Holistic View of Energy Use in the Household-Part 2

The Hack My Solar Podcast

Today we're going to finish up the conversation we started yesterday about taking a Holistic View of Energy Use in the Household and reduction of that use where possible. We really hit on the big topics yesterday. And so I'm not going to do any deeper dive into those. Those are the areas where you're using the most of your energy right now. And so therefore they provide the easiest opportunity to put plans in place to reduce that use. But some of the things they're going to talk about today as we finish up the conversation is going to be water usage insulation and windows. So when we talk about water really the number one thing that we're talking about is how to reuse greywater. The fact that we take potable water and put it into a toilet so that we can flush waste into a septic system is almost a crime when you consider so many places in the world that don't have access to potable water. A simple system like installing a sink on the back of your toilet. So when you wash your hands after using the bathroom that water from washing your hands goes down into the tank and then that water becomes the water that gets used on the next flush. That's a really inexpensive easy install system that helps with this problem. Another one would be a system that recycles the water from your bathtub and uses that for flushing water so for showers and baths and that it gets a little bit of treatment enough to make it not go bad. It is gray water it's not portable. And then using that for flushing water is a really nice system. The thing that you could do is in addition to try to come up with an idea for utilizing that gray water for flushing your toilet. What we do utilize a portion of it or all of it for outside irrigation for gardens and lawns and things like that you know installing systems that are going to do a pre filter or inheres the reality a little bit of bleach. I mean a little bit of Bleach goes a long way to make sure that you don't have a stagnant stinky you know water storage in between using a shower and using that shower water on your front yard. It's a great way to reuse it realistically if a household were to get really serious. They could reduce their water usage by 50 percent 30 percent is a pretty conservative estimate and I've seen estimates as high as 80 percent now. Not really sure how many times you'd have to reuse water to reduce your overall use by 80 percent. But those are the systems that give that kind of water reduction are pretty involved. They're probably not very energy efficient or energy neutral and realistically those are for areas that don't get enough rainfall don't get enough or don't have access to very good municipal water systems. But a 50 percent reduction is doable. And like I said a 30 percent reduction is easy with some very simple systems. I really believe in reduced flush and restricted flow showerheads. I know a lot of people that want their shoulder to split their hair you know or part their hair when they're taken. I don't necessarily need a shower that's that powerful. Our shower at the office off grid homestead is I believe a gallon and a half per minute which is still I mean there's a lot of you out there you can get four a gallon and Minahasa a gallon and a half. You know and you know 70 ish. My wife who has very thick hair doesn't have a problem doing what she needs to do to get her hair washed and all that. So with me I have relatively thin air a bucket of water would do me just fine. But you know using those reduced flush I think we got to one point three leader per flush system that handles anything we throw at it that restrict it flow showerhead you know is a big deal you could put restrict flow faucets on your sinks and it's just a simple situation of the vast majority of the water that comes out comes out hits the fixture and goes down the drain without ever touching us. So if we could get a system in place where we're just reducing the amount per minute of water t...