The Joys of Simple Living: Water

[cbayer]

A while back, I talked about doing a series on my and my husband's personal lifestyle. There was some interest shown by some members, so I thought I might start now.

For those that don't know, Starboard Tack is my husband, and I fully expect him to chime in.

I am hopeful that these threads will encourage others to share their experiences, ask questions and think about how they use resources and dispose of waste.

We live on a 43 foot sailboat. We do not have a slip and are rarely plugged into to the usual services (water, gas, electricity, curbside garbage).

I decided to start with water, because when it comes down to it, it is the most critical item.


The boat carries 150 gallons of water in two steel tanks. When we get the opportunity, we fill those tanks through a municipal supply. We were last on the mainland about 4 months ago, left with a full tank and have completely filled the tank only once since then (last week).

In between those times, we add water by filling 5-6 gallon containers, bringing them to the boat and topping off the tanks. This requires some physical work.

We also have a water maker (desalinator). It makes a little over a gallon an hour and is the source of most of our drinking water. It requires electrical power and can't be run constantly, of course, but we run it every other day or so and get a couple of gallons.

We have a salt water pump in the kitchen. This is great for rinsing and washing dishes, leaving only the final rinse for the fresh water. Soap doesn't get very "soapy" in salt water, but it works well enough for all but the worst dirty dishes.

We have an indoor and outdoor shower. Short, military type showers are the rule, and those only when needed. During this time of year, a swim in the ocean followed by a little soap and a freshwater rinse is really all we need.

The toilet flushes with salt water into a holding tank. We have a spigot on the outside that also pumps salt water if needed for a clean up on deck.

Laundry is mostly done on board with a very water efficient manual washer.

Overall, I figure we use on average less than 3 gallons a day of fresh water.

The bottom line for us is that water requires work and that makes you think about how much you are using. When people come to visit, they often reflexively turn on the tap and let her rip. Since the pump can be heard anywhere on the boat, this most often leads to me racing to wherever they are to explain why we can't do that. We have never had a guest who didn't get it right away and make changes in their usual habits.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. Fascinating to contemplate the difficulties just for water.

I live in a house with municipal water....all that I want whenever I want. But I still often think about how lucky I am and I am very conscious of the amount of water that I do use. This may be due to a week I spent at a mountain cabin that had no water supply. We also had to go down the road to get water, haul it up to the cabin, and realized just how much you can do with a gallon of water. First we would have a small pot for washing dishes and one for rinsing. The rinse water became the next dish washing water. The dirty dish water was used to flush the toilet when needed. I still remember this after more than 40 years.

I do not ever want to live without water coming from a faucet again, but I am still very conservative.

[cbayer]

2. Sounds like you learned early and well.

Seeing how far a gallon can go can be so enlightening. It's also enlightening to see how fast it can go down the drain if you just let it run.

I don't know how we make this a more universal lesson, but I wish people would pay more attention.

They certainly do in my home when I come running into the kitchen yelling "STOP!".

Thanks so much for adding your own experience, curmudgeons!

[Curmudgeoness]

8. You are right about how fast it goes down a drain.

I made my sensitive niece cry (unintentionally) when she did dishes at my house. She left the hot water run the whole time she was washing, and I did one of those "stop it" yells. I was especially shocked that she was a southern California born and raised kid, and that is one area that should be practicing water conservation, but obviously don't even think. She is living in Arizona now, and I bet that she still remembers the lessons she learned about saving water that day.

[cbayer]

9. Lol at the yell. I have had many a guest be the recipient at that.

I try to refrain when they are in the bathroom, but I swear I start to have an anxiety attack when I hear that pump running.

Kids don't know because they have never been taught and we have an obligation to let them know. Adults are harder. I know people that take several long showers a day. I just can't fathom it. Some of them even have pools, so I really don't get it.

We have a friend who bought a new house a couple of years ago. Some pool maintenance guy told her she needed to drain the entire pool and put new water in it. He gave her some bogus reasons which evaporated after doing a little research.

The day he showed up, we happened to be there and my husband met him at the door. He left without an argument, but I am sure he was mad about losing the deal. Seems criminal to me.

[Curmudgeoness]

11. That pool water is "stale". LOL.

What in the hell would anyone do with the water drained from a whole pool??? OMG.

[cbayer]

19. He was just going to run it into the street where it would go down the sewers.

And she lives in an area that has serious water shortage issues.

Ridiculous.

[Starboard Tack]

3. The problem with the wonderful faucet is what we do with it.

Nobody likes to haul water, but I must say there is something cathartic about it. I love to take long showers and wash the car or boat, but not every day. This map illustrates very well how we abuse our natural water resources.
http://chartsbin.com/view/1455

Note that the US and Canada both use more than 7 times the water per capita as the UK. Ironically, there are vast areas of the US suffering from severe droughts and it rains every other day in Britain. Begs the question "Why such a discrepancy?".
I think history has much to do with it. Britain, coming through two world wars, with the great depression in between and followed by several years of food rationing, was trained to be frugal across the board.
Meanwhile, in N. America, the post war period brought enormous prosperity, indoor plumbing became ubiquitous and electricity was cheap and fossil fuels were acceptable and seemingly inexhaustible.

This map shows consumption by percentage available. We use 15% of available water, yet parts of the country are in drought. This is partly due to draining huge aquifers that took millennia to fill and partly to do with redirecting river waters, but mostly due to human arrogance.
http://chartsbin.com/view/1473

Here's another link to what's going on in San Diego
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1127&pid=24858

[Curmudgeoness]

10. This country has always been blessed

with a wealth of natural resources, including water in most of the country, and I believe that we just learned overconsumption. Everything we do it "over the top" in regard to consumption---house size, energy use, food, consumer products, etc.

The maps are interesting, but I am surprised about the Middle East countries (all those "stan"s) that are using more water per capita than the US. I also would need an explanation as to how a country like Saudi Arabia is able to use 943% of the available water resources. How do you use more that 100% of your resources?

[Starboard Tack]

12. Great question

I think they either import or desalinate a lot of sea water. Curacao and Aruba come to mind. I think the stans are using for agriculture and their distribution/irrigation methods are probably very inefficient.

[abumbyanyothername]

13. The house of Saud

burns a lot of oil to desalinate water but I think that is going to end soon.

[Starboard Tack]

21. End how?

[abumbyanyothername]

25. Even the Saudis can run out of oil

http://peakoil.com/consumption/saudi-arabia-may-become-oil-importer-by-2030/

[Starboard Tack]

29. OK I thought maybe they were starting to go solar, which I guess they are.

The sooner the oil runs out the better AFAIC.

[fizzgig]

4. thank you for this

my husband wants to live on a boat, but i don't think he fully understands what that entails. i'm fascinated by it and love hearing your stories.

[cbayer]

5. Before living on a boat, you may want to charter one for a week or two (if you haven't already).

For me personally, the plusses far outweigh the negatives - I mean by light years.

But it's not always easy and requires a fair degree of flexibility. There is ALWAYS something broken, and, since everything on a boat tends to be a rather crucial piece of equipment, that can be frustrating.

If he or you would like to discuss anything specific, please feel free to PM and I will give you our email addresses. It's a big decision. What do you want?

[fizzgig]

6. it's his go-to dream when he's feeling unhappy with where we are

and something very unlikely to happen, at least in the foreseeable future.

hell, i've been on a boat a whole two times in my life, having lived my whole life in the mountains. and i am *terrified* just thinking of being on the water out of sight of land. i'd be completely useless out on a boat and i don't think he'd be much better, he's handy, but keeping him motivated is difficult at times. he's so flighty he'd probably hate it after a few weeks, especially when he finds out the pizza guy doesn't deliver to us

i use your experiences as a way to bring him back to reality that it's not just as simple as he thinks

[cbayer]

7. I hear you. A lot of people see it as completely idyllic, and

while some of it is, others are not so much

I am very fortunate to live with someone who was doing it long before I met him, but two greenhorns would have a really rough go of it.

Now a houseboat is a nice alternative. They generally just sit in a slip, giving you some of the advantages of living on a boat while still providing most of the services you would get on land. Not for me, but others love it.

At any rate, I have no idea where you could even close to doing it where you live. I recall seeing a big beautiful lake up above Colorado Springs once, but, otherwise, not a lot of large bodies of water.

[fizzgig]

14. yeah, where we are is not conducive to such living arrangements

and i don't see my experience on a paddle boat would do me much good on anything larger

[abumbyanyothername]

15. Do you think it would be possible?

Having just come off a week on a boat . . . with 8,000 of my closest friends (the Oasis of the Seas) and while I was there reading The Transition Handbook (on energy descent), I got to thinking . . . .

Would it be possible to design a food, water, waste and energy self-sufficient floating living space (otherwise known as a boat)?

Not to knock your thread off course or anything.

Even on a luxury cruise, the space constraints and ingenuity applied in the face thereof, was pretty freaking amazing. Bathroom was a 2'x4' wonder and entire cabin was no more than 150'^2.

[cbayer]

16. Not exactly sure what you are asking, but, yes, it is quite possible to design

and build your own boat. Also, because of the economy, there are a lot of boats on the market at some very good prices.

The efficiencies of a boat are amazing, and I will write more about that in other OP's. We use pretty much every inch of space.

[abumbyanyothername]

17. My question is really

if you think it would be possible for a boat to be a little self-sufficient aqua-farm . . . floating along, providing all the food, water, energy and waste disposal that the boat's occupants need.

[cbayer]

18. We are coming very close to that. The biggest challenge is the farming aspect.

I grow tomatoes and basil. I could easily make sprouts and do make my own bread and (occasionally) cheese, but those need ingredients I can't grow.

I'm not a big fan of fish, but there is sure a plentiful supply and I would certainly eat it if there were few other options. There are also ways to harvest and use kelp and algae.

We have a friend who has built a floating garden that is attached to his boat. The problem comes when it is time to move somewhere, as he can't sail with it attached.

So, the answer is yes. We live most of the time by making our own energy and we take care of our waste (plastic is the primary problem for disposal). We make most of our own electricity, but we do use some diesel for both the engine and the generator, but could use less (or none at all) if we added more solar and wind.

We can go a couple of months without really tapping into the *system* for anything other than groceries.

[lumberjack_jeff]

20. Yes and no.

It is very possible to use a boat to reduce your environmental footprint.

It is common to generate all your own electricity, some (if not all) of your potable water and seafood for much of your protein.

It is also possible to use electricity for auxiliary propulsion on a sailboat, but that generally requires shore power for charging.

Because space is at a premium on a boat, you will still need inputs of vegetables and starch, and you will still generate waste (albeit a fraction of that which one generates on land).

There are waste disposal devices which can treat sewage before it is discharged overboard, but it is generally better to empty the waste tanks at a dockside pumpout station and let a large onshore treatment plant deal with it.

[cbayer]

22. We charge primarily by solar and hardly ever plug into shore power.

When we do, it's a treat because we have hot water on demand, more lighting options and can use the electric heater if need be. But those are generally not necessities.

Holding tanks can be emptied 3 miles offshore and that is what we do. So can paper, food and broken up glass, crockery and metal. Get out 12 miles, and you can toss much of what does not float, except plastic.

I don't think pump-outs are a better alternative to pumping overboard if you are far enough out.

[lumberjack_jeff]

23. Most of my boating is in Puget Sound

Until you get to the strait, there really aren't any suitable places to "bucket and chuck-it".

A lot of boaters here use an MSD, but that's one more layer of complexity that is redundant to the free and mostly convenient onshore option.

[cbayer]

24. Yes, it would be a lot harder for you to get 3 miles out, and there may be an

additional prohibition in the Sound. We can get out there really easily.

What we would really like is a composting toilet, but the cost is still prohibitive. Hoping they will come down soon.

Is an MSD anything more fancy than a holding tank? I know there are "shocking" systems, but most harbors still wouldn't allow you to discharge that.

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. WA DOE is trying to get Puget Sound designated as a no discharge zone.

It's a bad idea. Specifically their insistence that "nutrient loading" is a problem.

In 1900, the sound was teeming with life because of the nutrients running off the forested land into the sound. As the area developed, that nutrient level (and biological mass) was maintained by sewage waste discharged into the sound (not optimal because of the bacteria involved). Now that the forest runoff and the sewage have both been eliminated, the sound is mostly sterile of marine life.

Salmon populations are down 70%+

All marine toilets are part of a MSD. Type 1 msd's reduce bacteria count to 1000 per 100ml. Type 2's reduce it to 200 per 100ml. Type 3's are holding tank/no treatment.

1000 per 100ml is a benign level. There are systems which function by electrically turning salt water into chlorine through electrolysis then treating the waste with that, and there are others which disinfect the waste using tablet or liquid chlorine. There are still others which incorporate bacterial digestion into the system.

[cbayer]

27. I figure it would take us months to put out what a whale probably puts out in a day.

At first, I had some discomfort with the whole idea, but as time has gone on, I don't. Were I in an area with lots and lots of boats, I might feel differently, but when we dump we generally can't see a single other boat.

We have a type 3 tank. We do put organically based treatments in there, but that's mainly for odor control. I'm not very interested in anything that requires an electrical part. Just another part to break down, imo. Ours is purely hand driven, including the flush and pump over mechanisms.

Interesting information on the nutrient levels and possible impact on marine life. I didn't know there was a correlation. The waters out here are teeming with sealife. It's a beautiful sight.

[Starboard Tack]

28. Composting toilets are becoming more popular on boats, RVs and other off grid housing

Couple of links on the subject
http://www.natureshead.net/
http://www.svsarana.com/FAQ.php

and here is a link to electric auxiliary propulsion http://www.electricyacht.com/support/design/

[lumberjack_jeff]

30. The composting toilet is interesting

but I'm not quite understanding how/if it disinfects the waste.

What I read indicates that it takes months to properly compost (kill coliform bacteria in) dry human waste.