Water Supply, more words of wisdom from M.G. Kains

Chapter 15, of Five Acres and Independence: A Handbook for Small Farm Management, is about the water supply.  M.G. starts by talking about his experiences with a variety of cisterns that he'd lived with over the years, and in one paragraph, he encapsulates all the mistakes one can make with putting in a cistern to harvest rain:

"At various times I have lived in houses where the primitive rain barrel furnished family needs and reared mosquitoes; where the shallow cistern provoked profanity every winter because holes had to be chopped in the ice and from which the water had to be lifted by a "sweep", "the old oaken bucket," or hauled, hand over hand, by rope and pail; a "chain-pump"; where a deep, unprotected cistern was built without provision for drainage and had to be cleaned of noisom sludge, dead toads, mice and other gruesome ingredients every summer; where there was a "filter cistern" which could not be cleaned (!) because of inaccessibility; where an attic tank filled direct from the roof collected leaves, soot, dirt and bird droppings; and where, in several houses, the water had to be pumped by hand either to a tank in the garret or a pressure tank in the cellar."

I have read a number of blogs where the authors planned to use a cistern to harvest rainwater, and this paragraph brought these folks to mind.  I've also seen some neat instructables from those who have actually made working rain collection systems.  Here are a couple of links to some manuals about creating rainwater catchment systems:


The Texas Manual of Rainwater Harvesting
Rainwater Harvesting Systems for Montana
Harvesting Rainwater for Landscape Use, University of Arizona
Rainwater Harvesting, Practical Action Organization

This interesting page details one family's experiences with using rain barrels:

http://www.kidsfromkanata.ca/files/rainbarrels.html

And here's another page from a fellow building a custom tank in his father's garden:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Water/WooTank/wootank.htm

In fact, visit Instructables and do a search for rain barrels.  There are lots of ideas for those that are handy.  In conclusion, there are some books that come highly recommended for those that are looking to build a water supply system based on rainwater:























































Art Ludwig has also written some great books on re-use of "greywater":















This particular blog entry also points out some of the pitfalls of gathering rain from a roof:

Blogs and Blooms

Here on my island, we've been complaining about how much rain we've had over the holidays.  Ironic really, as we will undoubtedly suffer a shortage of rain in July, and August.  We so rarely have freezing weather, it seems positively wasteful to watch the water that got away flowing off into the little swale behind the house.

Non-Electric Lifestyle

I was reading Wendy's post over at Surviving the Suburbs about giving up her dishwasher to save electricity and become more eco-friendly, and it struck me that we all have our little guilty electric pleasures that will be hard to give up.  I'm sitting here listening to my electric coffeemaker gurgling on the kitchen counter, and wondering how long I would need to pedal a bicycle generator to get my morning cup of joe.

There are so many things that we North Americans take for granted, and just never consider how difficult it would be if the lights went out for a very long time.  Growing up, we didn't have an electric coffeemaker.  Mom made it on top of the stove using a percolator; it went camping with us and made coffee just as happily on the camp stove as it did on the electric stove at home.

Many of my relatives had large kitchens with both electric and wood-burning cook stoves in them.  One of my aunts had an oil-burning cook stove for use in the winter.  One thing I remember vividly is watching my granny stick her hand into the over to gauge the heat and whether it was hot enough to stick a tray of cookies in.  I wouldn't have a clue what felt hot enough.  Mom's stove had a thermometer on the front of the oven door.

We've probably all seen those camping gadgets for making toast or popcorn, but these are not new inventions.  There was a time when these are what people used.  I remember sitting in front of the fire with a wire basket on a long handle full of popcorn kernels and watching them pop.  I grew up with all those non-electric tools, although I will admit that when dad came home with that first electric coffee maker when I was in high school, that produced genuine excitement.  With that baby in the house, my first major addiction was born.  Mmmm, coffee! 

Nevertheless, when I look at a lot of food storage sites, and prepper sites, even though we all talk (and write) about preparing for a time when there might not be electricity, we all have all kinds of electric gadgets for prepping with.  Now that's ironic.  M.D. Creekmore addressed the same issue in a recent post, 4 Unique Ways to Preserve Food.  Honestly, I read a post from someone who is using an electric pressure cooker to can small batches!

This has driven me to an obsessive search for all those old-fashioned non-electric tools that my mother used to use.   Amazon has an amazing selection of these products, and the prices are not bad at all: