As a quick recap, in our last article in the Going Off Grid series we covered the “harvesting” portion of a rain water system. In this case the field aka the roof or collection area and the roads aka the gutters or conveyance system. Just like any harvest though, you only want to harvest the […]
Fix a Leak Week: A Recap of Resources & a Rant
This week happens to be the 4th annual Fix a Leak Week where everyone is reminded to check for leaks around their home & get them repaired. If you consider that just one faucet that drips once every other second costs you 1,041 gallons of water a year you can easily see how the numbers […]
Going Off-Grid in the 21st Century – Harvesting Rain Water
When many people start to look at ways to reducing their water usage (especially for gardening) many look to the sky. They do some quick research, crunch some numbers on how much water they can save based on their roofs and jump in their car (or go online) to go buy a 30 to 50 […]
Alabama Storm Water QCI Training
This week instead of heading to Austin for the RESNET conference, I choose to head south to Montgomery to ABLE aka Alabama’s Better Living Expo. One of the reasons was to catch up on the updated Storm Water codes & regulations that apply here in Alabama (and the rest of the country). Like many EPA […]
Going Off-Grid in the 21st Century – Getting the Water where it’s needed
Living in today’s modern homes, life is great – we turn on the tap & the water just flows out. In most cases, we have no idea where it comes from, how it gets to our house leaving us with our only concern of how much is it to connect to the water main for […]
Going Off-Grid in the 21st Century – Water
As a brief recap, in our on-going series about going off-grid in the 21st Century, we have covered numerous options from powering ones home to handling waste. This has led us up to one of our most basic needs: water. For our first article in this series, I am going to turn it over to […]
Safety Sunday: Legionella, Water Heaters & Your Home?
Recently in a forum I frequent, an energy auditor basically went on a tirade that we were essentially harming & possibly killing people by encouraging individuals to turn their water heaters down to 120°. The reason for this concern; old studies found online about Legionella possibly being spread via water heaters & showers. This was […]
Going Off-Grid in the 21st Century – Gray Water (what the heck is that?)
For anyone serious about going off-grid, they really should look into renting an RV for a weekend. Even if one doesn’t go for the dry-camping route & instead hooks up at a full service campground you will quickly learn some interesting items which will apply to your new home. One item that surprises some 1st […]
Safety Sunday: Boil Water Notices & Advisories FAQ’s
Fortunately for many individuals affected by the tornados, the local water utilities were able to keep everything up to snuff eliminating the need to issue to a Boil Water Notice or Advisory. I only recall hearing about three communities / regions affected were they were issued. One of those communities is actually were my wife […]
Reading your Water Meter
For many of us, we simply wait for the utility bill to show up, and never give it a second thought unless something just does not seem right. Now all of a sudden we are staring at this bill and we start asking questions like, did they read the meter right, do I have a […]