Something More Important (And Prescious) Than The Internet (2) Water
What does it mean in practical terms when you run out of water? Firstly there is a need for water for cleaning purposes (non potable water).
Well the first thing you do is economise on water usage, so the immediate priorities would be to eliminate or reduce wherever possible on dishwashing. Dishwashers are notoriously wasteful of water, so that is a non starter, but you still need to wash the dishes and saucepans for good hygiene. Washing machines also use a lot of water, so do you hand wash everything, or alternatively outsource your laundry washing? Then of course you can reduce the water usage of the toilet by putting a brick in the water cistern, to reduce the amount of water flushed, if you don't have a dual flush type toilet, but you still need water for flushing in any case.
And the thing you realise is that irrespective of economising on water usage, you need to actually go and collect some water, if it hasn't rained in the meantime, since the problem arose.
So where to go for water? Well there is the river, fortunately there is lots of clear fresh water, not contaminated at all, but don't under-estimate the amount you need, maybe 20 litres per person per day?
Alternatively, in winter you can melt snow for water, but you soon realise that you have to melt about 10 times as much snow as you want water to use, so its not an efficient option.
And you can't drink river water, so you need to think about where to source drinking water from?
Up the mountain there is a fresh water spring, about 5km away up quite a steep incline, so a car journey there with as many suitable clean and sealable containers as possible, and top them all up. Glass is ideal for the water containers, but plastic will do
What I have found is that all my canisters and containers for drinking water will last me about a week before I need to replenish them again. I suppose for drinking and cooking, the clean water needed is about 3 litres per day, that is for a cold climate. You can imagine that in a hot climate you could easily double that amount. Then imagine having to collect for a family, say 3-4 litres each per day multiplied by the number of people in the family.
The alternative being to buy water for drinking in bottles from the supermarket, if you are not fortunate enough to have access to a fresh water spring.
Already you can see that water collection is a rather time consuming process. Thank goodness I have a vehicle. What an enormous chore it must be if you live in a hot and arid climate and you have to walk to collect water by hand and carry it back home (how far?), not only for yourself but for the family as well!!
Provision of clean water supply to every village and every home certainly rightly deserves to be a good cause for charity in developing countries. Clean water is a fundamental requirement, maybe it is a Human Right, without which it can be easy for diseases and contamination to spread.
Recent Comments
1
thank you for sharing!