Just out of the goodness of their hearts, too. So today I spent most of it on:
7 gallons of propane
16 gallons of drinking water
10 gallons of distilled water (actually this was paid for separately)
15 gallons of gasoline (breaking in that third new Jerry can)
150 pounds of chicken pellets
60 pounds of flour
1 pound of hamburger, because tacos, and…
A new electrical connector for the Jeep trailer…
…because I hate rats.
Landlady wanted to buy the distilled water Saturday after the dump run, and I had to explain why it might be a bad idea to drive the trailer through town just at that particular time. Welcome to my world.
Maybe some day you’ll hate rats enough to abandon your live and let live tolerance of them and embark on a focused effort to eradicate them. Traps, Joel. Lots of traps. Gazillions of traps. Rodent poison. While you are killing them think of the money you are saving and the diseases you won’t get. Raised platforms surrounded by high raised metal borders to keep your equipment on. Winter is coming. If you kill lots of rats you’ll have pelts for little warm furry rugs, hats, dog blankets and pillows. I’ll lend you my QuickStitch if you don’t have one.
You bought 16 US gallons of drinking water? (multiply by x, carry the one, add the number first thought of …) – that’s about 60 liters. How long does that last?
Here in Oz, that amount of water would last one person about a week. Recommended consumption for dry areas is 8-10 liters per person per day without exertion.
How much would a decent drinking water still/purifier cost to buy and operate?
“How much would a decent drinking water still/purifier cost to buy and operate?”
Also Joel’s one-surface roof is the perfect shape for rain water collection. He just needs a gutter and a proper water barrel.
On another subject: I admired the phrase, “because tacos”, That is as clear and concise as it is ungrammatical.
What? Nobody can drink 10 liters in a day. Not even an Australian.
One gallon per day per person in summer. That’s less than four liters.
Also: You know, I’ve never seen a commercially-made water distiller. Or even a home-made one. There are membrane filters, and reverse osmosis filters, and they’re all impractical in the long term because of power requirements, water wastage and/or expensive and short-lived filter elements. Seems like a passive solar water distiller would be the obvious way to go, and I’ve never seen one.
What? Nobody can drink 10 liters in a day. Not even an Australian.
Wanna bet? 🙂
Even https://noarizona.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/how-much-water-do-you-need-to-drink-in-arizona/ seems to believe otherwise.
I’ve done it myself. It WAS 46°C (~115°F) and we were putting in a fence. We stopped for the day when we ran out of water about mid afternoon.
Well…not every day.
Add barley, hops, and yeast to the water, then brew for a while and chill. A lot of people will try.
Sendarius – I agree with you about the barley pop – but i always agree when it comes to barley pop.
I could see that much water for a healthy person actively working in the 105′ and up range – but for a lot of people that much water might have sub-prime results. I agree that a person should be well-hydrated – but I’d also pose that person should – as they say – know their limitations. I would be very hesitant to take someone unfamiliar with the desert and have them exert themselves and also drink that much water. They probably shouldn’t be exerting themselves much without conditioning and the water could be problematic.
I used to spend some time around a ‘ropes course’ in the lower Arizona desert. (a ropes course is something like a boot camp endurance course for hire – usually to corporate clients and their trainers) Whenever we had clients on property there was a paramedic at hand. Rope burns and dehydration were the most common issues – and thorn removal…) The average client was 30-50yo and in poor to average shape – and they’d just flown in the day before from somewhere a lot cooler and wetter. There’s really no ‘right’ way to take someone like that and put their body through stress and this climate. We pushed water and salty ‘energy’ snacks at them and that helped to ease them through but I’ve seen a lot drop like flies if you didn’t keep an eye on them. Their bodies were so out of balance that no amount of water would put them right for that one day their company decided to punish them!
We also saw a couple cases of water intoxication – though that’s more of an issue of electrolytes than purely the hydration.
I ‘d agree that being in a condition where one could effectively use that much water if needed would be a good thing – but most people I meet would be thrown way out of whack with that much water in their system and the dry heat on top of it – and then some healthful ditch digging for good measure.
Joel, You can get one at Lehman’, although I assume that they could be cheaper elsewhere. You could also use as a design guide. Maybe an old pressure cooker, don’t know. Now it is “solar” only in the sense that it can use wood as a fuel and trees grow because of the sun…….
https://www.lehmans.com/p-5339-non-electric-water-distiller-kit.aspx