I just read a popular blog dedicated to the survival genre, and was invited to a few remarks on writing off-grid water supply and waste disposal, based on my own experience. My point is not to find fault with some comments here on the blog, but to add it. I understand that you write what you have experienced. That is all what I do, too.

The blog owner is a supporter (like me) to buy a cheap piece of land and lives out in an off-grid form,a cheap, older campers. He recognizes that a deep well pumps and related financially and logistically out of reach for most who are considering or living lifestyle, and that this leads to a severe water rationing in many cases, whether you carry water or rainfall catchment or a combination thereof.

In this context, "Popular blogger" (previously identified as PB) talks about using a pump-up sprayer as a shower with water heated on a stoveor, in winter, the wood stove. PB pushes the little hand-sprayer, without any kind of hose, ideal. He is also a believer in the sawdust toilet as a solution for human waste disposal. Of course itself creating a more economical use of water some gray water from showers, washing dishes, etc., and PB advises a "drywell" 55 gallons of oil containing holes in the ground, buried with stones and filled perforated drum.

That makes much more sense and is a viable solution. InIn fact, I will be only one such system, used exactly as shown. I also have similar systems, the larger pump-up sprayer included (which I much prefer), stoves and solar-heated I (a black plastic 1.5 gallons Pump Up Sprayer had, filled with water and placed in the sun, quick hot enough for a nice shower), and various types of RV and portable toilets. What I ended up with and eventually used for a while was a system that far surpassed any of the foregoing in comfort,and in fact would be sufficient as a permanent solution.

As it happened was, I came across an old house with single-wide trailer is needed to from the trailer park, it had to be moved, so I was able to acquire them for the great sum of $ 50. This trailer was packed with, among other things, a standard flush toilet in the bathroom. At the time I had with an old portable toilet, and while the portable became a viable solution, I rather enjoyed the opportunity, aStandard flushing toilet. So, after I 'new' apartment in the city was leveled, and (relatively speaking), I have my old WWII era bolt-action Marlin, 22 rifle, a few holes in the side walls and the floor to shoot a 55 gallons drum Then it sunk in a previously dug hole. Instead of filling the drywell with rocks as in PB's drum, I left the empty bowl and filled the hole around him with stones, as a leach field. This I covered with plastic sheeting and a layer of soil. Then I ran a sewer line on the drumStarting from my newly purchased toilet and went to using it, flush it directly by pouring about 3 liters of water * into the bowl from a bucket of mud that were previously filled by my rainwater catchment tanks.

I was like a lark for a while happy, but then I decided to improve things by using a 55 gallon drum on a run of concrete blocks outside the (outer stack) bathroom wall behind the toilet, a line from the drum on the water inlet of the toilet, and direct the water from aDrain on the drum. Ah, such a luxury! I had no more than a bucket of water poured flush, I now had a real flush toilet, with a small handle and everything! The only thing I did was done in the way of maintenance, if a longer period of little or no rain, I had to go to the brook and pour a jug of water into the tank before I could flush. Or, as often the case, I would discover this when the water ran out actually, so no action when I pulledhandle. In such cases I would usually just go ahead and pour the water directly in front of the bowl, after returning from the creek several hours later, you certainly do not (expect myself to the bay and not go fishing!).

During such a dry spell, which you retire on reaching the handle and discovered that it did not work, I wondered if I should only water I did not make the trip for dishwashers use allocated in the bay. Unfortunately, this would require settingfrom the dishes for one or two days, and I was clean utensils and paper plates for that matter. Then suddenly occurred to me that I can use the water for both purposes! Damn, just because water was used for dishes, does not preclude its use for flushing a toilet!

Until now, I still had so placed the gray water only exhausted on the floor in the courtyard, with the gray water drain pipe is already in the trailer. I took a shower in the tub with myPump-up sprayer, and occasionally took a real bath, if there is enough rain that I use flush (no pun intended) with water, bottled water and standard toilets for washing hands, brushing teeth or shaving, and heated water into a soup pot to the kitchen sink for dishwashers. All that gray water will be lost. Enough of that, I took my saw and began to saw the drain line from the kitchen sink and the toilet was the end, went outside and setting aMud bucket under the stump out of the sink / toilet to the water start issueing out of it. I am a 55-gallon plastic drum outside, at the end of the gray water line to catch water from the trough. All the water that I have for flushing the toilet.

This worked well. In fact, it worked so well that I grow is a problem with mosquito larvae in the now seldom used toilet holding tank, and water started overflowing and running under the trailer, so I finally completely removedand led the way out of this groove to a new fish pond. But this is a story for another day.

Of course, I was after flushing with a bucket again, but this is not such a big deal, right?

* 5-gallon plastic bucket, so named because "sheetrock mud is sold" in such a bucket.

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