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The Secrets Of Low Tech Plumbing

How to get all the fresh water you need... almost anywhere.

By John Vivian

Take control of your water supply and wet-waste disposal systems with low-cost, low impact, low energy rain
catchments and cisterns, water rams, and solar pumps ... and a dose of plain old-fashoned water conservation.

Illustrations By Laurie Grace

Most of us move to the country in search of a simpler life that's closer to nature, less wasteful, and more self-reliant. We happily trade smog for clean coun try air, city conveniences for rural independence, TV dinners and jogging for home-baked bread and the honest sweat of gardening. An adventurous few go "off the grid" to supply their own electricity with solar panels, a wind generator, or minihydro. But only true modern pioneers choose to relinquish that central feature of modern living: unlimited running water and a flush-and-forget waste disposal system.

Which is a shame.

Much of the continent goes unpopulated because the soil won't "perk" sufficiently to absorb effluent from a 1,000-gallon septic system that's Building Code-approved to handle a modern household—or the land is too rocky or too remote for a well driller's rig. As a result, too many good folks are forced to abandon their country-living dream because money is so hard to put by in the consumerist rat race of urban life-including the $10,000 to $20,000 or more needed to install a citystyle water system in the country.

The greatest shame of all is that modern households don't really use the 30 to 100 gallons/person/day of water they consume. They pollute it—not out of necessity, but for mere convenience. Water is less the essence of life than a medium for wetwaste disposal.

An individual only needs a half gallon to a gallon of water a day to drink, cook, and wash up with. Laundry and bathing demands more, but not 40 gallons per drawn bath or automatic washer load. That monument to Victorian denial, the flush toilet, takes five to eight gallons per use to dispose of an ounce or two of waste per person per day, dry weight. Of the five gallons a minute little kids waste brushing their teeth (they always leave the tap on full, right?), only a brush-wetting and one mouth-rinse—a four-ounce paper cupful—is needed. Automatic clothes washers use 30 to 50 gallons a load to do what our greatgrandmothers accomplished in a gallon or two of water with a washtub, a bar of lye soap, a washboard, and elbow grease, or with a little more water and a wringer/washer. Showers waste 12 gallons (eight to 10 with a water-miser shower head); by contrast, when I was a Marine we were rationed a count of five to wet down and soap up, and a count of 10 to rinse off-using perhaps a gallon of water in all. In the field, we brushed our teeth from a canteen and bathed, shaved, and washed our socks in a helmet half-full of water.

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