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The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

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Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#101

Post by RC_ITR »

MisterTea wrote: post #15
bradfa wrote: post #5

I can feel for the people who have been living there for a long time and now have to deal with the water situation. But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to h…

> But I can't understand the attitudes of people who are choosing to move to such a place where access to water is such a risk. From the article: "They believe that the county is not going to let five hundred homes next to one of the wealthiest cities go without water.” In their mind: "This is America." Meaning they are used to living in the "Land of plenty" never thinking that one day, it could end.

Add in “I’m a nature lover! I’m not the bad guy because I want to live in nature (with air conditioning, easy car access and half hour showers)!”

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#102

Post by cookrn »

I wonder how much this situation is being affected by large-scale deep agricultural wells? I think Arizona is a big foreign exporter (Saudi and China) of alfalfa for animal feed. Kinda wild to drain aquifers for export...

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#103

Post by phpisthebest »

bradfa wrote: post #91
phpisthebest wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>no one bugs me if my lawn is looking sad. But in other ways it would be nice to have a unified group to take care of some neighborhood things, like unifying garbage pickup since we have private garbage companies here: In many locations neither of those items are purview of the HOA, those would be City ordinances and City Services. HOA's in my experience fit 2 molds, with some over lap The first takes care of common…

My town has no interest in operating garbage service. A few of the area villages do have village-provided garbage service and often the quality and cost is less than the private companies, but it seems garbage service is not a big enough deal for people to try and unite over it. Pools and structures like decks or sheds are regulated by the building code of the town, but they do not impact your property value for prop…

Well my city has no interest in operating one either, instead they force me to pay a high monthly fee, then find the lowest bid contractor they can to do a shitty job of collecting my trash sometimes... (paying the contractor about 1/4 of the amount the city charges me for the service) while preventing any competing company from offering residential pickup anywhere in the city limits.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#104

Post by Scoundreller »

coryrc wrote: post #100
Scoundreller wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And heat pump efficiency takes a dump when it has to go through defrost cycles in heating mode at near/below freezing temps. In cooling mode they provide a source of fresh-distilled water! It always bothered me when air conditioners just dump that water down the sanitary drain instead of pumping it in a garden or misting it on the outside coils.

Yeah, air source has problems at cold temperatures, especially if they cheap out on ice detection. Fresh is not the word I would use for condensate. Try drinking some of you disagree :). It's corrosive for metal,{EDIT: maybe I just have that confused, see replies} which is why it usually doesn't find a purpose, but you could run it to plants. I have a window A/C which uses it for cooling the outside coils though.

Still wouldn't drink it unless I'm desperate, but I don't see why it would be corrosive. Maybe slightly basic from being in contact with metals, but it couldn't be much unless your coils and fins are disappearing before your eyes.

Legionella is a concern though.

https://www.environmentalleader.com/2013/01/air-conditioning...

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#105

Post by eesmith »

legitster wrote: post #57
alistairSH wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point 3 - the article explicitly mentioned lawn sprinklers, a pool for bathing horses, and some other things that most definitely DO waste water. And are they required to be better insulated?

Sure, but on average less than northern cities. At the end of the day, I don't actually care about moralizing what's wasteful or not if the owner is being charged the proper cost to acquire. If that's $1 a gallon for solar and desalination/recycled water, enjoy that lawn. (Pedantic person side note: pools are not actually that wasteful. If they are properly covered when not in use, evaporative loss is actually pretty…

Water in the Southwest has never been charged "the proper cost to acquire."

It's being pumped out faster than it can be replenished. Rivers are drained dry.

People have built for decades on the belief that water will never be its true cost.

Now it's the end of that day.

The "proper cost to acquire" isn't enough. Who pays the cost of repairing the damage done, like groundwater-related subsidence? Of restoring ecosystems?

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#106

Post by D13Fd »

Scoundreller wrote: post #99
D13Fd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true, although solar heating in warm climates can be mitigated in some ways (roof color, attic structure/ventilation) and solar heating in cold climates is tough with a layer of snow on the roof. Bottom line is that there are many variables but a big delta tends to be energy intensive to overcome.

> cold climates is tough with a layer of snow on the roof Snow is actually helpful by insulating. The sun is closer to the horizon over winter, so it's your vertical windows doing the heating anyway. An obvious issue is how much sunlight you get over winter. Not just in hours, but in N. Europe, you might have continuous cloudcover and not see the sun for weeks at a time.

Snow is not helpful for solar heating, as I said, and if your roof has a big r-value to begin with the snow is not adding a ton of insulation.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#107

Post by CharlesW »

crikeyjoe wrote: post #83

California refuses to desalinate, which would solve all the problems. I thought they were smart, instead they're political. They'd rather kill off the southwest. Assholes.

The Carlsbad, CA desal plant is 20m from me and currently produces 50 million gallons/day. What do you mean by "California refuses to desalinate"?

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#108

Post by occz »

paulcole wrote: post #54

> “Like, a scrambling-for-your-toilet-water-every-month kind of thing.” A few years ago I saw this coming and invented the Waterless Toilet. It's like a kitty litter box but for people who live in areas like those discussed in the article. Why scramble for toilet water when you can just use the Waterless Toilet? I've been trying to get funding for this so please reach out if interested.

Interesting. How is this different from a composting toilet? Those are already an available option for people with limited access to water and sewage infrastructure.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#109

Post by RC_ITR »

throw8383833jj wrote: post #66
bradfa wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the whole concept of having HOAs in many neighborhoods is a very regional thing. I live in upstate NY and pretty much every single-family homes neighborhood around me does not have an HOA. The only neighborhoods which have HOAs are those with large numbers of multi-family homes, like townhomes. In some ways it's nice to not have an HOA, no one bugs me if my lawn is looking sad. But in other ways it would be n…

what ever money save from garbage pickup will be vastly outdone by the enormous waste an HOA brings. Our HOA costs me 2K per year (that's a whole tesla every 20 years = 40K). And the only thing they do is take care of a couple of benches, blow some leaves off a few bushes, maybe a few sprinklers in a green area and 2 big white fences. Other than that, all the money goes to administration and inspectors that go around…

Two unrelated comments:

1) The conspiracy theory is that intentionally pointless HOAs were pushed by small government folks as a way to make people skeptical of tax-for-service organizations.

2) The HOAs point isn’t to regulate the 99% of people who would otherwise maintain their house. It’s for the 1% of people that wouldn’t and in order to avoid housing discrimination charges, you have to regulate everyone equally.

Re: The Water Wars Come to the Suburbs

#110

Post by Scoundreller »

bradfa wrote: post #24
Enginerrrd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have no information about this, but I would expect that homeowner's insurance should get much more expensive for these locations as without access to water it's quite hard to have firefighting infrastructure. Without firefighters, homes and humans are at much higher risk. Maybe insurance economics will help to resolve this? It's pretty normal in rural areas to basically not have a fire department for all practical…

Right, but even with a volunteer fire department, at least there's normally water that they can use to save the neighbor houses once they arrive on-scene. If there's no water then there's no way to save anything from a fire.

Right: They'll have water delivery trucks on standby contracts. The very trucks that deliver water to homes. They'll come to the scene and deploy an instant-pool for firetrucks to draw from.

You could say that having homes that depend on cisterns actually helps in firefighting efforts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i090t5scQ1o&t=220s

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