Reduce household water use by 40%

I've read the book, it's available online for free at http://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html . As Jenkins says in the book- why do we, as a culture, take a gallon and a half of perfectly clean drinking water, and crap in it, only to spend billions treating such water to be released back into the environment? I agree, it's not for everyone, but neither is burning wood for heat, growing your own food, etc. I agree wholeheartedly with the process, you must read the book before judging. Americans are so terrified of feces that we won't even talk about it most times. My wife, however, does not think it's a great idea, and the War Department rules on all domestic matters.

We did save at least 40% of our water consumption by installing water-saving aerators on all faucets, and getting a front-load washer that uses a lot less per load. We also switched to a dishwasher, after my brother demonstrated how it actually uses less water than hand-washing/rinsing. I got most of my faucet parts online, can't think of the name of the site now. Finding a water-saving showerhead that actually works well was tricky, mine is a nozzle type, like those found in some hotels. It's more like being pressure washed than being in a rainstorm. I also have a gauge on the showerhead and hose bib that keeps track of the gallons used. Sometimes seeing how much you use is the biggest prod to reduce usage.

EDIT: I got the stuff from Energy Federation, Inc. Their site is at: http://www.energyfederation.org/consumer/default.php

I think for most people there just isn't much of a ROI in saving water. Here city water/sewer costs me around $25/month, it's not worth worrying about. In MI we have a well, so the marginal cost of water is close to free. I'm more interested in halving my electric bill.

Here I would consider the "investment" to include having to crap into a bucket every day in my own house (and then empty the bucket). I think it's well worth whatever fraction of $25 flushing represents to not have to do that. (How much do you think you would have to pay someone to periodically empty such buckets?) Even if it is in a nice wood box. Ick. (Yes, I do have some hang-ups.)

I suppose with those and a graywater system I could have saved the cost of my septic system when I built my house in MI, it wasn't $20-30k but it still wasn't cheap. I still think it was worth it.

In short, I'm part of the "not" in "not for everyone". I bet my 5 year-old would think it was cool though. She still leaves the bathroom door wide open...

20-30K for a septic tank???? Out here we pay around 5-6 K including leach field ,

Gibbonboy said:

We also switched to a dishwasher, after my brother demonstrated how it actually uses less water than hand-washing/rinsing.

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can you please explain this - i still don’t see how a dw is more efficient than hand washing dishes

i have a dw and i live alone so i might only wash a coffee cup, spoon, fork and a few plates a day

BrotherBart said:

Little extreme for me. I will stick to saving half of that water. The woods are twenty feet from my office door.

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Also a great way to save on deer spray for your landscaping

Since our dog died, I've been trying to fill in - fairly effective, but not quite as good as the greyhound was.

-Colin

I drop my deuces at work during the week. I don't think carrying my elimination around the workplace in buckets would go over well.

My wife would call the guys with the rubber truck if I suggested that one.

To test whether the DW used more or less water, we did a side-by-side. Rinsing is the culprit when hand-washing. Besides, my son and wife can dirty 5 plates, 2 pans, the food processor, and 15 spoons and forks just having a bowl of cereal in the morning (well, it seems that way to me).

I'm pretty sure that this will remain a curiosity until there's a real shortage of drinkable water. I know each water bill isn't that much, but I'm not talking about purely monetary waste, more about the gluttonous attitudes that accompany "endless" fresh water. Actually, most of the municipal water supplies in this country aren't really good for anything but crapping in. How much pollution is caused by our "sanitary" sewer systems and the chemicals that we use to treat both water and sewage? That, or have half of your backyard saturated in festering poop in a leach field or sand mound?

I have friends who live totally off-grid, and have outhouses. This would certainly be a way for them to reduce their impact on the environment.

Gibbonboy said:

T
I'm pretty sure that this will remain a curiosity until there's a real shortage of drinkable water. I know each water bill isn't that much, but I'm not talking about purely monetary waste, more about the gluttonous attitudes that accompany "endless" fresh water. Actually, most of the municipal water supplies in this country aren't really good for anything but crapping in. How much pollution is caused by our "sanitary" sewer systems and the chemicals that we use to treat both water and sewage? That, or have half of your backyard saturated in festering poop in a leach field or sand mound?

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Everywhere I've lived, there was "endless" fresh water. If water levels dropped it was temporary because of drought, not because of overflushing. The main thing is to make sure that water rates (including industrial and farming use) accurately reflect supply and demand. Then when water is scarce the high prices will force efficiency. Abstract guilt will never motivate people like good old $$$.

I have seen and lived in many houses with septic systems, and not one had a "backyard saturated in festering poop". At most an area with nice green grass. I have seen vacation lakes that had problems with too many and improper septic tanks, but the problems were those of too many nutrients (also due to lawn fertilization), not actual biological (bacterial) contamination. And then the (invasive) zebra mussel moved in and cleaned up the water again anyway. Not exactly two wrongs making a right, but close.

[quote author="DiscoInferno" date="1189619460]I have seen and lived in many houses with septic systems, and not one had a "backyard saturated in festering poop". [/quote]

It's called "hyperbole".

And that's exactly the attitude I'm talking about, that money and gluttony rules. The whole "I'll use and pay for as much water as I want" thought is what will lead us to having shortages of drinkable water. Those lakes that we get our water from that are contaminated with heavy metals and such that water treatment plants don't remove. The groundwater that's contaminated from gasoline additives that were supposed to SAVE the environment.

I realize that about 10 feet of normal soil will sufficiently filter home sewage enough to render it drinkable, not that I'd try it. And yes, while it may not be "festering" per se, if you have a leach field or sand mound, you have tons of poop laying out there waiting to break down.

Gibbonboy said:

[quote author="DiscoInferno" date="1189619460]I have seen and lived in many houses with septic systems, and not one had a "backyard saturated in festering poop".

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It's called "hyperbole".

And that's exactly the attitude I'm talking about, that money and gluttony rules. The whole "I'll use and pay for as much water as I want" thought is what will lead us to having shortages of drinkable water. Those lakes that we get our water from that are contaminated with heavy metals and such that water treatment plants don't remove. The groundwater that's contaminated from gasoline additives that were supposed to SAVE the environment.

I realize that about 10 feet of normal soil will sufficiently filter home sewage enough to render it drinkable, not that I'd try it. And yes, while it may not be "festering" per se, if you have a leach field or sand mound, you have tons of poop laying out there waiting to break down.[/quote]

My point was that there are not and have rarely/never been water shortages where I have lived. Why should I feel guilty about using a non-scarce, renewable resource? And where there are shortages, the higher prices should lead to conservation. So I largely view that as a self-correcting problem. The heavy metals aren't because of water overuse, it's from coal-fired power plants, mining, and other industrial pollution. Electricity is what we need to use less of (says the guy whose next electric bill is going to be close to $300 due to constant a/c use). And when renewable and non-polluting sources of electricity become plentiful, then I won't worry about electricity consumption either. There's no virtue in conservation for conservation's sake; only if it alleviates some problem.

Something to think about - in much of the country the animal population vastly outnumbers the human population. Most animals don't even bury their waste. Fish feel free to poop right in the water! When I go camping I don't filter the water to remove industrial pollutants; I filter to remove things "nature" has left for me. So I feel like I'm doing pretty good to use a septic system.

I live in town and my water usage is metered, and then my sewer bill is based on that. So I have a real incentive to cut my water usage. Plus, the local distribution system is nearly maxed out, so if all of us overdo it, they're going to have to build a new plant and raise taxes to pay for it.

My parents, on the other hand, live on a tree farm in central Wisconsin. They have a septic system and draw their water from a well. For them, I think it's a zero-sum game. They pump the water out of the aquifer, use it, and then send it back down for reprocessing. The only resource being used up is the electricity it takes to run the pump. Since they heat their hot water with wood, I always take long, hot showers when I'm visiting them.

Given fresh water shortages in tropical regions, I think it would make sense to develop some kind of cheap rainwater storage for places like that. For every place, actually.

Anyway, I do my part by whizzing on the compost pile whenever nobody's looking. Another thing I try to get away with, especially when drinking large amounts of beer, is flushing the toilet every third or fourth usage. It pisses my wife off, but I think it saves money. Reminds me of something I heard as a kid: "If it's brown, flush it down. But if it's yellow, let it mellow."

Living alone, my water use averages 600 gal/month (500-700 swings). Over the summer, I had a lady living with me. Consumption went up to 2650 average (2450-2800 swings). You wouldn't believe the resentful stares I got when explaining rationales for conservation. Sheesh...

I think those of us in the eastern US, esp. in the country don't yet feel the pressure that's going to happen when people start paying for water as a limited resource. I like to think of my well as an unlimited reserve and I think within my 19 acres, I'm probably doing an OK job of recycling what I use through a well maintained septic field. But I can't stop the drainage of aquifers as higher density housing creeps up the county, so at some point, I expect to have problems, at which point good low use water habits will help. And this is where you will see some real battles waged - why should I have to redrill a well on my 19 acres because the housing complex that goes in down the road runs my aquifer dry by watering their lawns? You can bet I'll be at the town board meetings pushing for draconican government intervention if/when that happens someday.

Out west, this is going to become a major problem a lot sooner. In Austin, I knew people paying $250-$500/month to water their 0.5 acre lawns and keep them lush. Amazingly, those water/sewer prices were still not enough to stop them, but it definitely stopped me - I had a greenish/brown lawn most of the summer. Never died - it just bounced back in the fall.

We were also glad to buy front loading washers through the city's bulk purchase/rebate program back in 1998 - well before it was commonplace. The cost of water/sewer definitely helped my motivation to see the payoff, even when energy was cheap. I'm now that much happier that I put so many less gallons of hot water in it since energy prices have risen. (although now not such a big deal with solar HW, but at least it helps me stretch that supply in shoulder seasons)

Point is, economics will have to drive this in the cities, and for those of us in the country where we can't easily contain our water supply, things will get ugly. We could very well reach a point where rainwater collection and a cistern for all our non-drinking use makes far more sense than drilling more wells - my well here was $8000 - that would go a long way towards a collection / cistern system, and leave lots of cash for some reverse osmosis system for the drinking water!

-Colin

One of my requirements when deciding where to live was to have lots of clean water underneath me - and available locally. Luckily, we are blessed with both - scads of water - so much that they had to install flood control dams to save us all from washing downstream.

When I lived in NJ, it was in the Pinelands, which has quadrillions of gallons of water (clean) - you only have to dig a 6 foot hole to hit the first veins of it.

So I agree that this problem is regional in nature. Of course, then there is the matter of waste.....less water through a sewer system makes it less likely to overflow and easier to process.

A show on discovery channel last week showed that Death Valley has a vast aquafier under it!

I didn't read that book, but I remember reading about rural China - that farmers competed to put up the best looking outhouses along the road so that you could choose to use it! Also, they collected and distilled urine - although that may have been for other uses than fertilizer. The ancient chinese figured out how to get compounds out of urine which today we know of as "hormones", and used them for birth control and other things.

NY Soapstone said:

But I can't stop the drainage of aquifers as higher density housing creeps up the county, so at some point, I expect to have problems, at which point good low use water habits will help. And this is where you will see some real battles waged - why should I have to redrill a well on my 19 acres because the housing complex that goes in down the road runs my aquifer dry by watering their lawns? You can bet I'll be at the town board meetings pushing for draconican government intervention if/when that happens someday.

Out west, this is going to become a major problem a lot sooner. In Austin, I knew people paying $250-$500/month to water their 0.5 acre lawns and keep them lush. Amazingly, those water/sewer prices were still not enough to stop them, but it definitely stopped me - I had a greenish/brown lawn most of the summer. Never died - it just bounced back in the fall.

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These things are not even just regional, but a couple of miles makes all the difference. Growing up my parents lived in town, which draws its municipal water directly from Lake Superior (infinite supply). Basically the same place my well in Munising comes from. But now they live outside of town, away from the lake, in an area where the wells are known to be spotty. (Sometimes they go dry, and sometimes the water is salty.) The township recently turned down an application for a new development because of concerns they would suck up all the water. So here conservation makes a lot of sense and it's true that straight market incentives don't quite apply, at least on the individual level.

For metered city water, though, supply and demand do work. When I first bought my house in MD I watered my lawn through the typical summer drought. After the first $250 water bill (3 months) I told the grass it was on its own. This summer I didn't have to mow for 7 weeks straight, which was a bonus.