The Free-Range Insane Asylum .NET

My toilet is fed by drinking water.

As a child this bothered me

Let's get the pretense out of the way first. This doesn't make me better. I'm sharing this information to let you know what I came up with. Let's not even call this a project.
Also the limitations of the - thing I did - was that I rent. I didn't want to modify the plumbing of an apartment that was someone else's property.
I purchased three 5-Gal. (19L) buckets and lids for just about $20
I put a bowl in the bathroom sink
I used a 2-Gal. bucket that I already had for dishwasher capture
And a 6L storage container that I had for kitchen sink recovery

I then came up with water capture, storage and re-use processes and procedures.

The guideline is:

BATHROOM

In my bathroom you'll find a bucket to the left of the sink. There is a small bowl in the sink.

Wash your hands into the small bowl. This will encourage you to shut the water off between soap and lather, and rinsing your hands. Take the lid of the Bathroom Bucket and dump the water into the bucket.

When you shower, do so with the drain plug in. Use the small bucket from the kitchen to bail as much water out of the tub as you can. Water remianing in the tub can be used to mop the floors.

To flush the toilet, since it's a low flow toilet, if you were going to press the full flush button then dump water from the Bathroom Bucket into the toilet for a first flush.

PLANTS

I'm on the third floor. When a glass of water is drawn from the kitchen tap, the water is quite warm. If I run the water for any reason, I run it into the small rectangular container and then transfer the fresh water into the Plants Bucket. I will normally keep a water pitcher in the fridge full of drinking water to reduce the number of times I run the kitchen water.

DISHWASHER

Ok, that word alone probably costs me any credibility for trying to conserve. Here's how I try to make that work.

• The dishwasher is filled (1) from the Dishwasher Bucket.
• Diluted pre-disolved detergent (1+) is added.
• The Small Bucket is placed under the drain spout.
• The dishwasher is set to start past the purge stage of a wash cycle and just into the fill stage. Any additional filling is done from the Hot Water Tank (at the typical faucet connection). The dishwasher runs a wash cycle and then empties into the Small Bucket.
• The small bucket is dumped (2) into the Bathroom Bucket .
• The Dishwasher is re-filled (3) from the Dishwasher Bucket.
• Next wash cycle empties into the Small Bucket.
• The Small Bucket is dumped (4) into the Dishwasher Bucket.
• The diswasher fills (5) from the Carbon Neutral Hot Water for the Rinse Cycle
• The Rinse Cycle empties into the Small Bucket.
• The Small Bucket is dumped (6) into the Dishwasher Bucket.

Instead of filling from tap water three times, the dishwasher only fills (under 7 litres) from tap water for the rinse cycle.
That rinse water becomes part of the next wash cycle.
The first (detergent) cycle has already been reclaimed 1.5 times and will be used to flush the toilet.


It might not be appealing that this leads to particulate food waste in the Bathroom Bucket, but then again, that's what the Bathroom Bucket is being used to flush away.

There is more motivation behind this. The exhibit at The SAW Gallery was the equivalent of me needing to hear something three times before I seem to wrap my head around it. ...had heard this countless times. Conserve and Isolate Water.

Oh, water is included in my lease; I pay for the Hot Water tank's Carbon Neutral Electricity usage.

Please don't think that means water is free to me, My Landlord pays for Water, Heat, and - the - Building. My Landlord made the decision to replace a defective $9 part in my old toilet; with a new dual flow toilet. My Landlord mentioned that the first thing he noticed about this Building is that the Water charges are too high for a Building this size.
I pay my Rent.
I Pay for Water.