When I started out this crazy little plan, one thing I had in mind was conservation -- of anything I could. Water, energy, time, money, and so on. One thing I recently realized is that I was able to make tremendous savings in water. Not that I was wasting a lot before, but it's a concern living in the West where water is scarce and becoming more scarce with climate change and population growth.
From the beginning, I have logged my water use. The nice thing about having holding tanks for soiled water is that I know how big they are. I drain my gray tank once a week and my black tank once every three weeks. Combining capacity with the frequency of drains tells me about how much water I am using.
The other day on NPR, a factoid was dropped that the average American uses 150 gallons of water per day. No details were given about the statistic, but I assume this means toilet flushes, showers, hand-washing, dish washing, clothes washing, and drinking. The number seems excessive to me, perhaps especially now that I am living in a domicile that is specifically built for keeping water use down.
With two ~40 gallon tanks being drained a total of four times over 3 weeks, I can estimate that I am using about 160 gallons of water every 3 weeks. That comes to somewhere around 50 gallons per week, or about 8 gallons per day. Comparing NPR's factoid, it seems that I'm doing pretty well on water.
I should note that my data are based on my water use for dishes, food prep, drinking water, shower, and toilet. I have no lawn, so no water lost there. My numbers do not include laundry, which I do once every two weeks at a laundromat or toilet use while on campus. So, as bad as my science may be, even if I have a 100% margin of error (unlikely), I am still saving tremendous amounts of water in my daily endeavors.
Reasons for the savings likely include the flow restrictor I installed on the RV to keep standard water pressure from blowing the pipes. Also, the minimized number of dishes I have and the smaller sink, so dishes are done quite efficiently. The toilet I am using is also not a tank toilet, so I use a fraction of the water that even the most efficient house-toilets use.
I'm chalking one up for water conservation on the list of successes this experiment has produced.
