Water restrictions!

oldman said:
Maybe start using a rain barrel. My mom, back in the day, would put a large bowel outside to collect rain water when it started to rain and then use it to wash her hair. I don’t know what that was all about.
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It's forbidden to collect rainwater here. Once when I had a plumbing issue, I used my bath water to wash my hand washables for a few days. It worked out okay.
 

Phoenix is facing a possible water restrictions in August. The local reservoirs have been low for years due to lack of snow up north and the level of the Colorado River is low. Yet the Phoenix metro area still remains one of the fastest growing urban regions in the country. I have no idea how there will be enough water in the coming decades to sustain the growth.
 
MarkinPhx said:
Phoenix is facing a possible water restrictions in August. The local reservoirs have been low for years due to lack of snow up north and the level of the Colorado River is low. Yet the Phoenix metro area still remains one of the fastest growing urban regions in the country. I have no idea how there will be enough water in the coming decades to sustain the growth.
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I read a report, a couple of years ago, which said that the runway at Luke AFB has sunk over a foot in recent years, due to the water in the underground aquifer being increasingly depleted. If current conditions continue, or worsen, Phoenix will be just one of the major urban areas in our SW that will face increasing water shortages in coming years. The snowpack in the Rocky Mountains has allowed the populations to grow for decades....but that snow is declining a bit more every year. The Colorado river has kept Lake Powell and Lake Mead full, for decades, but now those huge reservoirs are quickly emptying. I'll be surprised if Las Vegas still has sufficient electricity to keep the casinos open in a few years.
 

@StarSong This subject is very near to me.

The idiots downstairs who flushed their toilet sometimes 3 times in an hour moved out. But they will be wasting water elsewhere.

I'm in California, obviously and I'm upset, depressed and worried over the drought. I think yard watering needs to stop. I water the few plants on my patio with used water, like changing the cats water.

When it's warm/hot I can start using the water right out of the shower. It's warm enough. I get wet, hair wet and then turn the water off. Wash, and then rinse off. I can wear clothes more than once before washing. More in the winter, less in the summer.

I never soak a pot or any dish with new water. If I need to fill a pot to soak, I'll keep it under the faucet if I need to rinse my hands, empty the cat's water in it if not needed for the plants and wash my hands over the pot till it's filled.

I live alone so I run my dishwasher every 5-7 days. I have a smaller stack washer/dryer in my apartment and I really watch the water level to use only what's needed.
 
Some tips on water wise gardening from New South Wales

Other ways to save water in the garden​

  • Plant for the climate and soil in your area. Talk to your local nursery about how to choose water wise plants for your garden.
  • Wash your car on the lawn using a hose with a trigger nozzle. You can water and fertilise the grass at the same time.
  • Pull out weeds as soon as they sprout so they don’t take water away from your plants.
  • Group plants that need the same amount of water together so that none of them get too much.
  • It’s the water in the soil that your plants thrive on, so water the roots of each plant, not its leaves.
  • Apply a 7–10 centimetre deep layer of mulch around your plants to help prevent water from evaporating.
Another practical tip:-

Place half a house brick in every toilet cistern. Every flush will be a water saver and if you can cope with this little ditty you will save even more -

When it's yellow,
Let it mellow.

When it's brown,
Flush it down.
 
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JaniceM said:
I've never heard of anything like that.. what's the reason?
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It was illegal in Colorado when I lived there, but apparently they changed the law since then. They now allow 110 gallons to be captured (that is the max combined size of containers, I don't know if that means it is the max allowed per rainstorm). I had thought capturing rainwater was illegal because the water wouldn't go into the watershed as normal and the wildlife would suffer, but I was reading about it just now and it turns out it was about water-rights. In Colorado there is a whole system of who gets to use water.
 
Our Santa Clara County just declared mandatory water restrictions that are mostly against outdoor landscaping and commercial users, by far where most of it goes. Not in the Southern California situation. Way way too many people, growth, and development given their endless monstrous real estate, financial, growth and development industries. The last thing real estate investors want is ocean desalination as would cut into their profits by raising taxes and costs. Am an LA native. I wouldn't cry if large numbers left and real estate industries became a disaster. Yeah they are part of dominant economic forces destroying our precious planet.

I've always used far less water than 70 gallons or 50 gallons if that is average. Most days probably just 5 to 20 gallons. I wash clothes with a full load maybe every 2 or 3 weeks. Do take unhurried showers. Half the water is wasted waiting for it to warm up. No dish washing, all by hand. Don't flush every #1 and have a bottle in the tank. I like my dirty 2007 Forester like it is so never wash it. That is what winter rains are for haha. How do people even use 50 gallons a day?

But then I live in a community of 4-plex townhouses and am not involved in the HOA external landscape watering. It is our real estate people that have always pushed watering our lawns for aesthetic property value purposes. Not many kids and none really does anything atop the lawn areas. I'd be fine with tearing out all the grass and alien iceplant. Will be glad when I don't hear the automated nightly sprinkler systems turning on during wee hours. Such systems don't have smart controls and rather just water by the clock whether it rained recently or not.
 
David777 said:
Our Santa Clara County just declared mandatory water restrictions that are mostly against outdoor landscaping and commercial users, by far where most of it goes. Not in the Southern California situation. Way way too many people, growth, and development given their endless monstrous real estate, financial, growth and development industries. The last thing real estate investors want is ocean desalination as would cut into their profits by raising taxes and costs. Am an LA native. I wouldn't cry if large numbers left and real estate industries became a disaster. Yeah they are part of dominant economic forces destroying our precious planet.

I've always used far less water than 70 gallons or 50 gallons if that is average. Most days probably just 5 to 20 gallons. I wash clothes with a full load maybe every 2 or 3 weeks. Do take unhurried showers. Half the water is wasted waiting for it to warm up. No dish washing, all by hand. Don't flush every #1 and have a bottle in the tank. I like my dirty 2007 Forester like it is so never wash it. That is what winter rains are for haha. How do people even use 50 gallons a day?

But then I live in a community of 4-plex townhouses and am not involved in the HOA external landscape watering. It is our real estate people that have always pushed watering our lawns for aesthetic property value purposes. Not many kids and none really does anything atop the lawn areas. I'd be fine with tearing out all the grass and alien iceplant. Will be glad when I don't hear the automated nightly sprinkler systems turning on during wee hours. Such systems don't have smart controls and rather just water by the clock whether it rained recently or not.
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With the current heat wave, our lawns are already getting crunchy. I'm cool with it, hubby hates it.

If I could go back in time, from the get-go the front of my house would have been fenced in, sprinklers converted to a drip system, and the lawn replaced with fruit trees and a vegetable garden.
 
StarSong said:
With the current heat wave, our lawns are already getting crunchy. I'm cool with it, hubby hates it.

If I could go back in time, from the get-go the front of my house would have been fenced in, sprinklers converted to a drip system, and the lawn replaced with fruit trees and a vegetable garden.
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I'd like to replace our front lawn with xeriscaping and a half-circular driveway but my huzz is proud of the lawn, sigh.
 
officerripley said:
I'd like to replace our front lawn with xeriscaping and a half-circular driveway but my huzz is proud of the lawn, sigh.
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I feel you on that one. I'm lobbying DH to let the front go. Watering two days a week during summertime will still yield a crunchy brown lawn, so better to give up the ghost. I'm telling him to water the small lawn area out back a bit more so the dog has a place to go without getting stickers in his paws, if you must, but it's time to let go of the front lawn.

By all reports, autumn is the best time for moving to xeriscapes.
 
My sympathies to all of you in drought country. Here, it's the opposite. Our typical spring-summer-early fall weather involves some amount of rain toward evening, nearly every day. Sometimes it's a tropical downpour. Lots of thunder and lightning. And some areas get flooded.

So we do get plenty of water, but there are times when we could do with a little less of it!
 
Last year we were in a heat dome, temperatures that had never been experienced here. It was fine that we were on water restrictions but some took it too far and the dead scrubs and trees around their homes are a danger now and in the coming years. We used the drip system for them in the middle of the night; it was permitted for limited hours. Then the forest fires started. Then in the fall we had torrential rains that washed out the hill and mountain sides and mountain roads.

I don’t care about the lawns; they’ll grow again. It’s obvious who the cheaters are when you drive past splendid green lawns.
 
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