Q: How do you upgrade during quarantine?
A: Start by living without water...let me explain.
My girlfriend has been living off the grid, in town, without water for nearly a full year. It's essentially a single car garage with wood floors and a gas fireplace. The place is pretty cool but it has no plumbing. Yes, correct, NO plumbing. I joined her a few months into it and now I have been living the bum metro life for about 6 months as well. Here's how we make the sink, shower, and toilet work.
The average household goes through about 80-100 gallons a day! We go through about 10 gallons a week. There is a blue 5 gallon jug that sits atop a tall shelf close to touching the 9 foot ceiling. Attached is a polyethylene tube that runs down, touches the floor, and loops back up to attach to the habitat for humanity sink that rests in the home made kitchen table. Here's the mind blowing part. It works because there is enough pressure from the jug to the sink that when you flip the faucet open, a small stream of water comes out. It then drains into a 5 gallon bucket underneath, that gets dumped out when it gets full. Have we forgotten to dump it out? Yes. Yes we have. Just last night in fact. Yes, it's a nightmare of grey water all over the floor. I can't talk about it anymore. But, how did we know how to do all of this? Youtube, duh!
The shower WAS an easy solution pre global pandemic. We went to the gym and showered there. A little annoying yes, but not that big of a deal. They even have a towel service, so it was easy enough. Luxury, amirite? During the virus though we are hopping from friends place to friends place. Thank you to all that have helped!
The toilet. Ahhh yes, the toilet. The bucket sits in an old side table with a hole cut in side and a wood toilet seat screwed to the top. The bucket has two trash bags in it and the saw dust we pick up once a week from Lowes covers the stink. A scoop of saw dust is essentially how we "flush".
So with that background now you understand how we upgraded. We spent 2 weeks in an air bnb cabin outside of town with running water, a full kitchen, full plumbing and it even included a hot tub. The place is called Ross Creek Cabins. It's a spectacular get away that we might even do in the future. It was exactly what we needed to reset a get ready for the next few months as we all head into summer.
Please stay safe, wash your hands, be grateful for plumbing, and I wish you all the best!
Leave a comment