[casa rakkaleff] water water everywhere, so lets use it all on the yard

[leff]

Yesterday I turned off the irrigation system. For good.

I've been nervous about the automatic irrigation system since we moved in. The plan has always been to replace most of the plants, including most of the grass, with native plants which require little to no watering. I have a strong desire to use as little water as possible. But for the time being I've been letting the water run. Yesterday I got the water bill...

mode: access standby

It was expensive (three times the power bill), but it's not the money that's worring me. What really gets me is the sheer volume of water that we used in the 25 day billing period. They total it up for you. It's an incredible amount. Over 10,000 gallons. Literally ten thousand gallons. Holy Mary mother of God that's a shit ton of water.

We need to cut that by an order of magnitude, like, instantly. So all the grass gets to die. A few select plants will get watered by hand, but only when they really need it. Everything else will have an opportunity to prove it's suitability to the local climate. The decomposed remains of the losers will be used to fertilize the newer, better plants.

but wait, there's more

There was some remodeling done by the previous owner, and it was done without efficency in mind. In fact, you get time impression that he hated efficency. Maybe it picked on him as a child, and he wanted his revenge. I don't know. What I do know is that we need to install a bunch of low flow stuff in the house.

We'll get started with your standard low flow shower head, to replace the Extra High Flow Water Waster 4000(tm) Torrential Edition(tm) that is installed now. Ok, it's not called that, but it is one of those rain shower things. And the water knob is all or nothing. I hate that soooo much. How hard is it to install a new shower faucet? In tile? Hard, right? I should get somebody who knows what they're doing, shouldn't I?

We'll also do the 'solid object in the toilet tank' thing. Fancy units, like this toto that Rakka found, can wait. We've already got the small little front load washer. What's left, the dishwasher? It's energy star, but that's just about electricity. I can't find specs on how much water it uses. For now we'll make sure it's all the way full before we run it and hope for the best.

Long term, Rakka wants the thing that recycles water from the sink into the toilet; the aqus system. I'm not sure that'd be compatible with the toto, but apparently the lazy environmentalist guy says it's cool. Also, we'll get rain barrels by the time it starts raining again.

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Posted By leff to casa rakkaleff at 7/19/2009 03:52:00 PM