I've been really bad about posting regularly this month. I try to keep our personal updates on
my other blog unless it directly relates to the mobile condo. This has been a great way to ward off the trolls but also sometimes leads to neglecting one blog or the other. Anyway, I have several half written mobile condo posts and photos that I've been meaning to put up here and will try to get caught up. For today, let's talk about greywater.
From the drain tank, a sanitation hose runs into the truck to a hand operated bilge pump. This empties to the greywater tank. When full (or at least once/day) the greywater tank feeds to the UV/filter assembly before being pumped back to the main freshwater tank.
We could have easily installed an electric sump pump but decided it would be nice to not have everything automated just for the sake of automation itself. It's not difficult or particularly time consuming to pump small amounts of water manually, so why not just keep it simple? Most of the time I am truly interested and amazed by automation but I feel the same way about this as I do about pencil sharpeners and toothbrushes. Sometimes automation is overkill and it's nice to find your own line between convenient and crazy. I imagine that the same people who think I'm delirious for preferring to manually wash my clothes (despite the fact that we owned and could have easily installed a top-of-the-line, space saving, EnergyStar rated, front-load washing machine) will also find problems with this option. What's your take on automation? Do you think everything that can be should be, the inverse of that or somewhere in the middle?
I'm definitely one of the automate everything types.
ReplyDeleteI can dig chopping wood, and at least laundry can wait until a convenient time, but pumping water is too much like a boring chore. What happens if you forget?
Plus, while the pumping itself might only take a minute, the act of interrupting whatever else you are doing tends to take a lot more time right there for me, could average out to 10 15 minutes if you're not careful.
I just had a look at the pics (usually browse with images off), are you going to test the system soon? I'm interested to see how it will work, I have some hypothesis... I'm not saying it is needed or anything, but I posted about a ~$500 Reverse osmosis system that should work for greywater recently.
ReplyDeleteAutomation is something that works great for those who are truly to busy for piddly tasks throughout the day, and of course for systems that need constant attention. Of course these systems can range from simple to complex, but for instance a thermostat controlled heater is nice if you want to leave your dwelling ever and have it just as warm or cool when you return as it was when you left. But lets face it, the truth of the matter is simple. Comments from individuals like "but pumping water is too much like a boring chore. What happens if you forget?" and "the act of interrupting whatever else you are doing tends to take a lot more time right there for me" Well, these comments mean that people are so used to automation and the idea that whatever they want to do is SO very important, that they should not have to be bothered with remedial tasks. In reality, comments such as these translate into real world context of simply one thing... POOR TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS. Because we live in a society where everything is done for us and gratification is either instant or not worth buying, people tend to believe that they are to prestigious to be bothered with tasks that do nothing for them immediately.. i.e. work... you are no more or less of an individual if you choose to rely on machines and commodities then you are if you choose to forgo such things. However more often than not our views of what it acceptable and what is not are based on the idea in ones mind of what other people think. Of course in a working social environment, especially on an animal level, those independent thinkers are like rogue elephant bulls and by all are shunned or removed from the herd for complacency sake. Even those who say "well yeah that seems fine for them, but I'm not gonna do it" are admitting to making such decisions based on a "fear mode" way of living as apposed to thinking on their own and standing by concreted decisions based on true individual thought processes. I'm just sayin...
ReplyDelete@gregortheinventor: I can't remember the exact rate but I think pumping a full drain tank will take less than a minute and shouldn't be physically difficult. I imagine that pumping the water will be a lot like flushing a toilet—something that is rarely forgotten but if it is, the contents just wait there until someone remembers. Because of our limited water supply and the visibility of all tanks except for the drain tank, it'll be so easy to assess the situation that I doubt we'd let ourselves overfill it. However, if it somehow did happen, first the tank would fill, then the drain pipe would fill, then water would stop going down the drain and start to fill the sink or shower pan and the need to pump would become even more obvious.
ReplyDelete@simon: You make a good point about time management skills. One thing that I've noticed about manually doing laundry is that if I plan ahead and don't wash clothes unless they are actually dirty, it really only adds up to a few extra minutes of physical work while the overall time from dirty to dry is about the same.
ReplyDeletePlus, laundry used to be my absolute least favourite household chore. I can't pinpoint exactly what I hated about it but it was something I dreaded and would let pile up. (Perhaps because when I was a child I usually only did laundry when mom was mad at me.) Now that it's a completely separate process that I associate with saving electricity, less of the time allocated for laundry is spent feeling inconvenienced or negative. It's actually kind of fun. I haven't tried the hand pump but I imagine that I'll have the same kinds of positive feelings about it.
Just a few years ago, I was all gungho about using labor for everything. A small example, I got rid of almost everything electric in my kitchen, used an eggbeater instead of a mixer, manual tools instead of a food processor, etc. We have a backup clothesline to our backup clothesline to avoid using a dryer. My husband built a contraption out of a bicycle to run our manual grain grinder.
ReplyDeleteI am now partially disabled and my attitudes on this topic have changed drastically. Having extremely limited energy means... everything I "spend" on life maintenance is that much less I can spend on LIFE. So...using a percolator on the stove instead of an automatic coffee maker seems like a waste to me as my energy has become the limiting factor.