Читать книгу The Self-Sufficiency Handbook - Alan Bridgewater - Страница 46

At the beginning of the twentieth century, most people had a well in the garden or, if they were very lucky, a hand-operated pump in the kitchen, scullery, or outhouse. Lifting buckets from the well, walking back and forth to the local village pump, and pumping water up from the sink to a bucket—the whole business of fetching and carrying water was hard, tedious work.

As such, most people did their best to manage with as little as possible, using only one or two buckets per day for everything, including cooking, washing, and cleaning clothes. It does not sound like much, but remember that toilets at that time were not much more than buckets and jugs. Gradually, over the years, with the introduction of indoor toilets, shower rooms, washing machines, and dishwashers, our daily water usage has grown from two buckets per day to the equivalent of between thirty and sixty.

A rough average is that we each use thirty buckets of water per day, and about one-third of that water, say ten buckets, is used to flush the toilet. To conserve water, we could cut back on using the washing machine, running the dishwasher, and watering the lawn and garden. To create significant savings, it’s plain to see that, more than anything else, we should cut back on flushing the toilet.