Wednesday, November 07, 2007

How to Convert Any Toilet to a Low Flush Toilet

A lot of discussion has been going on in my neighborhood about ways to conserve water. One of the easiest and most cost effective ways I found was to convert your toilet to a low flush toilet using a milk carton.

One of my neighbors passed along this information about creating rain capture cisterns:

Current watering restrictions are likely to get much worse, as the gravity of the situation reveals itself, possibly by next summer or earlier, beginning with pressure fluctuations or restricted hours of use. Of course if it rains heavily next Spring in the very small area needed to recharge the lake, things might return more or less to normal, at least for a while.

But since Lanier is the smallest lake in the United States with the smallest recharge area serving a major metropolitan area, and climatological predictions are indicating a continuing drought, it would nonetheless be prudent to start thinking not only about water conservation, but limited independence from the system.

Serious preparation efforts would probably include the installation of a plastic ribbed cistern made of potable( drinking water standard) grade plastic that can be installed in a rear corner of your house near a downspout and catch and store rainfall, which could be used to water at least the Oaks and Dogwoods that are at such risk during a drought.

Practical sized systems might be a 1700 gallon tank, measuring 5 feet wide, 5 feet tall and 12-14 feet long. Those same cisterns could also be filled by hauled water trucks and used for irrigation using a small pump to which you attach a garden hose.

In a serious water emergency where pressure or service is limited or interrupted, those buried or above ground tanks could be used to pump filtered, purified water up the back wall of your house,following the gutters downspout upward, entering into the attic, and dropping down to upper floor bathroom(s), and could be used for showering and flushing the toilet.


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