Our Missouri Life

Via Arizona Public Media

There is no resource more precious and more endangered in Southern Arizona than water. Each of us uses an average of 96 gallons of potable water per day.

Faced with uncertainty about how climate change will affect our water resources, Pima County and the City of Tucson recently formed a joint Water and Wastewater Oversight Committee to plan for a sustainable water future.

Producer Laura Markowitz follows the flow of wastewater in Pima County and describes a water-saving alternative to flushing that has been embraced by a neighborhood in Marana.

Everything you need to know about what you drink – Planet Green

Damn interesting article and videos!

An Earthship is a radically sustainable home made of recycled materials.

* Electricity is from the sun with solar panels and wind with wind modules.
* Water is caught on the roof from rain and snow melt.
* Sewage is treated on site in interior and external botanical planters.
* Heating and Cooling is from the sun and the earth.
* Food is grown inside and outside.

Earthships are constructed with recycled materials and perform as expected in any part of the world, in any climate and still provide you with what you need to survive.

Earthship Biotecture is a global company, based on 40 years of research and development by Michael Reynolds, principal architect of Earthship Biotecture.

http://www.rainharvest.com/

These guys carry a lot of stuff! Prices look reasonable, not sure about shipping but they have a lot of cool stuff!

I often get asked what type of things do I read. What do I read as far as articles for work, articles for our property, ideas for the home and land, gardening, cooking and etc.

It dawned on me that since I use Google Reader I can actually share them with anyone who’s interested.

So now you can click here: Articles Rick Shared and see what I’ve tagged for future reading or to save.

Somehow this story over at Green Daily made me feel vindicated. We’re more or less doing “staycations” (stay at home vacations) this year due to gas prices.

As it stands now, we only have two planned out of area trips this year. One to Springfield, IL for a family reunion and the other to the property in Missouri.

So I was sitting here this morning mulling over rainwater collection ideas.

I’ll post more about this in a few days but looking around the cisterns in the size I want (>1200 gal) are expensive given what they are – big plastic barrels. But with all my mumbling about price came the internal voice saying “At what price water?”. i.e. What value would I put on water given contamination of my well or pump failure in the middle of summer with no available funds to immediately replace the pump? Priceless was the answer.

Given our planned roof size we can gather 1000 gallons in a 1″ rainfall. Rainwater is easily and inexpensively treated to make it potable. No Brainer