it’s Earth Day, let’s pop that sucker in there and conserve some water.

I give you the text I sent Will an hour after executing my little plan:

typo – right=tight

I gently lifted the float about a centimetre to place the milk jug in the tank, and it snapped off in my hand.  Water started gushing into the tank.  In order to keep the tank from overflowing, I propped open the flusher, so the toilet continually flushed for at least five minutes while I wrestled with the shut off valve.  I whacked it with the hammer a couple of time, then threw all my might behind those damn pliers until the stupid thing started to turn.  Of course, my hammering and grunting and swearing woke Liam up from his nap, but thankfully, I got the water to the toilet shut off without breaking the tap.

We then went into the city and headed to Rona, where I told a salesclerk, “I broke my toilet,” and he showed me what to buy.  Got it all replaced, and the milk jug in the tank, after Liam went to bed that night.  Happy freaking Earth Day.

Anyway . . . back to the original story of the post . . . although the property has two wells, neither one is functional at the moment, nor were they ever hooked up to the new house on the property.  The previous owner was British, and didn’t like using the water for his tea!  (I don’t blame him; I have a feeling it’s going to be very mineral-y.  Ugh).

We’re trying to get one of the wells in good shape; we’ve shocked it and cleaned it, but it still tested positive for total coliform.  If at first the potability test doesn’t succeed, try, try again.  In the meantime, we have to haul our household water.  The cistern is in the basement and holds 2500 gallons.  We’ve found that we easily use 2500 gallons a month (!), and 2500 gallons a month is a $130 water bill. When we lived in the city, our water bill was $50 per month.  Ouch.

I put the call out on Facebook for my friends’ fave water conservation tips.  We already do most of the standard stuff, like using a low-flow shower head and using rain barrels to water the garden, but I needed some hardcore ideas.  One of my friends didn’t have running water until she was eight years old, so her mother had to haul all the water they used.  She became a pro at conserving water and using every drop efficiently.  Some of the tips below are hers; some are mine that I’ve picked up along the way.

Reduce:

• Have a foaming soap dispenser at every sink.  That way, you don’t have to turn the tap on to lather the soap.  Just turn it on when you’re ready to rinse.
• Shorter showers or reduce the number of showers.  I shower every three days now, which is approximately two showers a week.  Since one eight-minute shower uses 17 gallons (65 litres) of water, this means my showers only use 34 gallons (130 litres) per week, instead of 119 (452 litres).
• Batch wash dishes.  I used to do dishes three or four times a day to keep the counter clean.  Now I do dishes once a day in the morning, and let them pile up until the next day.  This way, I’m only pouring one sink full of water a day.  If for some reason, I have to do more than one sink full of dishes, I try to time it so that I can use the dishwater for something else, like wiping down the cupboards or mopping the floor.
• Fill a cup with water and use it to brush your teeth and rinse your mouth/toothbrush.
• If it’s yellow, let it mellow.  If it’s brown, flush it down.  I also let it mellow if it’s baby poop.  We use cloth diapers, and Liam poops three to five times a day (I know!).  Cloth diapers do use a lot of water since they have to be laundered every other day, but I still feel like they’re the better choice over disposable.  I always wash a full load, and line dry them, plus I got all my diapers used, so even though they use more water than disposables to manufacture, I figure it’s essentially cut in half if you buy them used – spread the environmental footprint out a bit.
• If you live in the country, use an outhouse.  I wouldn’t use it all year round (-40C and heading out to the outhouse to pee doesn’t sound like much fun), but I don’t see why we couldn’t have one to use in the spring, summer and fall.  There’s an old one sitting in the yard.  Might be time to dig a new hole.  The two thing that bother me about outhouses are the smell and the flies.  Perhaps I need to do a little research, and I’ve heard that if you keep if super clean, both problems go away.

Reuse:

• Bathe the baby every other day, and save at least one of his bathtubs full of water.  I don’t always use soap and shampoo on his tender skin, so once or twice a week, I bail out the water from one of those soapless baths into a big bucket.  This water is then used to water my plants and seedlings, to clean (like cleaning the bathroom), to soak stained laundry, or even to flush the toilet (pour it in the bowl, not the tank).
• I’m currently trying to think up a way of rigging up the sink and toilet so that grey water from the bathroom sink gets diverted into the toilet tank and is then used to flush the toilet.  I found a gadget that does it on the Internet, but it doesn’t seem to be for sale anymore.  If anyone out there has a brilliant idea on how to do this, let me know. I’ve also seen the toilet tank sinks, but I think it would be kind of awkward to have to straddle the toilet to wash your hands.

And of course, the best tip of all, DON’T BREAK YOUR FUCKING TOILET TRYING TO CONSERVE WATER.

#felfie

If you have any other tips/tricks for conserving water or information on old wells and how to get them back into shape, please leave a comment!

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acreage, barn, chickens, country life, country living, Saskatchewan, water, wells

It took more than a week, but I finally got over the stomach flu.  Then I caught a cold.  Which I think might actually be a sinus infection (going to the doctor on Monday).  But – I got out of the house and back to work.  Now things don’t feel so overwhelming and look so grey.

Must always remind myself – this is a ten-year project, not a one-year project.  Things don’t have to be completed by next summer.  One project at a time.  One small piece of the whole.

This year’s projects:

• Chicken Coop
• Barn
• Chicken tractor
• Water

Chicken Coop – 95%

This is (nearly) done.  I successfully converted the old grain shed next to the barn into a coop for our laying hens.

Before:

After:

Fully enclosed run

Chicken wire extends out along the ground to discourage digging

Enjoying their new ladder roost – although this makes the pecking order painfully clear.  Poor Ginger.

All that’s left to do is set up a new water bucket (the water nipples arrived in the mail today!) and cut a window on the south side (I need Will’s help with that.  As much as I love the Sawzall, I don’t trust myself to cut a large hole in the shed).

Barn – 15% done

I finished mucking out all the stalls this week, including taking apart the disgusting old brooder made from pallets in the first stall near the front door.  I found a desiccated rat in the 8 inch pile of old manure.

So many times I’ve wished for straight hair.  Sigh.

Dead rat.  Gross.

Future home of pigs or goats?

What’s left to do on the barn:

• Power wash and disinfect the stalls
• Fix the back door
• Fix the windows
• Power wash the exterior
• Prime and paint the exterior
• Fix the eaves troughs
• Fix the back corral

If all we get done this summer is fixing up the barn and the back corral, I’ll call that a giant success.  The wind was so strong the other day, it blew out one of the three remaining windows.  Grrrr.

Chicken Tractor – 5%

Haven’t actually started any work on building the chicken tractor, but I have a design and plans, so I figure that counts for at least 5% of the project completed.  I was hoping to have this done before I head to Regina for my next gig at the beginning of May so that I could order my meat chicks as soon as I got back in mid-June, but . . . well, we’ll see.  The plans I’m using say that you could build it in a weekend, so I figure it’ll take me at least two weeks.  I’m running out of time (and money.  Need to start bringing home a paycheque).

Water – 25%

We had a technician come out and look at the well.  He gave us lots of useful information – the pressure switch is good, the pump is good, the pressure tank looks okay, 29 feet top to bottom with about 20 feet of water.  The only thing that was wrong was that we needed 240 volts to run the pump, and we were only getting 100 volts.  Huh.  Turns out the electricity to run the pump is in the old house (so when we demolish it, we’ll have to get it connected to the new house – $$$) and the line from the main power pole to the old house was broken, so Will shut down the power to the farm, climbed a very high ladder, and hooked it back up!  Hurrah!  We have running water from the well.

So with Step One completed (get the well working), we moved on to Step Two (test the water).  We shocked the well, which involves a lot of bleach, and took a water sample in to be tested for potability at the Saskatchewan Research Council.  Bad news – it tested positive for total coliform and the nitrate level is approaching unsafe amounts.  Not drinkable.  Perhaps usable as household water if we can get rid of the total coliform, but at the moment, I don’t want to wash with it.  We’re going to shock it again and test another sample.

If we can move past Step Two, then Step Three would be hook it up to the house or at the very least, get a long hose and fill the cistern because right now it’s costing us $130 per month to haul water.

If Step Two and Step Three are a no go, then Step Four takes drastic measures – refurbish the old outhouse.

Yup.

Farm selfie – Felfie?

Feeling a lot more optimistic about the property now that a) I’m not vomiting every hour on the hour and b) spring is starting to arrive.  The other night, Liam and I were wandering around on our usual after supper outside time, and there were geese honking, and ducks quacking, and cranes hollering, and frogs croaking – it was like everything had come alive suddenly.  The air was cool and fresh, and the sunset was amazing.  It felt good to be here.

You can’t take your chicken for a nightly walk in the city. 

 

 

 

 

Homemade Vitamin Water

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DIY, flavoured water, homemade vitamin water, water

Homemade “vitamin water” is all over the place lately.  I’ve read two magazine articles about it this month, and dozens of pins on Pinterest.  Mainly, it involves infusing a pitcher of water with fruit and herbs, so that the water takes on a light flavour.

I also happen to have an herb planter on my patio, full of healthy, luscious herbs that I really don’t know what to do with.

(Except basil.  Basil is my herb soul mate.  We get along famously.)

So I took a handful of stevia and lemon mint leaves, half a lemon and half a cucumber, sliced thinly, and stirred them into a pitcher of water, and let it sit in the fridge over night.

It was . . . okay.  Too cucumber-y for my liking.  And the herbs made it taste a little bitter.  It was better if I poured half a glass from the pitcher, and then filled up the rest with tap water.

My next attempt, I used 10 lemon mint leaves, and half a lemon, thinly sliced, and it was so much better!  Very refreshing.  Best part, you can keep it in the fridge, and then you have cold water that doesn’t take on that fridge taste.  I quite liked my second attempt.

My third attempt is all citrus, all the time.  Half an orange, half a lime, and half a lemon.  No herbs this time.  We’ll see how this one turns out tomorrow morning.  Looks promising!