ecoexist.net

I’ve recently been confronted with an issue of having too much available reclaimable water. As I’ve posted before, I bring a 5 gallon bucket with me in the shower (5th paragraph down) to capture the cold water while I’m waiting for the water to warm up, and I reclaim bath water when I can. I’ve also have been wanting to capture the washing machine discharge but haven’t found a good way to do that with the approval of my wife

I’ve divulged before that I have an in-ground pool and that is a big part of why I wanted to reclaim as much water as possible – to offset the amount of water I need to put in the pool to account for evaporation (I also try to look for ways to offset the electricity consumption of the pool as well, but that’s a different topic). We decided this summer that the pool needs to be resurfaced since the gunite is very rough and porous-like, and is even worn away in some areas. To do this, of course, we need to drain the pool. As fate would have it the pool pump just died a couple of days ago (which actually is a good thing since I needed to get a more efficient replacement anyway) and now I’m stuck with about 20,000 gallons of stagnant water. What do I do with it?

Unfortunately we don’t have any use for that much water. We don’t have any grass (about 95% of the yard is covered in concrete or the pool) and we only have a few small flower beds. The flower beds are mostly taken care of with the shower water I collect with the bucket so…. I’m going to offer the water to my neighbors, hose down my concrete more frequently, wash the dogs a few times, hose off the house (lots of dust and ash from the recent fires), and wash the cars with the water. Other than that I’m out of ideas. I tried to find out if there was a place I could “donate” the water too but that seems a bit futile. I also had thought to rent a large water storage container originally, but the levels of “dissolved solids” – or TDS levels – is quite high and it is overdue to be changed.

Any ideas? Let me know.