The Latter-Day Frontier [/\/ick]

This is an addendum to Sarah's post about our weekend water woes.

I've never been much of a camper. As a youngster, I was sent to summer camp every summer. (It was a special camp for poor kids.) Each summer, we camped out in the woods for a night. One year I woke up in the middle of the night, got disoriented, and peed on some kid's pillow (mistaking it for the 'bathroom' tree),

As a young adult in New Hampshire, I went on a bike trip with the scouts. Well, I drove the support vehicle on their week-long bike trip. During the first night, it rained. In the night, some scouts tripped over my tent lines in the rain and I woke up soaked. I have not enjoyed the wilderness life.

In spite of this, my Grandmother, on more than one occasion, told me I looked like "Man Mountain Dean", aka "Mountain Man Dean". I thought she was just in her dotage and was making stuff up. Turns out he was a real person, a professional wrestler. That's him up at the top of this post. Tell me what you think- do I look like him?

I would not have survived living on the frontier, either. Living the past few days without running water has made me appreciate that. I still had electricity, and heating (it's been getting into the 30's at night here in mid-Michigan), and satellite TV (for General Conference (ok, for MythBusters)), cable internet, indoor sanitation (yeah, toilets) etc. We still had plenty of "mod cons", but I gained new appreciation for living on the edge and having to haul your water.

Think about what you have to do first thing in the morning. Now think about having to first go out of the house to haul a 5-gallong bucket of water in before you could do what you have to do first thing in the morning. Don't forget that you can only wash your hands in the kitchen sink because that's where the 7-gallon emergency-water container is (it won't fit on the bathroom counter).

Think not just of washing the dishes by hand, but of having to heat the water on the stove before you wash them. Think of the fact that you don't have enough burners to heat enough pans of water to fill your sink in one go. Then think of the fact that you have so many dirty dishes you can't do them in one sinkful of hot water, so you have to heat like 15 gallons of water in shifts. The whole time you're doing one sinkful of dishes, you're heating water for the next sinkful, because the water you're using now is already disgusting, but you don't have any new hot water for it yet, so oh well, keep washing. Dont' forget the cold water to rinse in, which is another 10 gallons or so. Yeah, it should probably be hot water I guess, but I don't have enough room to heat the wash water, much less the rinse water.

What about brushing your teeth? Do you use a) the unfiltered, unsoftened water from the hose, b) the water you've stored for six months but forgot to add a couple of drops of bleach to, so who knows what is growing in it, or c) the expensive bottled water? I chose some of (b) and some of (c). I chose (c) for the kids, though.

Oh, and don't forget to tell your kids not to drink (b) because you're not sure if its safe. Dan says it tasted fine, but then he vomited twice Sunday night and didn't go to school Monday, so who knows.

Finally, forget bathing/showering! You think I'm gonna haul that much water in and heat it? Oh no I'm not. So when things start to get a little itchy in places you shouldn't touch in front of company, just grab the wet-wipes and have a sponge bath. (Do NOT forget to warm them up first!) When your hair starts to feel like a greasy mop, grab the shampoo and the hose and go outside for a quick (and cold) hair-wash. Luckily, we have friends (two sets of friends, actually) who offered the use of their facilities, so we all got showered on Sunday and I didn't have to do the half-naked-outside-with-the-hose-hair-wash-dance.

To the vast numbers of humans who did without running water, electricity, and all the things that go with it: I salute you.

I need some water.

This is a test of the 72 hour water supply, this is only a test

When we bought our house almost 2 years ago the first thing we noticed was the water. It was so hard and it smelled awful! You never felt clean after a shower. Considering this was a new house it was really ugly to peer into the shiny new white toilet only to see rusty orange (which has since been cleaned out and it is shiny white). We had never lived anywhere with well water but most homes we looked at had them and they all had something in common. A top priority quickly surfaced – a water softener and carbon filter. The other homes had been around awhile so those owners had obviously learned this lesson that we were just learning. Our basement is one large expanse of completely unfinished space. In one corner sits our wellmate small holding tank and this is where our water softener was also installed. The carbon filter is attached to the ceiling and encased with a thick plastic blue housing. It hangs down almost 2 feet. So Friday night Nick went downstairs to find a cable and noticed water on the floor which was coming from the carbon filter. He found the o-ring was not working properly. In the process of holding onto the heavy thick plastic housing, half full of water, while trying to fix the o-ring at the top, it slipped out of his hands and fell to the cement floor. Now one might think that considering how heavy and thick this plastic thing is it would hold up to such a fall. Nope! It had at least a 7” vertical crack that was almost impossible to see until you connected the housing back up and let the water pressure flow through, quickly showing you right where that crack was.

We do not have a shut off valve to bypass the water filter. So, this meant we needed to keep the water turned off or we would have a mess downstairs! It was Friday night around 8pm and therefore too late to call businesses to see if we could get a replacement. Online the part was available but it wouldn’t have been processed until Monday and even then overnight shipping for a Tuesday delivery would have cost an extra $100+. Saturday we found that there were no businesses open. So we accepted our little test and decided to live without water until Monday when we hoped to be able to get this fixed.

To make it more interesting I was trying to prepare for a Tastefully Simple event I needed to be to very early Saturday morning and also trying to get a head start on soup preparation for our monthly Soup Saturday project for Dan. I learned just how often I rinse my hands while cooking! Fortunately we have a supply of backup water. Probably not enough for a REAL emergency but it was a great test of a 72 hour crisis situation. We put a large 7 gallon tank of water that had a spigot on the kitchen counter next to the kitchen sink. When tipped on its side we could easily wash our hands with it. We had bottled gallons of water that we could use for drinking and things like making soup and brushing teeth. Because the outside water does not pass through the filter we could fill up buckets of water to keep next to the toilet so we could flush occasionally as needed. Nick even took some of the outside water and boiled it to do dishes the old fashioned way. I must admit that when I helped to finish a few I enjoyed the extra warmth of the water. Or maybe I was just missing not having the instant access to hot water. All in all it was a bit of an inconvenience but a really good test for a real emergency. We do in fact have running water now! So I guess it was less than 72 hours. Our local Culligan office, who installed the filter originally, had a housing they sold us for about the price online (minus the hefty shipping charges). I’m sure they would have charged us more but they had one that had been in a truck and was dinged up a bit but had never been used. I can live with a less than smooth housing unit. The good part – no cracks! We are back in business. Now the laundry can begin again. I think I will start with a fresh cup of ice water. I think we have some ice left. . .