Precious Water!

I tug on my yellow rubber gloves and then make my way to the corner of our house. I reach up to a platform above my head and pull my body up with my left hand. I then feel for a ledge with my right foot. Ahh.. there it is, I take a moment to regain my balance and then pull myself up higher. The next step is a little easier since I can climb up the metal frame enclosing a window to reach the first level of our roof. Seconds later I'm all the way up. Good, I made it. I survey the roof for a moment, and then gingerly make my way to the drain. It's plugged with a thick mass of leaves and with my gloved hand I carefully clear it out.

There is at least three inches of water on this flat part of our roof and I am now standing in it. It's 3:00 in the afternoon and the sun has beaten down on it all day, so it feels like I am standing in hot tub water. We finally had a big rain storm last night and now I'm in the process of conserving all the water that is left on our roof. It has hardly rained in the last six weeks so our reservoir is getting low. Although the roof water looks dirty and muddy it is precious to us since we rely completely on rain to supply our home with water.

We use it to wash dishes, mop floors, water plants, shower (or in Jayden's case bathe in), and for laundry. The only things we don't use it for is drinking water.

All th rain water is collected in the gutters on our roof and then sent to this one single drain.

If the drain gets clogged, which happens every time, water starts to build up on the roof and then spills over the sides. In rainy season it doesn't matter as much, since it rains almost every night, but in the dry season with our water reservoir running low we can't afford to let that happen. Once the water goes down the drain it enters a big pipe and ends up in a large water reservoir located underneath our back patio.

There it sits until city power comes on. Once city power comes on, our pump turns on and pumps some of the water back onto the roof where it sits in a 200 Gallon Tuff Tank. During the day when we don't have city power the water that comes out of our taps is powered only by gravity. We have to conserve it, since if the Tuff tank runs dry during the day, it won't be filled again until city power comes on. As I clear out all the gutters, I decide that in the next rain storm I'm going to crouch under the overhang and keep clearing the drain, this way we can maximize the amount of water we save.

What a different way of life.