Post by Arlene on Jan 7, 2006 16:44:26 GMT -5
www.homestead.org/AltEnergy/SheriDixon/Cutting%20the%20Utilical%20Cord.htm
www.homestead.org/AltEnergy/SheriDixon/Cutting%20the%20Utilical%20Cord%20part%20two.htm
Cutting the Utilical Cord
Part One: Turning the Tables on Reddy Kilowatt.
by Sheri Dixon
We've scrimped. We've saved. We've searched far and wide. At long last we're here- The Country.
Whether our Country is 100 acres in the center of the middle of nowhere, or nestled among other small homesteads of a few acres each, we take very seriously the stewardship of this precious land we have chosen to call Home Sweet Home.
Organic gardening? Of course.
Learning and/or perfecting farming crafts and skills? Absolutely.
Self-sufficiency is the core of the Apple of Homesteadery. Duh.
A few of us are settling virgin acres miles from conventional power, while most of us are building reasonably close to utility hookups or renovating old farmhouses with varying degrees of modernization.
The former group of Homesteaders has no choice- alternative energy is thrust upon them, and they have my undying admiration. Their task is huge, their dedication to the "simple" life inspiring, mainly because there is nothing simple about it.
I belong to the latter group, those of us who unthinkingly turn on the tap and water comes out, flip a switch and lights come on, adjust the thermostat and feel comfortable. We must consciously choose between conventional consumption and alternative, possibly less convenient but undeniably more Earth friendly utility options.
My family is at the point of choosing, and although we have never been accused of being "normal" or "average", I believe our findings and plans match many other contemporary Homesteaders'.
If you are looking for a really good, technical article on the science of photovoltaics, there are hundreds of them on the web and whole shelves of books devoted to that, but this ain't it. I don't necessarily need to know How this stuff works, I need to know Why it will work for my family and our tiny fragment of Earth. This is one country gal who barely made it through high school science trying to gather enough basic knowledge to make sense and make a difference.
In a nutshell, here's how it works-
Energy from the Sun is collected by solar panels. It's transported to batteries that store it, and from there it goes to an inverter that turns it into usable, garden variety electricity. It then travels a) back into your house to power your stuff, or, in an inter-tie situation, b) back through the meter (which will run it BACKWARDS) and into the grid to run other peoples' stuff.
*Disclaimer* The following thoughts, ideas and plans are the express opinions of the Dixon family. Each family has their own level of comfort regarding utilities, and except for possibly using genetically enhanced hamsters on amphetamines running little power wheels, everyone's opinions are correct for them, and to be respected. *End Disclaimer*
Our current utility situation includes city water, city sewer, conventional electric and natural gas hookups.
Our first task was to decide how much energy we wanted to cover, and our confident albeit naive answer was "Hey, since we are going to do it, why not do it up right? Let's produce ALL our electricity with the help of Old Sol."
Next, we needed to look at our existing electrical usage (egads!). Using a handy worksheet I downloaded from RealGoods, we ascertained that during our high-usage months, we use just shy of 80,000 watt hours per day, or 2,400 kilowatts per month. This was verified by looking at our electric bill. Oh sure, I could've just looked at the bill and saved myself several hours lookin' under and behind stuff with my reading glasses, a flashlight, and a large shoe to squash creepy things, but the worksheet itemizes and highlights the powerhogs. (Plus I now know where all the dustbunnies go when they die).
For a system to power our current house at our current usage using our high month figures, we would need to write a check for right around $100,000. Hmmmm, we need a Plan. This is obviously not one of those projects that can be tackled of a piece (unless I'm holding the winning Texas Lottery ticket).
Also, if we lived in the Austin TX area, AustinEnergy would pay us $5 per watt towards our installation. Given that cost is between $6 and $9 per watt, that's pretty sweet. My husband thinks it's reason enough to pack up and move to Austin, but he's always looking for an excuse to do that...
STEP ONE: we need to TURN STUFF OFF. I was assured that our electric usage was pretty standard for a house of our size, but that only made me feel worse, because I thought we already DID use less electricity than most folks. Just paying attention and turning stuff off will cut our usage by about 15%, according to Stephen the Technician at RealGoods.
STEP TWO: upgrade/eliminate our appliances. We don't use some of the watt guzzlers anyway- hair dryers, curling irons, coffee makers; but our water heater was old when we bought the house, so no telling it's exact age, and from the faded label on the side, uses a whopping 4,500 watts of electricity. Granted I'm a terrible laundress and only wash in cold water, we don't have an automatic dishwasher (well, sort of- my wonderful husband gets up from the dinner table and automatically does them), and we all take short showers in the morning, but DANG. So Mr. Water Heater is first on the appliance Hit List- my husband has been drooling over the tank-less super-efficient ones at the Home Depot for several years anyway.
Our other appliances are not too bad. Our fridge and freezer are both 1/3 smaller than most folks' and under 5 years of age. Our little apartment sized dryer, bless it's heart, was a reject from the clinic I manage when they upgraded to a full sized model, but since it's smaller, uses less than half the watts of a full sized dryer. Our washer, handed down to me used when my 18 year old son was still in cloth diapers, will have to be replaced also, but not mainly as an electrical issue, but a water one- our plumber estimates it's using almost 50 gallons per load.
The kicker of course, is that these trusty old appliances are STILL WORKING. I guess there's something to be said for replacing them BEFORE they screech to a halt, but I'm still from the "You don't buy new, you make do" generation. Replacing our appliances with new efficient ones will shave another 35% from our usage, taking us down to half our current consumption without touching a solar panel, battery or inverter.
STEP THREE: we can address the solar installation in stages, starting with enough panels to produce about 1/2 our needs, during most months, and build up from there.
You can, if you are a do-it-yourselfer, climb-on-the-roofer, not-askeerd-of-high-voltager, put together your own solar system, buying piece by piece the panels, batteries, inverters and whatnots OR you can find a company who's been doing this for years and has pre-packaged units that are slightly altered according to situation, who come to your house and install the whole shebang (Howdy, come on in, I'll whip up a fresh batch of tea. Sweet or Unsweet?).
Now, since we already have electricity, courtesy of TXU Electric, a tie-in system just makes sense. If we have rain for a week like we did back in June and we deplete our stored power, the system will shift to TXU electric so seamlessly (supposedly) that only our computer will notice it. If we are making more than we can store, the surplus power gets washed back into the Grid and our meter runs backwards (I want to SEE that)!
There is a disconnect option, so anytime we want to, we can completely cut off from the Grid and be a free-standing entity.
Armed with my electric bill, the customer service number, and the righteous knowledge that it's federally mandated that power companies must buy back excess electricity produced, I bravely called TXU Customer Service. Note that I HAD been warned that the power company would not HAPPILY buy back electricity nor would they make it easy. After mucking through the swamp of "for my convenience" voice mail options and people who had no inkling of what I was talking about ("So why are you putting lights on the roof?"), I reached the executive offices and was told by Ms. Generic Phonevoice "Your call is VERY IMPORTANT to us. Please leave a message and we will return your call". Still waiting...
After chatting with Phil at Solar Installations in Dallas, who has been in the solar business for over 20 years, I was assured that he has installed systems for folks using our electric company, and after he educates them some, they have always gone ahead and installed a net meter.
Well, Class, what have we learned? We have learned something that our friends Homesteading in the Boonies already know- we need to THINK about where stuff comes from. We are so removed from the sources of everything, even those of us growing our own fruit and veggies (turn on the sprinkler and water comes out, cook and can on the stove, store in the freezer), raising our own livestock (electric fencing, lights for those early morning and winter evening feedings, tank heaters for the Snowbirds), and working those Homestead Crafts and Skills (power tools and tractors anyone?) need to sit up and take notice.
If we pay more attention to our consumption, and take steps to be responsible for our own power production, we will pay less to Reddy Kilowatt, and simultaneously pay into our children's healthy future on a healthy planet.
Part 2:
Water - Evicting the Sewer Gators
by Sheri Dixon
Water. We turn on the tap, and there it is. But where did it come from? How has it been treated (or not)? And where does it go once we are done with it?
If you are like us, you are connected to a municipal water/sewer system that performs reasonably well. The water is supposedly drinkable, looks and smells pretty good, and none of the kids has sprouted a third eyeball (yet).
We have been questioning our particular municipality about several issues and between the unsatisfactory answers and the rising costs (water, sewer and garbage pickup in our little town costs between $50 and $75 per month), we are ready to chuck the whole system.
One of the issues is that our drinking water smells very chlorine-ish most of the time, accompanied by an Alka-seltzer look and sound to it. I once cleaned my little boy's goldfish bowl and within 5 minutes, the fish were belly up. Good thing they were nondescript orange ones, easily and quickly replaced. My neighbor's son has actually been pelted by chlorine hail coming out of the shower. Our city water comes from a well, or several wells, they aren't very precise down at city hall. Now, our city only has but 745 folks in it, but that's gotta tax a well (or several wells ). We need a new source of water.
Our other issue is a murky sludge pit down at the corner of the property that smells suspiciously like sewerage. I call, I complain, the water dudes come out, dig a hole, stand in said hole smoking cigarettes, fill up the hole and declare it fixed.
We need a way to take care of our own wastewater.
Issue One-The three hurdles to water acquisition are-
-finding your water source
-storage of water
-delivery of water to the household
The traditional way to take care of this is to call a well digger and pay him to drill a well somewhere in the area of 40-150' down (costs and depths will vary according to your location, around here it's about $15 per foot), and a septic guy and hand him around $5,000 to sink a 3,000-5,000 gallon holding tank and clay tile leach field that will take ALL the water from your house and infect it with the little bit from your toilets, rendering it all disgusting. There are several obvious problems with these two options.
Our underground water supply is being sucked dry from agriculture, manufacturing and urban/suburban sprawl. It will take between 2,000 and 5,000 years to replenish our aquifers once they run out, and that's a long time between showers. If drilling is out, that leaves us with standing groundwater (ponds, streams, rivers and lakes), springs, or rainwater catchment.
Most of North America's groundwater is still potable, unless directly downhill from a major contaminant (nuclear station, foundry, lots of moo cows). If you are lucky enough to have a natural body of water on your property, you have a "source and storage combo" and all you need is a delivery system which can be anything from a carried bucket to a sophisticated pumping system run by standard electric, wind generator or solar panels.
Another earthbound source of water is an underground spring. Some springs show only as little muddy patches surrounded by lots of water-loving plants- kind of a mini marsh. Once you have determined that this stays marsh-like all year, you most likely have a year-round spring and can develop it. Depending on your skills and money, this can be simply dug out, lined with rocks and fenced off, all the way to constructing a bona fide well house. This too is it's own storage "tank" so all that's needed is a delivery system.
And there's always rain. Catching rainwater leaves out the potentially contaminated groundwater middleman. Even in the driest spots in the US, if you are careful about collection and conservative about usage, rainwater can provide a lot of your household's needs. In cold climates, the precipitation will have to be siphoned into the house to avoid freezing. Collecting off of the roof of your house is the most obvious catchment- just be sure there's nothing toxic in your shingles. There are diverters made that dump the first rainwater from the roof, then spin to catch the rest of the water off of the rinsed surface. Rainwater can be caught in cement, wooden or plastic barrels or cisterns and there should be some sort of tight mesh cover to keep out skeeters, leaves and the occasional suicidal rodent.
Your delivery system can be buckets and forced child labor, hand pumps (personally, I loved the kitchen sink hand pump in my grandparents' summer cottage and I'll always remember my little brother pumping the outside pump and a frog falling out), electric pumps, wind generated pumps or solar pumps. The solar pumps must receive at least 4 hours of direct sun per day to be effective. More is better, of course. The average pumping system works best if located 200' or less from the house. You can purchase pressurized holding tanks so your pump doesn't run every time someone washes their hands.
Now that you have your water and have chosen a delivery system- what do you do with it once it's in your house?
There are roughly a bazillion different water Treatment and water Purifying gizmos being marketed. The first step is to have the water tested to see what nasties you need to eliminate, since different gizmos blast different things. You can have your water tested by your County Ag Extension (average cost $200), or you can purchase a kit from a private company like Suburban Water Testing (www.h2otest.com).
Most times, depending on your test results, you can get away with just filtering the water for everything but consumption.
A low tech but still effective way to kill living organisms in your water is to boil it for 10 minutes. This does not filter out harmful non-organic matter, however.
Filter systems do just that- filter out things like arsenic, mercury and lead, and although they do trap bacteria, they don't kill it. In fact, the filters are a wonderful breeding ground for bacteria. This results in water that may be more bacterial than it was raw (bad).
Reverse osmosis is also used to treat for toxic heavy metals, and it too lacks in the living organism destruction department.
Filtration and reverse osmosis are considered "treatments", boiling and steam sterilizing (distilling) are considered "purifications".
Steam sterilizers usually come with a filter attachment, covering most of the bases.
Included in the list of What's Nasty in the Water are
-organic impurities like algae or sewerage. These will cause the water to stink and taste bad
-inorganic impurities like sand, silt and salt. These cause turbidity- dirty looking water
-TDS (total dissolved solids) which will give the water that metallic taste, leave hard water scales in the shower, and include excess fluoride. Yes, you CAN have excess fluoride. I found this out in Wisconsin when we moved to the country and had well water. My daughter's teeth developed white streaks and I thought "Oh, sure. We move to the country to have a healthier life, and because the water isn't fluoridated, her teeth are suffering". Turns out the water naturally has too MUCH fluoride. In the municipal treatment process, this all gets taken out and then they add just a little back in. Your tax dollars at work.
-toxic/heavy metals including lead, mercury and arsenic
-toxic organic chemicals courtesy of the manufacturing industries to the tune of one billion pounds per year nationally
-VOC (volatile organic compounds) which are lightweight and evaporate
-Chlorine. Yes the same stuff used to make our drinking water safe will, when mixed with the right organic substances mutates into THM (trihalomethanes) linked to cancer, high blood pressure and chronic anemia
-pesticides/herbicides (poison, no explanation necessary)
-Asbestos. Unbelievably, asbestos cement is the stuff water pipes were made of. Unbelievablier, over 200,000 miles of this still carries water to a lot of folks' kitchen sinks.
-Radionuclides including uranium and radium
Of course (hopefully) your water won't have ALL the above floating around in it, and testing it will determine the type of treatment/purifying your water needs to make it safe.
Issue Two- What to do with the water AFTER you use it. Obviously, the septic route is wasteful and expensive.
The water from sinks, showers, clothes and dishwashers is considered "grey" water- used, but not totally abused. There is no reason this can't be collected and diverted to your veggie garden. In fact, the bits of food, soap (safe, biodegradable soaps are available and are, I think, superior to the other stuff anyway and no more expensive), and teensie bits of skin cells from washing are good for your plants. The simple way is to run pipe directly to the garden using a soaker hose irrigation system. You can get as elaborate as your imagination or industriousness allows. I have plans for several "branches" of said pipes that I can alternate from veggies to flowers and back via the use of cut off/diverter valves.
Toilets produce "black" water. Black water treatment/ disposal is much more rigidly regulated by local municipalities and there are many many ways to go about this unpleasant but necessary chore. In fact, just the discussion of toilets merits it's own chapter in our quest for utility independence, therefore I won't be opening this "can" of worms (sorry) quite yet.
Better to leave ya'll clutching your magazine, banging on the door and hopping up and down. (smile)
www.homestead.org/AltEnergy/SheriDixon/Cutting%20the%20Utilical%20Cord%20part%20two.htm
Cutting the Utilical Cord
Part One: Turning the Tables on Reddy Kilowatt.
by Sheri Dixon
We've scrimped. We've saved. We've searched far and wide. At long last we're here- The Country.
Whether our Country is 100 acres in the center of the middle of nowhere, or nestled among other small homesteads of a few acres each, we take very seriously the stewardship of this precious land we have chosen to call Home Sweet Home.
Organic gardening? Of course.
Learning and/or perfecting farming crafts and skills? Absolutely.
Self-sufficiency is the core of the Apple of Homesteadery. Duh.
A few of us are settling virgin acres miles from conventional power, while most of us are building reasonably close to utility hookups or renovating old farmhouses with varying degrees of modernization.
The former group of Homesteaders has no choice- alternative energy is thrust upon them, and they have my undying admiration. Their task is huge, their dedication to the "simple" life inspiring, mainly because there is nothing simple about it.
I belong to the latter group, those of us who unthinkingly turn on the tap and water comes out, flip a switch and lights come on, adjust the thermostat and feel comfortable. We must consciously choose between conventional consumption and alternative, possibly less convenient but undeniably more Earth friendly utility options.
My family is at the point of choosing, and although we have never been accused of being "normal" or "average", I believe our findings and plans match many other contemporary Homesteaders'.
If you are looking for a really good, technical article on the science of photovoltaics, there are hundreds of them on the web and whole shelves of books devoted to that, but this ain't it. I don't necessarily need to know How this stuff works, I need to know Why it will work for my family and our tiny fragment of Earth. This is one country gal who barely made it through high school science trying to gather enough basic knowledge to make sense and make a difference.
In a nutshell, here's how it works-
Energy from the Sun is collected by solar panels. It's transported to batteries that store it, and from there it goes to an inverter that turns it into usable, garden variety electricity. It then travels a) back into your house to power your stuff, or, in an inter-tie situation, b) back through the meter (which will run it BACKWARDS) and into the grid to run other peoples' stuff.
*Disclaimer* The following thoughts, ideas and plans are the express opinions of the Dixon family. Each family has their own level of comfort regarding utilities, and except for possibly using genetically enhanced hamsters on amphetamines running little power wheels, everyone's opinions are correct for them, and to be respected. *End Disclaimer*
Our current utility situation includes city water, city sewer, conventional electric and natural gas hookups.
Our first task was to decide how much energy we wanted to cover, and our confident albeit naive answer was "Hey, since we are going to do it, why not do it up right? Let's produce ALL our electricity with the help of Old Sol."
Next, we needed to look at our existing electrical usage (egads!). Using a handy worksheet I downloaded from RealGoods, we ascertained that during our high-usage months, we use just shy of 80,000 watt hours per day, or 2,400 kilowatts per month. This was verified by looking at our electric bill. Oh sure, I could've just looked at the bill and saved myself several hours lookin' under and behind stuff with my reading glasses, a flashlight, and a large shoe to squash creepy things, but the worksheet itemizes and highlights the powerhogs. (Plus I now know where all the dustbunnies go when they die).
For a system to power our current house at our current usage using our high month figures, we would need to write a check for right around $100,000. Hmmmm, we need a Plan. This is obviously not one of those projects that can be tackled of a piece (unless I'm holding the winning Texas Lottery ticket).
Also, if we lived in the Austin TX area, AustinEnergy would pay us $5 per watt towards our installation. Given that cost is between $6 and $9 per watt, that's pretty sweet. My husband thinks it's reason enough to pack up and move to Austin, but he's always looking for an excuse to do that...
STEP ONE: we need to TURN STUFF OFF. I was assured that our electric usage was pretty standard for a house of our size, but that only made me feel worse, because I thought we already DID use less electricity than most folks. Just paying attention and turning stuff off will cut our usage by about 15%, according to Stephen the Technician at RealGoods.
STEP TWO: upgrade/eliminate our appliances. We don't use some of the watt guzzlers anyway- hair dryers, curling irons, coffee makers; but our water heater was old when we bought the house, so no telling it's exact age, and from the faded label on the side, uses a whopping 4,500 watts of electricity. Granted I'm a terrible laundress and only wash in cold water, we don't have an automatic dishwasher (well, sort of- my wonderful husband gets up from the dinner table and automatically does them), and we all take short showers in the morning, but DANG. So Mr. Water Heater is first on the appliance Hit List- my husband has been drooling over the tank-less super-efficient ones at the Home Depot for several years anyway.
Our other appliances are not too bad. Our fridge and freezer are both 1/3 smaller than most folks' and under 5 years of age. Our little apartment sized dryer, bless it's heart, was a reject from the clinic I manage when they upgraded to a full sized model, but since it's smaller, uses less than half the watts of a full sized dryer. Our washer, handed down to me used when my 18 year old son was still in cloth diapers, will have to be replaced also, but not mainly as an electrical issue, but a water one- our plumber estimates it's using almost 50 gallons per load.
The kicker of course, is that these trusty old appliances are STILL WORKING. I guess there's something to be said for replacing them BEFORE they screech to a halt, but I'm still from the "You don't buy new, you make do" generation. Replacing our appliances with new efficient ones will shave another 35% from our usage, taking us down to half our current consumption without touching a solar panel, battery or inverter.
STEP THREE: we can address the solar installation in stages, starting with enough panels to produce about 1/2 our needs, during most months, and build up from there.
You can, if you are a do-it-yourselfer, climb-on-the-roofer, not-askeerd-of-high-voltager, put together your own solar system, buying piece by piece the panels, batteries, inverters and whatnots OR you can find a company who's been doing this for years and has pre-packaged units that are slightly altered according to situation, who come to your house and install the whole shebang (Howdy, come on in, I'll whip up a fresh batch of tea. Sweet or Unsweet?).
Now, since we already have electricity, courtesy of TXU Electric, a tie-in system just makes sense. If we have rain for a week like we did back in June and we deplete our stored power, the system will shift to TXU electric so seamlessly (supposedly) that only our computer will notice it. If we are making more than we can store, the surplus power gets washed back into the Grid and our meter runs backwards (I want to SEE that)!
There is a disconnect option, so anytime we want to, we can completely cut off from the Grid and be a free-standing entity.
Armed with my electric bill, the customer service number, and the righteous knowledge that it's federally mandated that power companies must buy back excess electricity produced, I bravely called TXU Customer Service. Note that I HAD been warned that the power company would not HAPPILY buy back electricity nor would they make it easy. After mucking through the swamp of "for my convenience" voice mail options and people who had no inkling of what I was talking about ("So why are you putting lights on the roof?"), I reached the executive offices and was told by Ms. Generic Phonevoice "Your call is VERY IMPORTANT to us. Please leave a message and we will return your call". Still waiting...
After chatting with Phil at Solar Installations in Dallas, who has been in the solar business for over 20 years, I was assured that he has installed systems for folks using our electric company, and after he educates them some, they have always gone ahead and installed a net meter.
Well, Class, what have we learned? We have learned something that our friends Homesteading in the Boonies already know- we need to THINK about where stuff comes from. We are so removed from the sources of everything, even those of us growing our own fruit and veggies (turn on the sprinkler and water comes out, cook and can on the stove, store in the freezer), raising our own livestock (electric fencing, lights for those early morning and winter evening feedings, tank heaters for the Snowbirds), and working those Homestead Crafts and Skills (power tools and tractors anyone?) need to sit up and take notice.
If we pay more attention to our consumption, and take steps to be responsible for our own power production, we will pay less to Reddy Kilowatt, and simultaneously pay into our children's healthy future on a healthy planet.
Part 2:
Water - Evicting the Sewer Gators
by Sheri Dixon
Water. We turn on the tap, and there it is. But where did it come from? How has it been treated (or not)? And where does it go once we are done with it?
If you are like us, you are connected to a municipal water/sewer system that performs reasonably well. The water is supposedly drinkable, looks and smells pretty good, and none of the kids has sprouted a third eyeball (yet).
We have been questioning our particular municipality about several issues and between the unsatisfactory answers and the rising costs (water, sewer and garbage pickup in our little town costs between $50 and $75 per month), we are ready to chuck the whole system.
One of the issues is that our drinking water smells very chlorine-ish most of the time, accompanied by an Alka-seltzer look and sound to it. I once cleaned my little boy's goldfish bowl and within 5 minutes, the fish were belly up. Good thing they were nondescript orange ones, easily and quickly replaced. My neighbor's son has actually been pelted by chlorine hail coming out of the shower. Our city water comes from a well, or several wells, they aren't very precise down at city hall. Now, our city only has but 745 folks in it, but that's gotta tax a well (or several wells ). We need a new source of water.
Our other issue is a murky sludge pit down at the corner of the property that smells suspiciously like sewerage. I call, I complain, the water dudes come out, dig a hole, stand in said hole smoking cigarettes, fill up the hole and declare it fixed.
We need a way to take care of our own wastewater.
Issue One-The three hurdles to water acquisition are-
-finding your water source
-storage of water
-delivery of water to the household
The traditional way to take care of this is to call a well digger and pay him to drill a well somewhere in the area of 40-150' down (costs and depths will vary according to your location, around here it's about $15 per foot), and a septic guy and hand him around $5,000 to sink a 3,000-5,000 gallon holding tank and clay tile leach field that will take ALL the water from your house and infect it with the little bit from your toilets, rendering it all disgusting. There are several obvious problems with these two options.
Our underground water supply is being sucked dry from agriculture, manufacturing and urban/suburban sprawl. It will take between 2,000 and 5,000 years to replenish our aquifers once they run out, and that's a long time between showers. If drilling is out, that leaves us with standing groundwater (ponds, streams, rivers and lakes), springs, or rainwater catchment.
Most of North America's groundwater is still potable, unless directly downhill from a major contaminant (nuclear station, foundry, lots of moo cows). If you are lucky enough to have a natural body of water on your property, you have a "source and storage combo" and all you need is a delivery system which can be anything from a carried bucket to a sophisticated pumping system run by standard electric, wind generator or solar panels.
Another earthbound source of water is an underground spring. Some springs show only as little muddy patches surrounded by lots of water-loving plants- kind of a mini marsh. Once you have determined that this stays marsh-like all year, you most likely have a year-round spring and can develop it. Depending on your skills and money, this can be simply dug out, lined with rocks and fenced off, all the way to constructing a bona fide well house. This too is it's own storage "tank" so all that's needed is a delivery system.
And there's always rain. Catching rainwater leaves out the potentially contaminated groundwater middleman. Even in the driest spots in the US, if you are careful about collection and conservative about usage, rainwater can provide a lot of your household's needs. In cold climates, the precipitation will have to be siphoned into the house to avoid freezing. Collecting off of the roof of your house is the most obvious catchment- just be sure there's nothing toxic in your shingles. There are diverters made that dump the first rainwater from the roof, then spin to catch the rest of the water off of the rinsed surface. Rainwater can be caught in cement, wooden or plastic barrels or cisterns and there should be some sort of tight mesh cover to keep out skeeters, leaves and the occasional suicidal rodent.
Your delivery system can be buckets and forced child labor, hand pumps (personally, I loved the kitchen sink hand pump in my grandparents' summer cottage and I'll always remember my little brother pumping the outside pump and a frog falling out), electric pumps, wind generated pumps or solar pumps. The solar pumps must receive at least 4 hours of direct sun per day to be effective. More is better, of course. The average pumping system works best if located 200' or less from the house. You can purchase pressurized holding tanks so your pump doesn't run every time someone washes their hands.
Now that you have your water and have chosen a delivery system- what do you do with it once it's in your house?
There are roughly a bazillion different water Treatment and water Purifying gizmos being marketed. The first step is to have the water tested to see what nasties you need to eliminate, since different gizmos blast different things. You can have your water tested by your County Ag Extension (average cost $200), or you can purchase a kit from a private company like Suburban Water Testing (www.h2otest.com).
Most times, depending on your test results, you can get away with just filtering the water for everything but consumption.
A low tech but still effective way to kill living organisms in your water is to boil it for 10 minutes. This does not filter out harmful non-organic matter, however.
Filter systems do just that- filter out things like arsenic, mercury and lead, and although they do trap bacteria, they don't kill it. In fact, the filters are a wonderful breeding ground for bacteria. This results in water that may be more bacterial than it was raw (bad).
Reverse osmosis is also used to treat for toxic heavy metals, and it too lacks in the living organism destruction department.
Filtration and reverse osmosis are considered "treatments", boiling and steam sterilizing (distilling) are considered "purifications".
Steam sterilizers usually come with a filter attachment, covering most of the bases.
Included in the list of What's Nasty in the Water are
-organic impurities like algae or sewerage. These will cause the water to stink and taste bad
-inorganic impurities like sand, silt and salt. These cause turbidity- dirty looking water
-TDS (total dissolved solids) which will give the water that metallic taste, leave hard water scales in the shower, and include excess fluoride. Yes, you CAN have excess fluoride. I found this out in Wisconsin when we moved to the country and had well water. My daughter's teeth developed white streaks and I thought "Oh, sure. We move to the country to have a healthier life, and because the water isn't fluoridated, her teeth are suffering". Turns out the water naturally has too MUCH fluoride. In the municipal treatment process, this all gets taken out and then they add just a little back in. Your tax dollars at work.
-toxic/heavy metals including lead, mercury and arsenic
-toxic organic chemicals courtesy of the manufacturing industries to the tune of one billion pounds per year nationally
-VOC (volatile organic compounds) which are lightweight and evaporate
-Chlorine. Yes the same stuff used to make our drinking water safe will, when mixed with the right organic substances mutates into THM (trihalomethanes) linked to cancer, high blood pressure and chronic anemia
-pesticides/herbicides (poison, no explanation necessary)
-Asbestos. Unbelievably, asbestos cement is the stuff water pipes were made of. Unbelievablier, over 200,000 miles of this still carries water to a lot of folks' kitchen sinks.
-Radionuclides including uranium and radium
Of course (hopefully) your water won't have ALL the above floating around in it, and testing it will determine the type of treatment/purifying your water needs to make it safe.
Issue Two- What to do with the water AFTER you use it. Obviously, the septic route is wasteful and expensive.
The water from sinks, showers, clothes and dishwashers is considered "grey" water- used, but not totally abused. There is no reason this can't be collected and diverted to your veggie garden. In fact, the bits of food, soap (safe, biodegradable soaps are available and are, I think, superior to the other stuff anyway and no more expensive), and teensie bits of skin cells from washing are good for your plants. The simple way is to run pipe directly to the garden using a soaker hose irrigation system. You can get as elaborate as your imagination or industriousness allows. I have plans for several "branches" of said pipes that I can alternate from veggies to flowers and back via the use of cut off/diverter valves.
Toilets produce "black" water. Black water treatment/ disposal is much more rigidly regulated by local municipalities and there are many many ways to go about this unpleasant but necessary chore. In fact, just the discussion of toilets merits it's own chapter in our quest for utility independence, therefore I won't be opening this "can" of worms (sorry) quite yet.
Better to leave ya'll clutching your magazine, banging on the door and hopping up and down. (smile)
