The simple action of filling and carrying a 20 litre jerrycan was one of these lessons for me.
A twenty litre Jerrycan is heavy. It should weigh twenty kilograms, but it doesn't.
It weighs about forty kilograms. A scale won't tell you that, but carrying one will.
When we were plastering the inside of the cottage in October we needed about two hundred litres of water each day for the building each day.This was a challenge. There are no taps. If you need two hundred litres of water you go and find a spring.
We used a four wheel drive to collect the water each morning, and we usually had a small army of children to help us fill and load.
But it was still a massive mission.
So this was the lesson I learned: Living in an urban environment, it is impossible for me to appreciate the importance and value of access to fresh water.
One of the bigger challenges we have at the cottage will be how we will access water.
There is a spring about 350 meters away, down a 40 meter hill. But this spring will have ecoli. And if we drink it it will make us ill.
This is the spring, the logs and sticks are to discourage animals from using the same spring and contaminating the water even further.
Our best bet has been a rainwater tank.
We put a 5000 litre tank in when we were up in October.
We have about 50 square meter of roof to fill this.
We have put gutters on half the roof, and as soon as we arrive we must put up the other half.
Based on East London rainfall figures this will give us the following rainwater per month in litres (by the way, you are using more than 200 litres in a single bath - the figure in brackets is what we can use, as family of five, for all our cooking, drinking, cleaning, bathing, and washing up)
Jan - 3450 litres (115 daily)
Feb - 4600 litres (153 daily)
March - 5250 litres (175 daily)
April - 4150 litres (138 daily)
May -2600 litres (86 daily)
June - 2000 litres (66 daily)
July -2350 litres (78 daily)
Aug - 3900 litres (130 daily)
Sept -4000 litres (133 daily)
Oct -5100 litres (170 daily)
Nov -5500 litres (183 daily)
Dec -3150 litres (105 daily)
So in a best case scenario, the figures in brackets are the total litres we can use per day.
Below is are target of what we will try and keep our daily consumption down to:
Showering/Bucket Bath - 40 litres (20l for the 3 kids, 20l for the adults - this gives me 5 x 2 litre juice bottles of water to bath/shower with each day)
Brushing teeth, shaving, washing hands etc - 3 litres
Drinking - 12 litres (2l per person per day drinking, plus 2 litres for the kettle)
Cooking - 8 litres
Cleaning Food - 3 litres
Cleaning dishes - 12 litres
Total minimum required per day for family of five = 78 litres
(this is about one third of one bath)
When I see the total like this it seems pretty daunting.
But we don't really have an option.
Roy very kindly donated an old pump to us, and I will play with that and see if we can get some spring water up to the cottage, and by adding chlorine or jik, get it clean enough to at least shower in. But it is a bit of a long shot and we cannot rely on it.
We are also going to need about twenty litres per day for chickens and dogs. We will use spring water for this which we will collect once per week and store in two 100 litre drums at the cottage.
We will also recycle any greywater we can to use to water our vegetable garden.
So, like I said, you learn little lessons all the time.
When I stand in a shower now, I appreciate it.
And when we build our new house, we will for damn sure put in rainwater tanks.
