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Old 04-13-2015, 11:27 PM
 
Location: Mountain View, CA
1,152 posts, read 3,192,042 times
Reputation: 1067

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Most urban water use ends up being for landscaping, so as a condo dweller I'm limited in my ability to make meaningful cutbacks. That said, I've made several changes that probably do add up. Granted, many of these are common sense measures that probably make sense to do anyway.

- Turn off water during teeth brushing.

- Turn off shower while soaping up.

- Let the dishwasher get as full as possible before loading.

- Generally don't flush the toilet overnight, just flush in the morning.

- When I do have the car washed I generally use a company that is low water use. Of course most commercial car washes use recycled water anyway.

I've been doing most of this since the start of the drought. I figure every little bit adds up.
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Old 04-19-2015, 10:48 AM
 
Location: Southern California
372 posts, read 573,932 times
Reputation: 560
When we moved to our new (to us) house and started using the showers, we caught water in buckets
and found that it took 8-10 gallons of water before we got any hot water.

We installed a hot water recirculation system and now catch less than a gallon in the bucket -- which goes onto
the potted plants.

Our gas bill went up, so we put the recirc system on a timer,
and now it's only on half the day, to be ready for showers and baths.

We also capture water from our RO unit when it recharges and water with that. We're not going to save the
state with those efforts, but at least I don't feel so guilty about watering the plants.
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Old 04-20-2015, 04:52 PM
 
Location: South Bay
327 posts, read 960,757 times
Reputation: 192
No idea how they're going to enforce this. They seriously need to chop down the almond trees and have someone else grow those nuts. I don't know how feasible it is to have farmers switch over to drip irrigation. It's probably a logistical and maintenance nightmare. But they need to change how they irrigate crops. I saw pictures of a huge indoor greenhouse that takes up one city block, is multiple stories tall, produces a wicket amount of food by using a fraction of the water and a fraction of the land. This seems like the future of food production here instead of endless former desert fields where a significant % of the irrigated water evaporates away. Unless there's significant advances in irrigation, I don't see how water mandidates for minority water consumers is going to really help.

Personally, I'm shutting off the water when I brush my teeth and harping on my kids to stop wasting water. But I haven't really decreased my showers. It only takes me a 2 minutes to shower anyway, so I'm not really willing to shorten that. If everyone did this, it would help. Cities like L.A. and San Francisco are going to have to start using recycled sewage water as drinking water. Many modern and dense urban cities in SW Asia already do this. It's no different than desalinating sea water. Same process. Same H2O.

And of course, some fubar behavior needs to end. Like rice paddies outside of Sac and drowning your green lawn when your neighbor lets the lawn run wild and die in an epic eye sore. What's the point? Rip out the grass, and lay raised gardens and some paver stones. Plant a citrus tree so you can skip buying lemons/oranges at the supermarket. Become your own mini farmers market. Take away the iPads and force your kids to tend to the mini garden and grow some character. There's always a silver lining here.
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