Saturday, November 24, 2012

Slightly Skewed

We are short of water. That's my only big concern right now. I'm not at all bothered by rioting crowds at Walmart or whether or not people think that's one of the signs of the big collapse. We see rioting at some Walmart somewhere almost every year on Black Friday.

The pond is as low now as it was back in August. We haven't had any rain in quite awhile. My main tank is empty and I've been having to buy water again, something I only had to do a few times over the summer. It's $6 up at the local fire department when I bring my 200 gallon drop tank up in the back of the pickup to fill. A very easy thing to do but I hate having to do it.

Right now we get an average of 28 inches of rain per year. Per inch I can collect 318 gallons off of the main roof. That's 8904 gallons per year I'm capable of capturing. We use an average of 200 gallons per week (slightly more in the summer months) which means our current water capture methods can fill 44.5 weeks out of the year.

Math very clearly spells out the problem: Not enough water being captured.

The addition to the cabin we're currently building is going to add another 512 square foot of roof for capture. That will double our water collection potential and I'll probably need to purchase another 3000 tank. Especially when you consider that our rainfall is not evenly distributed throughout the year and the majority falls in the winter months.

Still, we're here and we're functioning. In a pinch we could be drinking the water from the pond (after it gets filtered through the Berkey) but I'm not willing to do that short of the apocalypse. There's just too much going on up the creek for me to feel very hapy about that.

Pray for rain!