Conserving water in the kitchen or garden: what, if anything, do you do?

[CatPoet]

I'm lucky ( or not) , I'm stuck on plateau and it is wet here.  We just had flooding in our basement.   Every summer we do have a  water  restrictions but they go for every one, including farmers and big companies.  We all get  a  certain amount we can use in case of drought, well it is wet here for the moment. The river has been over it banks ever spring for the last 5 years.

Also this area prides it self of being the most environmentally    friendly town in Europe, so we  have hard  restriction then the rest,  all is geared toward saving Nature. 

 

I use non salted cooking water for  flowers. And when it comes to roses, I dont  have any now but  we used to pee on them, stunning roses, weird morning habits.

[haresfur]

I've seen a few of those rain cisterns; that's a great idea. Friends around here are more likely to adapt used 55-gallon drums (that previously held something nontoxic, of course) and tuck them at strategic points under their rain gutters. It's probably less expensive, and easier for a small plot of land. Haresfur, was that an expensive installation?

I've heard of newer houses that deliberately direct the grey water out to the lawn and only send the black water to the septic system. I think it isn't approved in a lot of areas in the USA, unfortunately. It does require more awareness on the part of the homeowner about what goes down the drain, and which household chemicals to use.

 

It's a 20,000 L tank and I think it was under $2000, installed.  I'm hoping to keep it about 1/2 full in case they need it for fire fighting (my fire plan is to wave goodbye to the house and leave things to the fire authority).   It probably won't pay for itself in water costs - at least for a long time.  But it's the right thing to do and I consider it part of the entertainment budget (or the food budget - same thing). The thing about small barrels is that they will fill up right away if you have any roof to speak of.  You can often find used chemical totes that are in between in size - assuming you know what they had been used for is ok.

 

I don't think I would put grey water from the drains on food plants - you can get grey water treatment systems here but they look like a fair bit of work to maintain.  They are also moving to recycled water piping systems in some parts of Oz - purple pipe.

 

I know that agriculture is a very heavy water user but that doesn't mean that domestic saving is insignificant - especially when you factor in energy as mentioned above. As someone said, "If you give a megaLitre of water to a farmer, they make food.  If you give a megaLiter of water to a city, they make poo."

[CatPoet]

haresfur: My aussie friend fire plan is like  yours, except they now have a  fire and water proof safe room in the house they built.  The three homes they have had before  2    burned and 1 swept away in the great  wall of water and all the day after the house had been sold.  

 

My toilette have two buttons, one for pee and one for poop,  different amount of water and the new built houses  have system that make sure minimum water and energy  waste, you cant even  wash you clothes when you want too, which is annoying when you have kid.  It only starts at night...

[weinoo]

 

The real reason California is in drought is not because people in LA are taking long showers, it's because of the incredibly byzantine but enshrined laws regarding water rights that give farmers no incentive to shift to more water efficient forms of agriculture (such as drip irrigation). If you've ever seen the movie Chinatown, the entire movie was about the high stakes politics of water rights in California.

Actually, the real reason California is in drought is because where most of the people live, it's a fucking desert.

Edited July 1, 2014 by weinoo (log)

[Shel_B]

Collect gray water whenever you can -- from rinsing fruits and vegetables, rinsing dishes, etc.  If you have a grey water container (a slop bucket!) in the kitchen you can use that for watering plants.  We used to keep one in the shower, as well, to catch the water running while you wait for it to get hot and whatever shower water could be recovered.  That water can be used to flush the toilet, or to water plants.    In the shower, we'd rinse. Turn the water off and soap.  Then water back on for short final rinse.  Get a low flow toilet and a low flow shower head, of course. 

 

 

We do that at Toots' place.  After her shower I carry two to three buckets of used water out to the garden.  She has a container in one part of her sink for washing and soaking vegetables and dishes.  That goes on to the garden as well.  She also installed a water recirculator of some sort into the hot water plumbing which significantly shortens the amount of time water has to run before it's hot at the tap.

 

Both of us use low flow toilets (1.3 gallons/flush), and we only flush every other time if there's urine in the bowl.  This, BTW, is quite common amongst our friends and acquaintances in this area, a procedure that goes back at least to the 1980s when there was a severe draught in Marin County, across the bridge from us.  "If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down."

 

Neither of us have a dishwasher, so we are very careful when washing dishes.  I don't run water while soaping the dishes, and use a low flow stream when rinsing off the soap.  Toots does something similar. 

 

Our water company offers a testing kit to determine if the toilets leak (you'd be surprised at how many do and how much water is wasted) which we both use every few months.

 

Toots installed an irrigation system for her garden which has cut water use there substantially yet the garden is looking better than it has in years.  All her plants are natives and draught tolerant.  She has no lawn.  We had a few guests over two weeks ago and one of them said that the garden looked "voluptuous."

 

We often go to talks about conservation and try to stay aware of current ideas.

[Martin Fisher]

Can anyone who gardens tell me if my pasta water would be safe for my roses: 4 qts water, maybe a Tbsp of olive oil and maybe 2 tsp of salt?

 

In general, roses are quite sensitive to salinity, so it's not a good idea unless it's well diluted and portioned sparingly.