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Barb (Boudicca),
I've been away for a 10 days, so have just read your first Frugal-Ed post,
on how you save water, but I'm replying before I read the consequent posts
in the thread you must have started.
I just wanted to say that what you do is _exactly_ what our family of 5
have done, when we had a drought. The only difference is, I used ordinary
buckets (incl. a 20-liter), and lifted each to put the rinse water back in
for the next wash. I also filled each in the washtub (plug was in), leaving
the last ~20 l in the tub, siphoning most of it back in via the outflow hose.
I mentioned "drought", since all our water comes straight out of the sky,
onto our roof, into a 4000-gal concrete tank, & electric-pumped up to the
taps. So for late Fall until mid Spring, we have water overflowing! (here
in western New Zealand) so it's only in the Summer (January-February) that
we're short of water. (I use a float & string, to keep track of the water
level in the tank.)
For flushing, besides having a brick in the cistern (and now having a
1/2-flush button), during major droughts I ensured that a bucket (the right
anount to refill the cistern) was filled with wash-water and each member of
the family poured that into the cistern. We also didn't flush necessarily
_every_ time. Also in those droughts, I used bath water for the wash
cycle, and single rinse (with exactly-right amount of soap powder: 1-cm
bubbles burst in ~5s). If we could expect rain in a week or so, we used
bath-water then rinse water, for flushing.
For disasters (earthquakes and running completely out of drinking water),
we have gallon juice-jugs full of boiled water in a cupboard (been there
for years!), and we take our showers in at work/school (our kids were at
high school then). We haven't had such a drought for ~4 years - one kid's
got his degree and is married, the other 2 are at college now.
I suspect I've said too much, much too late.
My Web-site is unbelievable, but true.
**
David MacClement <davd@geocities.com>
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/6783/