New York Renovator

We’ve got rain.

Rain rain rain.

I hate rain. Rain is my enemy. My property lies in a low spot, surrounded by asphalt parking lots. The water table is very high here… so when it rains, all that precipitation usually goes into my basement. I have suffered through some serious flooding here. The years 2004 through 2008 were terrible, where EVERY SINGLE TIME it rained, we got water measurable in feet in my basement. I just can’t handle the flooding. Things have improved since we rigged up a super-duper double sump-pump system with large pipes of PVC dumping water into the town basin.. and the kids and I built a French drain outside, which helped immensely. So PRAISE GOD we haven’t had such severe flooding in a while. But if the pumps are unplugged, the basement fills fast. And if we get torrential rains, like we’re getting now (2+ inches an hour, all day)…. I get nervous. Talk about how to remove dark circles under eyes– eep, you should see mine!

Everything is sopping wet. Everything rots. I am tired of all this rain! It’s December, for crying out loud! I want snow!

I do like snow. I enjoy the muffled stillness, the white nights, the cozy evenings cuddled in blankets, sipping hot tea and talking with the kids. Now that we have a better heating system, I expect the heating bills to lower, which will increase my ecstasy all the more.

But it’s raining. *sigh*

Rain barrels are DIFFICULT to find!!! Well, they were. I recently discovered a site that has rain barrels for sale. Finally!

Rain barrels collect, well YEAH, rain! Although we have had no scarcity of excessive rain here in Upstate New York for the past ten years or so, I do not like all the rain that falls from my roof and into the ground by my home’s foundation. I had installed a French drain/dry well kind of contraption (the kids dug a trench 4 feet deep by 24 feet long!), and that has helped immensely. But there’s still a lot of water coming down from that roof, and my home cannot support gutters until we re-do the siding.

A rain barrel is predominantly for rain harvesting. It’s great for areas that have little rainfall. The rain barrel has a small spigot at the bottom, so you can hook up your garden hose and utilize the water elsewhere in the garden (say, for watering plants or filling the watering can). It is a TERRIFIC way to conserve water from your municipal water supply or well. Most rain barrels have a slot or hole at the top of them, to receive water from your gutter system and downspout. Me, I’d just place the rain water barrel under one of my roof eaves, where the rain comes shooting down the valley and into my stone foundation.

Anyway, you can find rain water barrels online in a variety of styles and sizes. Some are very elegant! It’s a good idea to conserve water– good for your wallet, good for your neighborhood.

Short answer: YES.

Long answer: Depends on what state you live, and depends on the outcome of new bills coming through the U.S. Congress, as they seem to making up new and stupid ones every day….

From what I have ascertained so far, it is illegal to collect rainwater in the following states:

• Utah
• Washington State
• New Mexico
• Colorado– although I JUST saw a news story published this week that says this has changed. BUT it appears that city dwellers who rely on municipal water cannot collect rainwater.

I also heard that in 1998 the UN past a resolution that all water on the planet is to be commercial, to be bought or sold like, you know, an XBox or something. GRRR. Now I have not confirmed this, but if anyone has any input, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll check it out. Also, there was a “water war” in Bolivia after the country privatized their water resources, and then a company from the U.S. (Bechtel) won a contract for the resources. Immediately, the company had the collection of rainwater outlawed because they wanted a complete monopoly on the resource. People colecting rainwater cut in to their profits.

Now, some of the water laws, especially for the western states, go way back– back to when the area was owned by Spain. Water is a precious resource over there. BUT, this law is being stretched. The laws state that you can’t divert streams or suck lakes dry for your own use. Sure, I understand that– evil people were crooks and stole the water resources. Bad. OK. But some states are suddenly interpreting this to mean that people can’t collect rain in rain barrels?! That’s dumb. The government does NOT own the rain. It’s ridiculous for the government to PRESUME to be able to CONTROL the rain and it’s diversions, as well. If those old water laws are now being interpreted so as to place more restrictions and heavier burdens on citizens, and line the pockets of Big Business and their Government Buddies, that’s tyranny. That’s all there is to it.

You know, we Americans ARE the government. We abide by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Dare I say that we do not have to obey de facto laws and we have the right to redress the government for grievances. These things are really going waaaay too far in this country.

I saw this neat little gadget at HipCompass. It’s a handheld water sterilizer, called the “SteriPEN Adventurer Handheld Water Purifier.” When swished around in a glass of dirty water, it’s supposed to destroy the DNA of nasty microbes. It uses ultraviolet light to do so. Interesting! I don’t know if I’d be so brave as to try out the water to make sure the gadget works. And it’s $78 at Amazon, gulp. So next to travel insurance, this could be quite the expensive little carry-all. They have bigger filtration systems, too.

Water filtration is on my mind because Health Nut Wannabee Mom had a great post about bottled water versus tap water. She wrote about the benefits of tap water versus the expensive bottled water. And I agree, tap water can be just as good or better than bottled water. But it really depends on your source. If you live near a bunch of landfills or toxic waste dumps, you can be assured that bottled water is a better choice than tap water. I wrote in the comments:

Tap water has so much junk in it. It’s basically sewage liquid, run-off water, and ground water that goes through a treatment plant. My tap water is loaded with chemicals. I know there’s flouride, chlorine, and lead in it, and God-knows what else. In Arizona and Nevada, there’s tungsten in the tap water which has led to a leukemia epidemic there. The water in Albany, NY, was recently tested and was found to have exceedingly high levels of Cialis in it. How on earth did Cialis get in the public water supply? The water is treated WASTE water– people who took Cialis (and I guess there are a lot of men in Albany who do) pass the drug into their urine. The urine goes through the septic system, to be recycled and treated for our drinking water. The chemical treatments might remove cholera and typhoid, but not a lot of the prescription drugs that people take.

There are increasing levels of chemicals — purposely added, and some are there from industrial waste run-off that I just don’t trust tap water…

I’ve been puttering around, looking at water filtration systems and wondering if I want to install something when we redo the kitchen. I guess I just don’t trust the tap water anymore. More to think about…

I wrote about our power outage earlier this week. Power outages are rare for my neighborhood. My block is on the same grid as much of the commercial district, so the power company has extreme measures to keep this grid up and running. However, Monday we had a severe thunderstorm and we lost power for several hours that morning. Power outages give me the willies because we have two sump pumps in our basement that absolutely MUST stay on. If they are off for more than an hour, my basement floods.

Here’s a photo of our predicament Monday, when the water started to rise from the sump well. GULP.

Thank God, the power was restored before the water got too high. We’ve seen water rise up to three feet in that basement. It’s a constant worry, and I’ve seriously considered selling the property because the flooding causes me such anxiety. I just cannot live in a house and on property that floods when we have moderate to heavy rains. We are in the process of (slowly) dealing with the problem, but a large part of the problem has to do with my property is the only greenspace in a large area of asphalt parking lots, and there has been a lot of over-development in the lands up the hill from me. My yard seems to be the depository of all the run-off water, and my lawn can only soak in so much. So we have a high water table and it seeps up through the basement.

Anyway, all is well today. But I’m off to clean the basement floor again before it starts to smell like a pond!