What are you doing to become water efficient?

[igorsMistress]

well, I'm in Los Angeles. I grew up in Santa Barbara, also during a drought, and as a child I was taught to turn the water off like that. Also in college in Berkeley I it was the expectation around me. I don't insist my kids do it, bc I know as a child I thought of it as child abuse! but now as an adult I do it. You may be right it doesn't save so much, but I also have a toddler, who literally every time I turn on a faucet tells me there's a drought, and that kind of gets under one's skin...

Los Angeles is saying we are only allowed to water 2 days a week for 8 minutes each time, so that's pretty severe. BUT you can get around it by hand watering, which you can do daily after 4pm or before 9am. And truthfully, I have to hose down the chickens' run in the middle of the day. They are responding by raising prices drastically after a certain, very low, water use threshold.-AND it doesn't matter how many people live at your home. I have 8 people living at my house (and 25+ animals), but they don't care.

I say, where are our desalinization plants?

Long-term, I encourage my kids to think about moving somewhere where it occasionally rains, although too much moisture brings a whole other set of problems

I had to laugh about the kids telling you there’s a drought. I sat down with the grandkids and explained to them why we need to conserve water and why I’m saving water from the dog bowls and dishes and timing their showers. How important it is to turn off the water while brushing, etc. The ten year old helped me with the chickens the other day and I left the hose running to make a puddle while I checked for eggs and he was appalled.

Thanks so much for your input! I lived in So Cal for a long time and when I moved to AZ, well most people don’t have a lawn. There’s a lot of xeriscape and the towns here, at least where I live, encourage people to go that route and give rebates to rip out your lawn. I feel like I have an idea of what I’ll see in the future here now though. I currently have five people living in my home and ten animals here. My biggest thing is what I’m going to do with my garden. If I switch to hydroponics then I’ll use electricity which is nuclear and I’ll still use water.

 

[sewfree55]

I think you’re on the right track there with the mulch over them to prevent rot. I haven’t ever dealt with an armadillo, do they dig your stuff up?

Oh my, they are destructive! The first time I ever planted a fall garden, just as everything was up & looking nice, an armadillo came & destroyed it! In his defense, he "tilled" it up in perfectly straight lines (following where I had watered, I'm sure). I chased him out of my yard with my hoe, with him hissing all the way, He was ready to take me on, for sure! My back yard faces a truck bypass & a couple of days later there was a squashed armadillo in the road... I've never had another one, thank goodness!

 

[ChicksnMore]

Do they still have the solar incentive program going? We went solar 5 or 6 years ago and got a tax rebate...something like 20% of the set up cost. Hubby handled all of that so I don't know all the details, but sun is something we never run short of

 

[igorsMistress]

Oh my, they are destructive! The first time I ever planted a fall garden, just as everything was up & looking nice, an armadillo came & destroyed it! In his defense, he "tilled" it up in perfectly straight lines (following where I had watered, I'm sure). I chased him out of my yard with my hoe, with him hissing all the way, He was ready to take me on, for sure! My back yard faces a truck bypass & a couple of days later there was a squashed armadillo in the road... I've never had another one, thank goodness!

They hiss? Makes me think of an opossum lol. At least it’s gone and no more trouble, but you know how that goes…get rid of a few and it makes room for a few more. I hope not in your case!

 

[igorsMistress]

Do they still have the solar incentive program going? We went solar 5 or 6 years ago and got a tax rebate...something like 20% of the set up cost. Hubby handled all of that so I don't know all the details, but sun is something we never run short of

Probably but we haven’t gone that route yet. I’d like to though.

 

[igorsMistress]

I’ve been using the condensate from the A/C to water my xeriscape garden and haven’t used any other water since I started that. It takes about 24 hours to fill a five gallon bucket but it should go faster next week since the humidity will be up.

 

[artbykarenehaley]

Well... This is kind of gross but I often don't flush the toilet if it's just urine.

If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down.

We do that too

 

[artbykarenehaley]

I’ve been using the condensate from the A/C to water my xeriscape garden and haven’t used any other water since I started that. It takes about 24 hours to fill a five gallon bucket but it should go faster next week since the humidity will be up.

Hey that's a really smart idea!

 

[artbykarenehaley]

I live in the PNW in Salem OR. You'd think we'd be set on water and I'll admit I'm not as water conscious as my Arizonan father in law. But I try to conserve water. our water costs are increasing compared to when we first moved in six years ago and any little bit helps.

I bring a couple low and wide buckets into the shower with me, and stand in them while I wash up. I only shower twice a week because it's bad for my skin and scalp to overwash, so when it comes to my sparse showers it's more about my health haha.
These buckets are then poured on the strawberries. I also dump my coffee grounds in the berries because the slugs can be real buttheads around here, lil berry theives that they are

I set up an irrigation drip line and a timer for the vegetable garden.

We use our grass clippings, the neighbors leaves in the fall, free wood chips, shed dog fur and dryer lint to make a layer of free mulch and then in the front garden we put another layer of "pretty" mulch on top of that.

We rent, but I'd route the laundry machine into an outdoor tank if I could.

We are allowed a limited amount of rain collection, but can't have over a certain size barrel. I haven't gone that route yet but plan to.

For my container gardening, I fill empty Cholula and Tabasco bottles with water and put them in the pots upside down. It's a slow release of water instead of dumping a whole bunch on top. I find pouring a watercan or running a hose on a pot causes the water to run straight through it. Its that narrow opening on hot sauce bottles that slows the flow. Works pretty well. If I had more bottles I would do it next to my more water consuming in ground plants.

Something I want to try is burying natural sponges near my plants that are along the sidewalk out front. That area is baked hard and solid every summer. Don't know if the sponges would work but It just might help retain moisture.

I'm not perfect on the water preservation! I have a lot of areas I definitely could work on. I forget to turn off the sink when I rinse dishes sometimes. My kids like to fill a leaky kiddie pool and I haven't replaced it yet. (Partly because if it drains, then I don't have to worry about my little one going outside and accidentally drowning in it)

I don't have sprayers on the ends of my hoses because the ends are cut off (one hose got a leak and I cut it below the hole, the other hose was ran over and that smashed the metal end shut. I had to cut that off too). This means I have water running while I walk over to the spigot to turn it off. Usually I stick the hose in a bucket, the dogs water, or one of the chicken waterers, but I often forget to do that too.

Our laundry washing is insane, because my husband gets dirty at work, my kids and I get dirty at home, and my youngest is still learning the bedtime potty training. So she causes a lot of laundry we would otherwise not be washing if she was trained, but that is a temporary season that will pass.

 

[gtaus]

I live on a lake in northern Minnesota, so I don't have the water concerns expressed by so many in this thread. Most of my water conservation measures are more in line with reducing my labor, without really thinking about saving the water itself. Also, since I have my own water well and septic system, all the water that I flush down the toilet or into the drains gets automatically cleaned and recycled back into the ground water.

Having said that, I have some questions on previous posts and maybe some thoughts to help others who are working hard to conserve water (I did not always live on a lake).

First question relates to reusing soap/laundry detergent water....

Sometimes we put Home Depot buckets in the shower and collect water to dump out on plants.

"Laundry to landscape" piping. My washing machine water now goes to a shallow basin in the yard around some trees, to get used a second time.

Our laundry drains outdoors into a basin and a channel to a second basin so it waters two trees and misc other plants.

We catch all rinse water from dishes, washing

My first question, how does soap in the water affect your plants? I would think that watering the plants with soap/laundry detergent water might be toxic to the plants. Do you use any kind of environmentally friendly soap that does not harm plants?

Second thought related to planter types...

I was having to water every day for several hours each day, to keep my garden alive.

I use water reservoirs in all my planters instead of drainage holes

Something I want to try is burying natural sponges near my plants that are along the sidewalk out front. That area is baked hard and solid every summer. Don't know if the sponges would work but It just might help retain moisture.

I would encourage people to look into using Sub-Irrigated Planters (SIP) with built in water reservoirs, and also into using the Hügelkultur method of making raised garden beds. Although I don't normally have a problem with lack of water, I use both those methods to drastically reduce my labor in watering my plants.

The SIP planters I have only need to be refilled maybe 2 times per month where I live, in normal rainfall years, and the plants only drink what they need. Much better system then using planters with drainage holes that need to be watered almost every day. My 2X4 SIP planter on the deck filled with beans grows much more food than an 8X8 plot outside in the ground garden bed.

I have a number of larger hügelkultur raised beds in the garden and around the house. The hügelkultur wood base in the raised beds acts like a giant sponge, soaking up lots of rain water, and slowly releasing it to the plants when needed. Last summer we had a terrible drought year with no rain. My main garden does not have running water. Most of my plants dried up and died, but not the plants in my hügelkultur raised beds. Yes, I live on a lake, but without rain, I was not able to tote enough water to the main garden to keep the plants alive. The hügelkultur raised beds just retained whatever water I could feed them much better as compared to my regular raised beds that dried out.

Something I have been thinking about lately...

and the broader picture is that most of our water comes from the Colorado River and most of it goes to agriculture (eg, not to the homes of people like you and I).

Why do we continue to pour all that water into crops like almonds, which require gallons and gallons of water to produce a very small number of nuts? Is it time to reconsider what crops are worth the precious water we have available for use? I heard, somewhere, that the agriculture use of water is as much as 97% of water use, and yet we have people afraid to flush their toilets to save a cupful of water! IF I lived in the region where the Colorado River is drying up, I would be asking those questions.

As to a few posts about garden hoses...

Hose timers on every hose. I've forgotten a hose too many times and that wastes a lot of water each time. Leaks and accidents are the worst.

I don't have sprayers on the ends of my hoses because the ends are cut off (one hose got a leak and I cut it below the hole, the other hose was ran over and that smashed the metal end shut. I had to cut that off too). This means I have water running while I walk over to the spigot to turn it off.

I use hose timers on my garden sprinklers. In my case, it's not so much to conserve water, as it is to regulate how much/how long I want to water the plants and for the fact that I just set it and don't have to go back to faucet to turn it off. Hose timers are not all that expensive, and if you pay high costs for water, then a hose timer would probably pay for itself in no time.

As to garden hose with ends cut off... they can be repaired with replacement ends for a few dollars. I have repaired many hose ends over the years and/or splicing hoses with holes that are leaking. If you don't want to repair the hose ending, then you could easily fold the hose back onto itself and clamp it down with spring clamp to shut off the water until you can turn the faucet off. You can get a strong spring clamp from Home Depot for 99 cents.

Another thought...

Long-term, I encourage my kids to think about moving somewhere where it occasionally rains, although too much moisture brings a whole other set of problems

At one time I was stationed in Naples, Italy, where fresh water was not guaranteed to be coming out of the faucet. We had to buy bottled water for almost everything except bathroom needs. It's a lot of work toting clean water for daily living use. When I returned to the USA, I decided to live on a fresh water lake with my own fresh water well.

In a macro sense, why do so many people insist on living out in the middle of a dessert?

I would like to hear more about this system...

I’ve been using the condensate from the A/C to water my xeriscape garden and haven’t used any other water since I started that. It takes about 24 hours to fill a five gallon bucket but it should go faster next week since the humidity will be up.

Hey that's a really smart idea!

While reading all the posts about people living in hot climates and using A/C, I was wondering if it was possible to collect A/C condensate for use as fresh water for plants, etc... Sounds like you have such a system. And, wholly cow, you are filling up a 5 gallon bucket every 24 hours!? That could feed lots of SIP and hügelkultur raised beds to grow people food.

Thanks to OP for posting this interesting thread and for all the comments that followed. Enjoyed reading it even though I personally don't have to (thankfully) conserve my water
like so many others. I am very glad that I no longer live in an area that uses the water from the Lake Mead reservoir which is at historic low levels and getting worse. The situation looks very bad and I hope you guys get some relief.