Cape Town Water Crisis

[Veneficus]

Ek het erens gelees of gehoor dat Oom Angus gese het die Kaapse damme gaan einde Maart vol wees.
Ek sal graag wil glo, maar ek dink Oom Angus.......
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Laat ek maar eerder nie daai sin klaar maak nie

Gaan lees weer die actual info

Die koerante het dit verdraai

Angus het gese dat hy en die mense moet gebede se en dat as die Here will dan sal die damme vol wees voor dit.

Die Koerante probeer die story verdraai dat Angus vir God se wat om te doen (of dat hy "claim" om vir God te se wat hy moet doen)

Maak nie saak of mens glo of nie maar een ding wat mens so ver moet se is dat Angus claim nerens dat hy God kan maak om iets te doen nie
Hy claim net dat baie gebede word gehoor though.

[CornelisVoigt]

Net n voorstel wat ek gee om tenks op te sit. As die water regtig dan opraak kan ons nie by owerhede gan staan met emmertjie nie.

[Karookarma]

Net n voorstel wat ek gee om tenks op te sit. As die water regtig dan opraak kan ons nie by owerhede gan staan met emmertjie nie.

Doen die wiskunde - 'n 5000l JoJo tenk = 200 x 25l kannetjies water wat jy by punt moet gaan oplaai. As jy rerig wil water so opgaar is die geheim om nie 'n geut te laat oorloop nie - as jy bome in jou erf het - maak gereeld geute skoon. Ook - genoeg "downpiupes" wat na tenke toe voer! Dis futiel om 'n hele sy van huis wat bv. 'n 20m lange geut net een uitlaat te gee - hier in die Karoo kan 'n donderstorm maklik 5000l van kleinerige dak opvang maar dit help nie as helfte van water mors agv vuil geute of te min uitlate nie.

[the_terrible_triplett]

Water usage, same as solar systems, require the same logic.
With solar system you need your watts consume over hours to get the size of the battery bank.
With a water system, you need to know how much water you use for what, and then re-use the water as much as possible, to get the right tank size required.

To get drinking water, is not that problematic. To shower, some great ideas here already.

The biggest problem in my mind is "if it is brown, flush it down". That can, as has been pointed out, cause a lot of serious issues.

And then the potential theft, as has also been mentioned here, of water being carted or stored on ones property, by the "Have Not's".


The pictures of standing in buckets in a shower, jip, been doing that for months now, works like a dream for toilets, till you go next level and start using wetwipes and dry shampoo. Then there is even less water for toilets.

Washing machine water we re-use. The 1st cycles dirty water, goes into bin 1, as toilet water. The 2nd cycle, rinsing, goes into bin 2, and that water becomes the next loads 1st cycles water. So +-600l per month sorts a lot of washing and toiletting.

To treat grey water, to stand as long as one needs, I found this website, have ordered, going to try it: http://www.biosystemssa.co.za/domestic/re-use-grey-water.

As has also been mentioned, and that is what I am aiming for, is how many liters of water does one need to store for 1 year. The problem is one does not want to involve the bank for such a system, for when Eskom failed, and Cpt was the laughing stock initially, lots of people bought UPS'es, then Eskom stopped their nefarious load shedding and a lot of people was left with UPS not needed anymore. Jip, I sold a LOT of UPS'es at the time. None are being used today.

As someone has said above, I also think Cpt is part of a high level political game being played by National Government, to bring Cpt to it's knees so that they, ANC, can get rid of the DA by, as Zuma did with the "free education" and ito Eskom, "I told them no more load shedding" announcements, the ANC can come swooping in and say, here is the money, see, build the desalination plants, we sorted the problem - then stealing that money before the plants become operational.

Bottom line, we are between a dry tap and no rain.

[Jambo7]

Yep, we're in for a rough ride here in CPT regarding water, and it's going to be a long drawn out issue that could get nasty as the situation worsens. For now we have to make do with any water saving ideas that we can come up with.

My wife and I are retired so we are at home more than those still working, but then there is just the two of us - offspring fled the nest many moons ago!

We're lucky to have a borehole that draws off an underground stream running off Table Mountain and which in over 40 years has never run dry. In normal winter rainfall years it used to overflow up the bore pipe to a run off drain to the storm water drain in the street. Hasn't done that in the last three winters which indicates how poor the rainfall has been recently. Apart from tapping off that overflow to our storage tanks in future when we hopefully get decent rains we do the following to save as much water as we can.

Wee on the grass in the back garden. No one overlooks us and the grass thrives on it! Must be the Shiraz content.....The grass gets watered by what comes next.

Next we shower in the garden as well using a Gardena shower connected to one of our borehole taps. OK, the water is cold but in summer months it's fine and the grass benefits - we just move the shower around which has a spike on the bottom for just this situation.

Lastly, we use the borehole water for drinking once we have collected a few litres and have passed it through a USA designed and manufactured gravity type Berkey filter in the kitchen. Check www.berkeyfilters.com There is a South African retailer here. These come in different sizes and use sophisticated replaceable filters that not only take out the iron oxide in borehole or well point water, but any nasties such as heavy metals, coliforms, viruses, pathogenic bacteria etc but leave desirable minerals in the water. However, these filters are not designed for bulk filtering so one cannot pass borehole water through them for use in the house plumbing system or for topping up a pool.

If you're fortunate enough to have a borehole or well point the foregoing can save quite a few litres each month.

[bredsj]

you guys underestimate how much water you can collect off a standard size roof in a year via gutters. Here in oz it's law to have rain water tanks. On my previous property where annual rainfall was under 600 mm a year I had 26000l tanks and they overflowed. Rural properties here have 50000 to 90000 l tanks. Accessing it for drinking is no big issue.

True, I have installed rainwater tanks, it will help with next summer unless we get rain now in summer. I managed to catch a lot of water that will greatly assist. We have a promise of rain tomorrow! I have also installed a grey water system, so shower/bath water is utilized in the toilets.

[bredsj]

You seems to be very frustrated. One needs to remember that the responsibility to provide water does not belong to the City. The City only cleans up the water they receive from government owned dams. It is a government responsibility. The aquifers and all that water belongs to the government.

But, I must point out to you, reluctantly, that you must take time to read all the comments. Most of what you are saying have been discussed on the forum in several threads.

I am frustrated, surely. And I have read (by now) almost all the posts. Thanks for understanding. I still hold my viewpoint. The responsibility is a joint responsibility so local, provincial and national government must work together. National government can't build a dam in 3 years time, the public participation and environmental studies will take 10 yrs, believe me, I am an Engineer and work regularly with these things. The frustration is that the City takes no responsibility, they shift the blame.

Nothing prevents the City Council to build a desalination plant, it is not a national government function.

The City of Cape Town must know that what we do is permanent. I have installed 4 water tanks and a grey water system, costing a fortune. This will now be utilized in the future, meaning less water to buy. Ironically the City will just increase their rates to still have the same income! The Business Chamber pointed out to the City that they want to charge for a product that they cannot supply. This is life, a city council is an authority, not a business.

But, we'll survive, hopefully we'll get enough rain to push us through the critical months up to May. And we'll pray that Day Zero not arrive as those in Government (all levels) totally underestimate what will happen if 20000 people start to queue for water at each water point, that means that 833 persons must go through per hour, 24 hrs per day or 14 per minute!

[bredsj]

Add Domestos to the water.

Domestos work. I have tried the commercial stuff, makes the smell worse. Now I drop a chlorine pill in the tank.

[Musashi]

Here are a few things we've done over the last year to reduce our dependency on municipal water:

The washing machine is a big user of water. Our top loader easily use 160 litres for a single load. I built a cheap 160 litre system that allows us to capture the water from one rinse cycle to use in the washing cycle of the next load. This effectively reduced the water consumption by 40%.

We shower in a large bucket and pour the water in the cistern of the toilet (this is more effective than pouring it in the bowl). The problem is the three of us shower with less than 10 litres of water so we don't actually have enough water for the toilet. Over weekends we swim rather than shower.

We redirected two downpipes (about 60m2 roof area) to the pool. Every 1 mm of rain fills the pool by about 3mm. We haven't topped up the pool in more than year.

At this point our average daily consumption was about 35 litres per person per day.

Yesterday I finished connected our rainwater tank to the plumbing of the house. The tank is currently 80% filled with pure rain water and we should be able to go a month without municipal supply. If the tank is empty, we have 20,000 litres in the swimming pool that we can pump into the tank for dishes, laundry and the toilet. We can buy the little drinking water we need. With the first winter rains the tank should fill quickly and we hope to be off grid most of the year.

[Uys]

Necessity is the mother of invention!

[glamprecht]

Rainwater collection arithmetic can be simple i.e. 200m2 house x 0,5m of rain per year = 100m3 or 100 000 litres. Now storage of this volume is more complex and challenging with seasonal rainfall and steady consumption. But using 12 000 litres per month (100 litres per day x 4 people) = approx 8 months supply. A bit of arithmetic and knowledge of monthly likely rainfall will reduce the storage needed but not by too much is my guess.

If one could collect the water from all roofed areas and the paving (driveways etc) you could probably squeeze a year's supply out?

All that is needed is the rain (and plenty of JoJo's)!

Not quite this simple! There is an an approximate 90% collection efficiency for metal roofs and 62% for tile roofs. This varies, but especially in Cape Town where summer rainfall is 1-4mm at a time combined with warm roofs from the previous day and high winds, often all the rain is absorbed by the tiles and you get zero collection. So you cannot simplify the calculation. It could rain 40mm between December and March, and you can collect nothing at all during this time.

[metelm]

Having a household with 4 kids & 3 adults, water requirement is quite high! We let yellow mellow, we re-use grey water, but water is still a major requirement. I have little faith in either the Municipality or the Provincial / National governments to sort out the problem. Some time ago we decided that "Day Zero" was going to become a reality, and have tried to plan accordingly.

We have a large salt chlorinated pool, and a roof area of around 300 m2. We have re-directed the roof downpipes into the pool, and I have installed a marine desalinator capable of making 160 l/h of fresh water, and we are augmenting the supply with desalinated water into a 2500 l tank. This water is 100% drinkable (probably cleaner than what comes out of the tap). Almost finished all of the conversions, and it is working like a charm!

[cribblekris]

http://www.dryloo.co.za/

[MrTolbos]

We have re-directed the roof downpipes into the pool, and I have installed a marine desalinator capable of making 160 l/h of fresh water, and we are augmenting the supply with desalinated water into a 2500 l tank.

Can you please let us know what kind of marine desalinator you used? And where we can buy it from?

[Reenen]

Gaan lees weer die actual info

Die koerante het dit verdraai

Angus het gese dat hy en die mense moet gebede se en dat as die Here will dan sal die damme vol wees voor dit.

Die Koerante probeer die story verdraai dat Angus vir God se wat om te doen (of dat hy "claim" om vir God te se wat hy moet doen)

Maak nie saak of mens glo of nie maar een ding wat mens so ver moet se is dat Angus claim nerens dat hy God kan maak om iets te doen nie
Hy claim net dat baie gebede word gehoor though.

Wel, angus was ten minste reg by my. My damme is almal vol.