living on a cistern
 

Some friends of mine are on a cistern water system and I have been researching and helping them find ways to save water as they have it trucked in.
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So….we have done some things to save water usage for them.
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Removed the old 3.5 gallon flush toilet and installed a 1.6 gallon flush toilet.
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Removed the old unrestricted full flow shower head and installed what I believe is an adjustable .5 gallon to 2.5 gallon per minute water flow head. The new shower head incorporates what looks like a venturi design to mix air at the shower head to improve the feel of the lower water flow.
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Now I am researching ways to save water usage at the bathroom sink and I am thinking about recommending either a .5 gallon or .375 gallon per minute aerator to slow water flow.
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And probably recommend a 1.5 gallon per minute aerator at the kitchen sink faucet. The higher flow rate for the kitchen sink over the bathroom sink is to compensate for the different usages of the two appliances. Filling a kitchen sink at .5 gallons per minute may be a little frustrating…
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http://www.metaefficient.com/bathroom-products/the-most-efficient-faucet-aerators-of-2008.html
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Really, the only other major water user in the place would be the washing machine and yes it’s an older top loading model so I know its wasting a ton of water.
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Any recommendations on a water-saving efficient washing machine I can pass on to them ?

Re: living on a cistern
 

I live on a cistern and I can tell you that the major water using device is the wife. When I was a bachelor living with my cousin, we used a 1600 gallon cistern full in a month. Now that I'm married, we use the same amount every week or less. Install all the gadgets you want, but if you leave a woman unattended, she will go through a lot of water.

Re: living on a cistern
 

Don't flush so often. Not every visit requires a flush.

Also consider a dishwasher. They "can" use less water. Especially if the dish washer person likes to leave the water running while washing the dishes.

Re: living on a cistern
 

And check into recycling the "gray" water from the kitchen sink and maybe the bathroom sink. Flush the toilet, water the house plants or the garden, or other non-potable water needs.

Re: living on a cistern
 

rain collection for outside uses may also help.

The biggest user of water in the house is the washing machine. We replaced ours with an LG front loader, and it drastically reduced our water usage.

Now, about those trees.....

Re: living on a cistern
 

If it's brown...flush it down...

If it's yellow...let it mellow....

Re: living on a cistern
 

Are they using roof collected rain, or just the trucked in ?

What the annual rain fall there ?

How much roof do they have ?

Re: living on a cistern
 

Exactly what I was going to say.:wink:
Keep a box of washing powder beside the toilet so if it's a real full-strength hangover piss, it will neutralise it. Sorry to sound brutal, but it's true!
Get a front-loader. Even an old one will save a stack of water. Mine uses a third of what a top loader does.
Do the washing-up in a plastic bowl in the sink, not the sink itself. Needs less water to fill to the right depth.
Fix anything leaking, or even dripping. Toilets love to drip away your water.
Put in cisterns for grey water, and another for roof water. Grey water for the garden and toilet, roof water for everything except drinking.

I've been living at my BO place like this for 20 or more years (though my "grey water" is also from a hand-dug well - gets pretty stinky), and we rarely run out. We do have a lake there, but organising the pumps, batteries, etc. is such a pain that we avoid it as much as possible.
15 people lived there for a full drunken week (stag week/bachelor week, whatver you call it), and only had to refill the (small, very small) rooftop water tank once.
.

Re: living on a cistern
 

The only water they use is trucked in...the 3 of them are using approximately 800 gallons a week at the present time...

average annual precipitation is 25 inches per the internet...they have a (2 bedroom, 1 bath) small home with a metal roof so they have the beginnings of a great rain collector with the addition of some gutters and whatever else may be entailed...i've never thought about that before since i have my own water wells, but the education on water saving devices has been great...

i had no idea how much water people needlessly waste till i started researching water saving devices...

Re: living on a cistern
 

I agree completely.
Women, as a general rule, have no idea.

Re: living on a cistern
 

That's a pretty huge amount of water to use a week. But they have good rainfall, so it's also a pretty good amount they have to use now that they need to! Is the rain seasonal, or autumn/winter only? I have a good amount of experience sizing commercial harvesting systems, so may be able to help out there. If it were a tile roof I would suggest a UV system to make the water suitable for drinking - but at 800 gallons a shot, the problem is NOT drinking too much of it or cooking with it!
The water tank I mentioned for the stag party BTW is about 3x5x4 foot. You don't NEED a 15 minute shower every day - get wet, turn it off. Get soapy, turn it on. Get out, get dry.

Re: living on a cistern
 

Light:
I'm afraid to give thanks to that one. might find myself like john wayne bobbit in the morning hehe

Re: living on a cistern
 

With 25 inches of annual rainfall ( you SURE that's right ? You're talking pretty arid conditions there.... ), a square foot of roof will collect 15 gallons of water over the course of a year.

Small house.....say it's 1200sf of roof......18,000 gallons/yr or 1500 month.

That's HALF their use right there....and probably more, I'm being conservative with the roof, and I suspect, if they are in Alaska like you, you're WAY off in your rainfall amounts.....


Put in a 1500 gallon plastic tank, a basic sand filter like a pool uses that you can backwash, a 5 micron fiber filter, and a UV light, and you're good to go.

Got a buddy on top a mtn here where well isn't practical, economically ( no grid power either ), and he does this. I calculated the gallons he would get based on our annual rainfall and his roof, and he says I hit it right on the money.

Re: living on a cistern
 

If you put ina full system with a roofwasher etc you do lose a fair bit of water though - that 10 minute downfall has to go straight to the grey water tank, so you lose it for showering purposes etc. Wilo make an excellent system, which produces very clean water - but at a price.
They will however take your specs, design you a system for free, then you can buy elsewhere. I normally use their stuff because it is well proven, and clients in the past have been delighted with it - but you CAN build a system for buttons. I've done it, the only thing I got from them was a simple mesh filter - industry sample!

Re: living on a cistern
 

Install a urinal... just a thought.

Re: living on a cistern
 

I really wish we had done this in our master bath when we had our house built.

Oh well, add to the list for the eventual retirement cabin.

Re: living on a cistern
 

Make your own waterless urinal - cut off the water supply to it, and add about a cupful of any oil into the urinal. Whatever festers there will be blocked off by the oil on top, and every month or so just pour a bucket full of bleachy water down it.
My neighbour has exactly this system running in his yard - knocked down the garage, built a bar instead. His friends kept going outside and "watering" the pot plants, killing them, which annoyed his wife a good bit... so he got an old-style wooden phone box, painted it all up nicely, and put in a urinal which drains into a soakaway maybe 1' square by 2' deep. Just hardcore and rubble in the soakaway, then turf and grass on top. He uses vegetable oil, motor oil, any oil, and it stops it getting smelly.
As a bonus, it also has a fully working old-style dial phone in it, for that "Honey, I'm gonna be a little late home tonight" call.:565:

Re: living on a cistern
 

Rainwater collection in Alaska? It's popular in the South but haven't seen them in cold climates. It seems ice and sliding snow would destroy the gutters and diverters.
Anyone have experience with this up North?

Re: living on a cistern
 

You use a snow guard on the roof to keep the snow from sliding off and ripping the gutter off....

http://www.metalroofsnowguards.com/t...axx=300&maxy=0


Without:

http://www.metalroofsnowguards.com/a...ges/dennys.jpg


With:

http://www.metalroofsnowguards.com/a...ages/bank1.jpg

Re: living on a cistern
 

Be careful with this one. You may inadvertently create a huge mosquito breeding pond. Assumes mosquito's are a pest in your area; they are in mine.

Re: living on a cistern
 

The eaves are colder than the rest of the roof because they are not adjacent to the heated home.
So the snow guard is one solid block of ice and the metal roof (where it's covering heated space) has thousands of pounds of snow on it....ready to slide because the metal roof is just above freezing. I have a 1 in 10 pitch on my roof. You can imagine the downward pressure against the frozen eaves. At some point something has to give. will it be the gutters? Will the frozen snow on the eaves somehow separate fron the snow guards and slide off with the rest of the snow above it without taking the snow guards and gutters with it?
I'm a Southerner that just moved North, I don't know, you tell me. There must be a reason rainwater collection has not really caught on here.