You flush your toilet... I have water for a day.

I realized after talking to some family and friends, that the last update I gave was about not having water or power.   Well in early October, we got electricity back the IFP and our home.  No more late night trips to the guard house to fight for an outlet to charge things, no more cooking on carvão (charcoal), no more silent days without music because all of my electronics are dead and I have nowhere to charge them until night.  We still don’t have running water in our house so that has been an (quick) adjustment.  We are very lucky that the IFP has a large water pump right on the campus and it is very easy to get too.  We are also lucky that many times when we ourselves go to fill up our buckets of water (often we have our empregado do it) our students will be around and will always offer to help.  Occasionally in the past, I would refuse but let’s be real… I really don’t like carrying water, so if I don’t have to, that’s great.  Plus it’s how they show us respect, by offering their help… it’s what students here do for their teachers, so who am I to say noJ.

                I was talking to my dad the other day and he asked how much water I used per day, and while it varies each day depending on how many dishes we have, if Sam or I do laundry, if our empregado comes, if I bathe and if I wash my hair that day, and any number of other things.  When I told him what I thought, his response was, “that’s what we use to flush the toilet here.”  This got me thinking and I started measuring on average what all of my activities use for water.  So here we go… here is what I use for water daily.

Drinking: I try to drink at the very least 3L of water a day because it is very hot here and I sweat a lot and walk a lot as well.  Some days I drink more, some days less but this is my goal each day.

Shower:  If I don’t wash my hair, I probably use about 1.5L of water or so, if I wash my hair maybe 2.5L at most.  I’ve gotten very good at using very little water.  We also collect the dirty water from our bucket baths and laundry to flush our toilet with… that’s right our toilet is a dump flush now.

Washing hands/brushing teeth/ things like this:  I probably only use about 3 Cups of water a day for this all. 

Laundry:  This is where we use a lot of water.  We try to use as little as possible and if I’m being completely honest, I don’t do laundry nearly as much as I should considering how dusty and sweaty I get walking into town.   To do laundry I probably use about 20-30L or so.  And again we save this water to flush the toilet. 

Flushing the Toilet:  As I said, we use the water from our showers and laundry that is already dirty.  We never use clean new water for this. 

Washing Dishes: Depending on what we cook we probably use about 2L on average to wash our dishes.

Cleaning: Once a week our empregado washes the floor and he probably uses about 9L of water for this.  And we probably use about a Liter the rest of the week for cleaning

Cooking: again depends on what we cook but probably only a few liters for this at most during the day.

As these are mostly estimates, I decided to measure in one average day what I used.  So I filled up this bucket to the 25L mark

25L to start

The bucket full of water at the beginning of the day

and we only used water from this bucket for the entire day.  This day included both Sam and I taking bucket baths (and both of us washed our hair), as well as cooking, doing dishes and boiling water for our filter.  So the result; we used about 12L of water in one day, for those of you who don’t want to do the conversion, that’s about 3 gallons of water. 

Update: Ironically yesterday, I was sitting in our main room when I heard a unfamiliar rumbling and clang-ing from our pipes... the water is back.

End of the day about 13L left.

Here is a chart that I found at http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.faces with some average household items and the average water use of them, so you can get an idea of the difference in my life now.  

Indoor Water Consumption

Activity	Gallons Used (Conventional)	Gallons Used (Water Saving*)
Toilet Flushing	5 - 7 gallons per flush	1½ - 3½ gallons per flush
Shower (water running)	7 - 10 gallons per minute	2 - 4 gallons per minute
Bath (full tub)	36 - 50 gallons (conventional)	30 - 40 gallons (conventional) 40 - 80 gallons (whirlpool)
Laundry Machine (full load)	60 gallons top loader	42 gallons top loader
Dishwasher	15 gallons normal load	7½ - 10 gallons normal load
Dish Washing by hand	30 gallons tap running	10 - 20 gallons tap running
Shaving	20 gallons tap running	2 - 5 gallons tap running
Brushing Teeth	10 gallons tap running	2 - 3 gallons tap running
Washing Hands	2 gallons tap running	1 - 2 gallons tap running
Bath Shower	30-50 gallons 7-10 minutes	Average shower = 12 -15 minutes A 15 minute shower = 150 gallons Many people shower more than 15 minutes During hot weather, we tend to shower more often