Okay, being without running water in the house has us doing a lot of interesting things we didn’t think of otherwise.
I mentioned the other day about washing the dishes with very little water. That was one thing.
Another thing is getting enough water to fill the tank on the toilet to flush it. We are trying shades of the book Dune. We are running the AC and it generates water out of the air. We have a dehumidifier for the basement, and it generates water. We have the room AC unit for the dormer upstairs and it generates water. Usually we have the AC and dehumidifier aimed to go down the drain in the middle of the basement floor, and the upstairs unit goes out the window. But today we are aiming them all into water jugs, attempting to collect enough water out of the air itself to be able to fill the tank. It is an interesting proposition.
We began the process Saturday afternoon, and by bedtime Saturday we were almost halfway full in the tank. By Sunday morning the dehumidifier had filled another large jug half full of water, and we had a full tank to flush with.
This process shows just how much we are unaware of the processes and modern conveniences around us, and the side effects of each process. That water was just an extra byproduct of those other processes, until we needed to capture it for use. It wasn’t worth capturing normally, but now its value has increased.
This isn’t a lesson on environmentalism, though it easily could be. Rather it is a lesson on economics. The value of something isn’t an absolute — it depends on the value and availability of both itself and other things.
At The Rainbow 