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Otter2 Tech: The Half-Gallon Shower [1]

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Date: 2023-01-15

Over the many years of my adult life, I have discovered certain ways of doing things that may be helpful for others to know. The two that stand out are bicycle commuting and limiting water use.

Since people in certain regions of our country are dealing with extreme water shortages, I have decided to discuss this one first.

For most of my adult life, I have lived in a trailer park. And it is old and run-down even by trailer park standards. One of the earliest problems, I faced living here, was an somewhat unreliable water system. The park has a small forest of ancient trees, and the water mains are about as ancient. It probably would cost more to replace them than the owner is willing to pay. So, when they inevitably spring leaks, they get patched not repaired. And, since they run under the equally ancient streets, they tended to spring leaks frequently. Since there is only one shut-off valve for the whole park, the water would get shut off as soon as a leak was discovered. When I first moved into the park, this happened on a nearly weekly bases. And it often happened without warning.

I'd be in the middle of a shower. Then. Bam. The water would quit. I soon learned to store enough water to finish my shower, should this likely event occur. At first, I kept two one-gallon milk jugs, filled with tap water, to cover this likely inconvenience. Living in a mobile home, I didn't have a lot of floor space. Plus I had to figure out just how to efficiently get the water from the jugs onto my soaped up body. Dumping it directly out of the milk jug was awkward and inefficient. I would often empty both jugs without completing my rinse. Much of the water ended up going straight down the drain. But I continued doing it this way until I confronted another problem. This was because the water shut-offs may have been frequent, but they were not every day.

And this new problem was caused by the ancient trees. In the Summer time, their leaves provide blessed shade. This keeps the mobile homes from turning into rather efficient ovens on even temperate Summer days. But trees have roots. And roots just love messing with sewer lines. One Winter day, the sewer line got blocked. Not only would the toilet not flush, but the sewer line, from my mobile home, froze solid. The next day, the toilet flushed. I thought my problem was over. But during a Winter thaw, a nasty smell started coming up from under the trailer. I discovered that the sewer line from my trailer had broken free of the toilet, and every flush was being dumped directly onto the ground. While trying to repair this, I found that the sewer line pipe threaded onto a main sewer drain pipe from the toilet. I tried to reconnect it, but the treads were ruined. So, I got a cinder block and some wood and propped the sewer line up to the sewer drain pipe. I got it to fit reasonably tight. So when I flushed the toilet, it all went down the sewer. Success. Well, not quite.

On a really hot day, I decided to take a long, Hollywood shower. Upon going outside afterword, I found a huge puddle coming out from under the skirting. The bath tub was not draining into the sewer. A section of drainage pipe had burst during the freeze up incident. No problem. I would just replace it and be all set. One problem. I couldn't get a piece of pipe that would screw into the main drain part. I first went to a big-box hardware store. No luck. Then I went to a dedicated pluming store. Still no luck. Finally I went to an RV part store. Still no luck. So I gave up.

From this point on, if I didn't want a permanent puddle under my mobile home, I would have to plug the tub drain, take a shower, then bail the water out afterword. Luckily, the toilet was right next to the tub. And it still worked. So, after taking a shower, I had to bail the water out of the tub and into the toilet. The more water I used, the more bailing I would have to do. So, now I had a real incentive to use as little water as possible. The answer to this came in the form of a one-gallon bucket and a n empty soup can. I would fill the bucket up with warm water, use the soup can to wet myself down, soap myself up, then use the rest of the water in the bucket to rinse off. Now, I had only one gallon to bail out. Not only that, but now I needed to set only one gallon aside for surprise water shutoffs.

The Flint water crises (the poisoned water catastrophe) got me thinking. Maybe there was a way to use even less water. I noticed that much of the water, being dumped out of the tin can, was doing little good. Much of it was going straight into the tub. Maybe a hand sprinkler, the type used to water potted plants, would do a better job. But I didn't want to have to store one. Then I came up with the idea of punching a hole in the side of a tin can, near the bottom. It could be several holes. But the tin can emptied out too soon. Since I eat a lot of cottage cheese, I always have empty containers laying around. So I took one of them and drilled three, 3/32nds inch holes in it, in a neat row, near the bottom. I soon found I had an efficient shower head. All of the water ended up going where it needed to go. I found I needed far less water. And it was inconvenient to get the last little bit of it out of the bucket.

I then decided to trade the bucket in for an empty margarine tub. This way, near the end, I could simply dump the last of the water, in the margarine tub, into my shower head. Then I could use every last drop. This is now my standard way of taking a shower. I now use less water, while showering for a whole week, than I do with one flush of the toilet.

Below, in detail, I will describe how I take a shower:

First, I fill the margarine tub nearly to the top and set it on the side of the tub.

Next, once I'm in the tub, I use the shower head (The cottage cheese container with holes in it) to scoop out some water.

I first wet my hair down with it, then wet the rest of my body.

Then, I get a bar of soap, soap up my hair (I have short hair) and my crotch only, then put the bar of soap aside. I won't need it anymore.

After that, I scrub my head then smear the soap from it (and my crotch) over the rest of my body and scrub where needed.

Next, I use my shower head to rinse my hair and head.

Once this is done, I re-scrub my upper body.

Then I fill the shower head again and rinse the rest of my body off. And I'm done.

Most of the time, there is enough water in the margarine tub to complete the job (almost always). But, I imagine that if I had longer hair, I would have to use more water. If I had more hair, I'd soap only my head, before smearing the soap on it onto the rest of my body. I still may then have had to use more water. But I found that one margarine tub equals less than half a gallon. So, even if I had to use two, I'd be using far less water than I would by taking even a Navy shower.

I hope some people, who really have to watch their water usage, find this method helpful.

I use another technique to clean out empty margarine tubs and cottage cheese containers.

For a margarine container: I use up as much of the margarine as I can. Then I dump my next batch of cooked vegetables into it, then stir them up. This efficiently removes almost all the margarine from the bottom and sides of the tub. Then it takes far less detergent to clean them. Once cleaned, they make handy leftover food storage containers.

For a cottage cheese container: I get as much cottage cheese out of it as I can. After that, I put maybe a few ounces of water into it. Next, I use my fingers to smear the water onto the cottage cheese, that is still stuck to the sides and bottom, starting at the top. I get almost all of it off this way. I dump the milky remains, then add another few ounces of water and repeat the process. This usually ends up getting it nearly completely clean, without using a drop of soap.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/15/2147318/-Otter2-Tech-The-Half-Gallon-Shower

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