Bees and other insects need to drink too. A plant saucer with pebbles in it, topped up with water, does the trick.
Our holiday cottage in Scotland certainly makes visitors think about where their water comes from. We collect rainwater in two 1000 litre tanks, and have a share of a spring for drinking water. Water from the two sources has to be pumped by the visitors (there are electric pumps, but they have to remember to operate them) into holding tanks in the house; rain water is used for the shower, loo and hot water tank. All the water passes through physical and UV filters. (We were told we'd have to filter the rainwater too, in case someone drank from the hot tap.) You'd be surprised (or maybe not!) how often we get a plaintive phone call asking how to get rid of an air lock because they've run the system dry...
Since 2019 I've lived in east Clare, in the west of Ireland.
We had a UV filter for drinking water fitted in our flat in Goa. Worked a treat. It was about the size of a power shower unit, you switched it on, the light was red, then it changed to amber , then to green. Green = good to drink. It only took about 30 seconds.
Interesting discussion, my son lives in Australia and all his water is collected from the roof. It has a coarse mesh which filters out the larger leaves and is pumped back into the house for all purposes, including drinking. We usually buy bottled water to drink just as water but use tank water when boiled.It sometimes is a bit brown (if the gutters need cleaning out ) but it's fine and very common practice there. However he doesn't have a problem disposing surface water when it rains really hard, there's a Creek which runs through his garden (dry most of the time ) and if it floods the house is raised up.
I was in Romania earlier this year. Stayed in a very rural village which was just a road through it and the houses along dirt tracts climbing off it. Along the front of the houses, all single story retrangles built out of clay they have storm drains with the water going to tanks under the houses. This water is then used on the land each house has where they grow the vast majority of their food and keep rabbits and chickens to eat. It is a poor area so nothing is wasted including the rain.
To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.
Most of us in the UK have lived with hose-pipe ban situations and many remember the long hot dry times in the 1970s. I think we - esp in the south - are aware that water can get very low in the summer. Very often. The standard response seems to take more from rivers, than improve conserving options. Which is daft.
A couple of years ago I oversaw the renovation of a country cottage near here. An old chap had been living there all his life and it was completely off-grid. Not the trendy off-grid with solar panels and a borehole for water, this house had nothing. No electric, no phone, no gas or oil, no indoor plumbing. All the water came off the roof and was stored in some rather antiquated outdoor tanks that didn't seem especially clean. There was no filtration of any kind and I'd love to know if he just drank it straight or boiled it first. He must have been tough as old boots though.
I still have some sedums I re-homed from the border in front of the cottage before it was landscaped. They're as tough as their previous owner and happily grow and flower for months with no soil at all.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
There was no filtration of any kind and I'd love to know if he just drank it straight or boiled it first. He must have been tough as old boots though.
I've often heard it said about untreated well water that if you've been drinking it for years, you'll be fine, but someone new to it can be made really quite ill. I'm sure even hardened well water drinkers would be ill if they got a dose of e-coli or the like, but they are probably pretty much immune to the more common bugs like cryptosporidium and pseudomonas.
And on the other hand I've also met one or two people living in remote areas, drinking local spring water who get very ill if they drink tap water. That's presumably not bacteria but the chemicals in tap water. Even going from hard water to soft water (or vice versa) can cause constipation or mild bellyache or skin rashes/itching.
Drinking water is one of those things where we become very closely adapted to our familiar constituents and micro-organisms, and any change can be discombobulating to some degree
Gardening on the edge of Exmoor, in Devon
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Roof water has to be pretty manky though. It only takes one crow to leave a bit of dead sheep in your gutter... But then he had no electricity so no fridge or freezer, I imagine he must have been used to eating some dodgy stuff. I'd love to have known more about how he lived. I'm guessing, or hoping, he had relatives near by that helped him out.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
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Our holiday cottage in Scotland certainly makes visitors think about where their water comes from. We collect rainwater in two 1000 litre tanks, and have a share of a spring for drinking water. Water from the two sources has to be pumped by the visitors (there are electric pumps, but they have to remember to operate them) into holding tanks in the house; rain water is used for the shower, loo and hot water tank. All the water passes through physical and UV filters. (We were told we'd have to filter the rainwater too, in case someone drank from the hot tap.) You'd be surprised (or maybe not!) how often we get a plaintive phone call asking how to get rid of an air lock because they've run the system dry...
It was about the size of a power shower unit, you switched it on, the light was red, then it changed to amber , then to green. Green = good to drink.
It only took about 30 seconds.
Along the front of the houses, all single story retrangles built out of clay they have storm drains with the water going to tanks under the houses. This water is then used on the land each house has where they grow the vast majority of their food and keep rabbits and chickens to eat.
It is a poor area so nothing is wasted including the rain.
And on the other hand I've also met one or two people living in remote areas, drinking local spring water who get very ill if they drink tap water. That's presumably not bacteria but the chemicals in tap water. Even going from hard water to soft water (or vice versa) can cause constipation or mild bellyache or skin rashes/itching.
Drinking water is one of those things where we become very closely adapted to our familiar constituents and micro-organisms, and any change can be discombobulating to some degree
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”