What do you do to conserve water?

Question

I personally collect water from showering to flush the toilet. At the same time I adopted "if its yellow let it mellow...". I also use water from rinsing dishes to water my plants in the yard.

Shower no longer than 3 min. etc

what do you do to conserve water and help the environment?

Answer 1

if its yellow, save it for plant food....

gives nitrogen, some phosphate.

dilute 10 to 1 with the washing up water, which will also supply more phosphate.

all you need now is the potash, bonfire or woodburner ash are perfect but need to be put on fresh.

Answer 2

I have a well, so I cherish the rain.  I go to the laundry mat to wash clothes when their is a drought or when the well seems low.  

The yellow mellow rule also applies, but I don't live alone so I'm not certain if this is working.

We go to the car wash.

I use to  save rain water in a large tub but the mosquitoes are horrible.  I do use rain water every now and then for house plants.

We buy drinking water, barrel and jug.

Answer 3

what you are doing is great ,never use human waste (p**p or pee) for plants that you may get food from or anything else from it is unsafe and can pass dangerous pathogens into the soil and to you.Try using a rain barrel to collect rainwater to water plants,plants will absorb the soap taste into it and the vegetables could take on a bit of that taste.

Answer 4

Anne,

All of my homes water comes 100% from rain catchment (we live completely off the grid). It's absolutely safe, and actually better then some bottled water and most city tap water.

We storage it in 2000 gallon containers we purchased from Wiley (I think that's the right spelling), but before we did that we got 55gal containers for free from coca cola and Walmart (make sure they're "food grade" or you'll be doing a lot of cleaning). freecycle, craigslist, habitat for humanity, a local ranch and feed store, etc.

Before we decided to catch and drink our rain water I sent in samples of it to UT for testing, the results came back 99 ppm (500 being "drinkable" by the dept of food and drug) 0 toxins, 0 chemicals, 0 pollutants. Since then i purchased a handy little pocket water tester and have kept a close eye on it. I also take it with me on travels and check the water I'm drinking in other cities. Some of the better cities tap water are SLC at 250ppm, Detroit (surprisingly) 280. I don't want to say what some of the lesser ones were. Aquafina bottle water was 440.

Anyway, your roof should be completely clean and a perfect surface for catching water. Any dust that builds on our roof simply settles to the bottom (the house inlet is about a foot off the bottom) of the tank and doesn't affect the taste or health of the water what so ever (we all ate plenty of dirt as a kid). We do ad a table spoon of bleach to the tanks per every 500 gallons of water, not for the caught rain water (as it is clean to drink immediately),but because we storage it for long durations of time in tanks. Without the bleach (silver works just as good) algae tends to grow (which still isn't bad for you, just taste weird).

We do not filter our water as it is cleaner then most "filtered" bottled water.

If you'd like more info I wrote a self help DIY guide that's available at  www agua-luna com

Hope this helped, feel free to contact me personally if you have any questions if you’d like assistance in making your first self sufficient steps, I’m willing to walk you step by step threw the process. I’ve written several how-to DIY guides available at  www agua-luna com on the subject. I also offer online and on-site workshops, seminars and internships to help others help the environment.

Dan Martin

Alterative Energy / Sustainable Consultant, Living 100% on Alternative & Author of How One Simple Yet Incredibly Powerful Resource Is Transforming The Lives of Regular People From All Over The World... Instantly Elevating Their Income & Lowering Their Debt, While Saving The Environment by Using FREE ENERGY... All With Just One Click of A Mouse...For more info Visit:  

www AGUA-LUNA com

Stop Global Warming!!!

Answer 5

To conserve water, I take very quick showers. I just turn on the shower, then shut it off while I shampoo and lather up, then I turn it on, rinse off, and that's it.

I leave the faucet off when I brush my teeth and I think that's all about I can do for conserving water.

I do other things though like using composters and recycling....I wish there was more I could do but I'm very limited because I'm stuck in a dorm...*sniff*

Answer 6

I think something people take for granted is leaky faucets and toilets.  We make sure that our faucets and toilets don't leak.  You wouldn't believe how much water is wasted from those two things.