How We Shower, Use the Bathroom, Have Drinking Water #offgrid #homestead

Do you feel confident you could get by if you no longer had access to running water?

My husband and I got a Berkey last weekend at a garage sale that had a set of brand new filters with it. We paid 40 dollars for it. We were blown away. We got home and started cleaning it up and we think that the people that had bought it must not have known how to prime the filters because we found that the system had never been used and the filters that were already installed were brand new too. My husband spotted it at the garage sale...so husbands go with your wives to those sales, you can find some really good deals.

When I was a kid, my parents bought a cabin in the mountains in AZ. We moved into it full time. We had electricity but no running water. We would haul our water in big plastic jugs for whatever we needed it for. We had an outhouse and we took our baths out of a basin of water. Washed our clothes at a laundrymat. As a kid, it was fun, but I was so happy when we finally got running water along with a proper bathroom. I know it isn't as hard to do without as people think it is. You'll always adapt to whatever living conditions you've got.

For those people who, like me, are on a tight budget and can't afford a Berkey filter - make one. There are plenty of videos available on how to make one using the black Berkey cartridges, two food grade plastic buckets and a spigot. Sure, it doesn't look pretty like the shiny, fancy ones but it does the job. Just remember to drill a tiny hole in the lid of the top bucket, and another one on the side of the bottom bucket (as close to the top as possible) to help with the flow of water and you'll be grand. It costs between a 1/4 and a 1/3 of the price, depending on the size and the number of filters you need. My water isn't that bad most of the time so my two cartridges last around a decade. Berkey have a handy calculator on their website that will help you figure out how often you have to change them. Hope that helps anyone.

Lady, you and your husband are amazing! You're actually living similar to the way I grew up and the way my parents and grandparents lived. We didn't think anything about the inconveniences of running water because we never had them until the early 1960's. Good on you for being so self sufficient and I wish you the best of luck.

Here's a slick trick: I connected a blue plastic food-grade 55 gallon barrel to the bottom valve of a 275 gallon IBC tote with a ball valve and check valve on top of the barrel. Collected rainwater (2,000 gallons) moves itself into the blue barrel when I turn a ball valve and provide a vent. I have a 1/2" soft copper pipe run vertically from the bottom of the blue barrel and up through the burn chamber of a 2" welded steel rocket stove. Heat from the fire causes the barrel water to "thermosiphon" eliminating any need for a pump. Half an hour of burning twigs yields a barrel full of 115°F water any season. "My" barrel is insulated centered in a box of coarse play sand 4" all sides. I fill the barrel, light the fire and when it's up to temp, I isolate the barrel with valves and charge it with compressed air @ 40 psig. The shower outlet is drawn through a pipe penetrating the lid and terminating at the bottom inside the barrel with it's end cut on a bias. Expanding air pressure shoves the water out. Also -- I often just rinse myself off, cleaning the dirt off, then hop into my redneck hot tub for a soak. I draw my laundry water from my hot tub. Waste not - want not. I'm 75, autistic and live alone on the prarie in Texas. Alone is my happy place. BTW I have my own YouTube channel so my kids & grandkids can keep up with my shenanigans. Feel free to visit, but please do not subscribe, if you visit. That's not my bag. It's just that my favorite class in school was show & Tell. 😊

We went off-grid three years ago. Didn't have running water for months. Our toilet was the woods. I would wash my hair in a bucket, and then use the water to wash some laundry. Hubby made a solar shower out of a 5g black bucket, just drill a hole near the bottom and plumb in your shower head! We have running water now, most of the time... got an rv and built a utility room addition off the one slide opening, since the slide was rotten and had to be removed anyway. In that room, we have our solar setup, water barrels with a 12v pump and woodstove. Our rainwater catchment is off our chicken coop, with spigots installed on the barrels for filling buckets which we then haul to the house to fill the house barrels. We dug a huge pit that stays full with water, and that supplies our animals, gardens and also serves as the supply for our fire pump if ever needed ;)

I remember when my grandparents had a well & we had to go out & pump water. No inside running water. Great information

I hand wash All of our clothes, use 12 gallons of water per load, 4 for wash water,4 for 1st rinse,4 for 2nd rinse. The second rinse I include a 1/2 cup of vinegar. But if you do two rinses the clothes co.e out much cleaner. I also use a washboard which helps. I find my clothes get MUCH cleaner when I am washing them by hand. I have to say I absolutely love your channel content.😊

We've been living not only without running water, but without a well too for almost two years. We live on a mesa with harsh rds that are tough to get around on to obtain water, which we need to truck in. There may be hidden water on our land, I'm working on finding it, but then the challenge will be to access it without spending $50K for a well.

This channel should have a million subscribers.

I use a 5 gallon bucket for my toilet and I take a bath in a Kitty pool. We've been living off grid for7 years, I did learn some stuff watching this video.Thank you for sharing this information.

We do laundry every six weeks. It saves lots of money. As retirees, we wear mostly jeans and Tee shirts. The pants are easy. Tee shirts keep a supply. Underwear is easily hand washable if you use washable fabrics--line dry them. Socks are a little harder so keep a bigger supply haha. But our system works. Only two loads for two people.

There is a historical series called, "Tales from Green Valley", based on living in a 1600's farm.. . In one episode, they saved the pee in a bucket because, after 3 weeks, it turns into ammonia. Then they used it to make laundry soap to get stains out. Actually learned a lot from the series

All I can say is you were smart to sell your Florida home in the Nick of time.

Urine diluted with water can be a wonderful liquid fertilizer for some plants. (It is rich in a variety of micronutrients, including nitrogen and important minerals such as magnesium.)

12:15 Seperating liquid & solid waste: Nooooo! The urea in urine provides the nitrogen necesdary to drive the composting reaction. If the smell gags you, either use a plastic kitchen bag liner in your bucket or on clean-up day, toss a cup full of quick lime on things. The quick lime ERASES the foul sulfur odor.

Got my own well, very good well, will always have running water ! Well was bored during a drought before I moved onto property. Cost was under $2,000, brother and me put in the pipes and well pump over 40 years ago. Replaced the pump 1 time. $200. Life choice ! I would never put my wife in a situation w/o running water !

Superb setup! You are almost self sufficient!

So many people in todays time have no idea what it is like to live without such things. As a person from a 3rd world country, even talking about a filter is much, we just used what we had, we fill barrell full of water, our stomach just adjusted naturally to the water, whether its terrible or not. What we use to do was to add a little bleach to kill some of the things in it. I rememeber when I learned americans actually had hot water, it was shocking, we use to jump up and down because our water was just so cold sometimes, it worked though.