Water You Waiting For?

You can see our gate, leaky outdoor hose for sharing water,
the pipe that goes up to the tank, and our kids climbing!

I guess we expected that water would be a big deal here in the desert.  It has still amazed me how much I take running water for granted and how inconvenient life is without it.  

We’re still working on getting prepared for the water shortages that are common in our area of town, which I think will be an ongoing battle.  We thought that getting a water storage tank would be a good solution to provide the possibility of continued running water even when the city’s supply isn’t running.  Putting it on the roof of the house provides for okay pressure for the water coming from the tank, but we didn’t realize it would make it difficult to get water into the tank.  So there needs to be just about full water pressure coming from the city to get water up to the tank, which has been rare here lately.  Apparently the water supply comes from continual drilling for water and so sometimes the supply is low or the electrical outages affect the drills.  We’ve gone for most of the week with just a slow stream on for part of the day (mostly at night), and so even the water we’ve been saving in buckets has not always been sufficient for what we want.  While not having running water is rough, it’s even worse when you expect to have it and it doesn’t appear!  

We have the added stress of not wanting close off relationships in our community by turning people away who are looking to fill a container because they know we are one of the few houses in this neighborhood with a water tank.  We’re still trying to figure out the balance of having-and-sharing along with another dimension of keeping the fruit trees in the yard somewhat watered for the owner of the house!