Water for Geeks and Greenies1
What's so special about water?
It falls from the sky and it's wet, and if it isn't wet, it's cold, something which should come as no surprise to you even in the unlikely event that you didn't know: but did you know what happens to it next? And did you know what happened to it say, three hundred years ago? And do you know why the difference is important?Well, I'm going to tell you, anyway.
Three hundred years ago the water that fell soaked into the ground, more-or-less straight away. Not much of the land was drained, and what was, more often had bush drains than tile drains, and the water took longer to percolate through the soil and to make its way into the ditches, and from there, to the streams, and from there to the rivers, and from the rivers, to the sea.
So, a lot more of the water which fell was available as 'surface water', and hung around long enough to be taken up by crops, and it could be tapped-into by digging wells, or scooping it from waterways with jets. "Jets?" You ask: A jet is a scoop on a pole. The ones you might come across will probably be made of galvanised steel, and look like a large round-bottomed saucepan. The pole fits into the handle, and the jet is dipped into clean water and taken out, for refilling kettles, water buckets, vases of flowers, goldfish bowls, etc.
Where was I? Oh yes: rambling on about water. In full flood...
Clean water isn't quite so easy to come by these days. Well, not without a certain cost to the environment. The water which still runs off fields very often carries with it fertilisers and pesticides. Not only that, but because of improved drainage of the agricultural land, it drains off much, much quicker than it used to. A period of rain used to keep the system supplied with water for weeks. Now it may be virtually gone in a couple of days.
Nowadays, what with the rate houses are going up, the rate that roads are being built, and the amount of land being covered by concrete and tarmac, and the provision of efficient sewers (Bunwell people - stop laughing!) not so much of the rain that falls gets a chance to soak into the ground. What falls on those places is carried off in drains, and the drains debouch into sewers, and the sewers go to water-treatment plants, whose effluent water usually runs off into rivers or streams.
What with better drainage of agricultural land and the contribution of urban building, paving, storm-drains and sewers, rainwater swells the rivers rapidly, only for them to subside to trickles almost as quickly. (And people are surprised that lots of rain results in serious floods!)
BUT... there are more and more people wanting to use less and less available water: once it's flowed into the sea it can't easily be recalled. Some water can be extracted from rivers, while it's there, but taking too much when there isn't a great deal available results in damage to the eco-system. Extract it from the aquifer beneath us, then? The aquifer beneath us is chalk. Water has seeped through this chalk or flowed through underground rivers a very long way, and it's taken a long time for it to do so. Rain falls in the Chiltern Hills, which stretch from round about Luton (not Luton Roundabout) to the Reading area, and soaks into the chalk there. This seeps under Hertfordshire and Essex, up through the East Anglian Heights (for small values of height) in Suffolk and Norfolk. It doesn't do this overnight, and the supply is not inexhaustibubble.
Now I'll be the first person to admit that my orange juice bottle
isn't going to provide instant relief, but every little helps. I intend using the water collected in it for flushing the loo, watering the garden, even for the hot water system when there's enough. I'm not sure where it's going to go though. Nor is that the only consideration: you can't just run water from the gutters into a big bottle and expect it to deliver nice clean water, it won't. Leaves, creepy-crawlies, algæ, lichens, bird droppings etc will all pollute it to some extent, so, it has to be filtered.A proper sand filter can be made very easily, and once it is established (which takes about a fortnight) it will remove solid matter, most dissolved impurities, and very importantly, kill any bacteria present in it. It's not the sand which does most of it, well, not by itself: microscopic algae (like pond weed, seaweed, etc., but tiny,) coat the sand grains and nosh the impurities as they soak through. While it's easy to make the filter, some means will have to be found to support the collection tank high enough so that a pump isn't necessary to deliver the water to where it's wanted.
So, Where's it going?
That's the best-kept secret in the world. The short answer is, I don't know. I know where I'd like to locate it, but I have to take the neighbours into consideration. The bottle isn't excactly a pretty feature, and the water-treatment plant could, if I'm not very careful, be about as welcome to them as a picturesque little gasworks.Oh, and there's another thing...
Electrickery
Generator
No, I'm not aiming at self-sufficiency, but having once had a generator, I know just how useful it can be when the mains supply fails. Round here, as you will probably remember, such a failure can drag on for quite a while after stormy weather, and the contents of freezers and fridges may be at risk.It's all very well being ready with the candles, even having remembered to get matches. It's even better if you have an oil lamp, and paraffin to put in it, but there are certain things for which that isn't quite enough. My computer, for instance, will not run on paraffin, nor will the microwave cooker, or most importantly, the eclectic kettle. OK, I could boil a kettle on the gas, if I had a kettle, or boil water in a saucepan, which is what I did last time. Tea cannot be foregone: this is basic to 42.
So, when an opportunity to acquire a generator occurred, I swooped. It has to be admitted that it is not a nice compact, quiet little thing, but a thumping-great single cylinder air-cooled diseasel, spinning an alternator which delivers 110v. While not ideal, it will do. Red diseasel is not very expensive, and 110v can be transformed to 230v. The noise might though, be a bit of a problem, so there will be a little more work to undertake, namely, building a soundproof shedlet for it.
Something to consider for the future is to cover an area with photoelectric solar panels. The roof of the house would be ideal, but costly. I believe that panels to resemble pantiles can be got. Still, you needn't bother yourself with that: the chances of my ever being able to afford it are slim, and in any case, it isn't a DIY job. You can breathe again. (I just mentioned it to help fill up the column, really, so that they were more-or-less equal in length.)
Hot water
When theAnd I've no Idea where the back boiler will be planted.
It would be rather good to be able to supplement the heating of water with solar energy, and I shall be thinking about this: it's not a priority, and it will require a lot of thought because while solar panels for heating water are easy to make, there's nowhere obvious to put them. There are plenty of good places, but they are all in such a position as will spoil the appearance of the cottage. So, that's another one for the future perhaps, or perhaps the future.
Are you beginning to get the idea? Apart from tea, and some sensible jobs like laying carpets, making a dresser, installing a solid fuel stove and a Rayburn, oh, and a few more, there are a lot of projects which might happen, but not immediately. These are things to look forward to - well, I think they are.
Other fuels
I believe in recycling things. Some materials though, are not very eco-friendly to recycle. Paper is one of them. Recycle lots of paper, and lots of new forestry isn't planted. "This is bad?" You ask. Yes, this is bad. Young trees absorb a lot more carbon dioxide and release more oxygen than a forest of mature trees of similar size.Also, the amount of energy expended in pulping the waste, sorting it, removing plastic and metal, etc, and then of making the new paper is not a lot less than that of making paper from trees. So, I do my bit by soaking old paper and moulding it into 'logs' using a piece of wood and a length of plastic drainpipe. You can help, if you like...
I will admit to the intention of using oil in the Rayburn though. Sorry.
