Our Water Headache
The biggest difficulty and the hardest transition for us living tiny has been our constant challenge of getting water. Our house is hook-up ready which means we have a spigot on the outside of the house that we can connect a hose to in order to have instantly running water. However, where we are parked, there is no water source to connect to in that way. We knew this when we decided to park here and realized that that would be a big learning curve to work through.
We purchased a 47 gallon water tank that sits on the floor in our "living room" and plumbed that up to our hot water heater and our sink in the kitchen. We built an L-shaped storage bench that hides the water tank while still allowing access to it so we can fill it. Filling it is the real pain-in-the-ass chore about us living this way.
Roughly once every two weeks, it's time to haul our water. Along with the tiny house water tank, we also have a water tank that sits in the back of our 1994 Ford pickup truck. We fill that tank from a pump at a neighboring home, drive back to Lil Blue, run a hose or two from the truck's tank to Lil Blue's tank inside, and then use a utility pump to pump the water through. This poses some challenges. The biggest of which is that we need to leave our door open a bit in order to snake the hose and the pump inside. That means, in the summer, we allow for blistering heat, humidity, and bugs to get inside the house and in the winter, all of our heat escapes and we freeze. We turn the heat off while we do this, bundle up, and hope it gets done quickly and before the sun sets and we're working in the dark.
It is better and easier now that we have a good routine. At the beginning, it would take us three hours to haul in our water. It was messy, difficult, and would eat up an entire afternoon. It was stressful to plan when we would get our water around our work schedules, the weather, having enough light and time, and also timing it so that we wouldn't be left without any water in the house for too long. Now we can haul water, start to finish, in an hour. But it takes two people--one has to stay outside monitoring the hose and the outside water tank (Jordan) while the other person (me) holds the hose inside and monitors that end of things so that we don't get water everywhere. Jordan has been the brains behind this operation and I have thankfully been able to just go along with whatever he tells me to do. I'm good for many things, but logistically figuring out hauling and filling water has not been one of them.
We are able to get water so infrequently (once every two weeks) because we have chosen not to shower in our home. We have a shower and everything is set up for us to be able to shower here but if we did, we would be hauling water in every other day. It would be too much of a hassle and too stressful. As it is, we use this water to wash our dishes and our hands, and to cook with and drink. We shower at the YMCA or at friends' and family's houses. We do our laundry also at friends' and family's houses. We are lucky and blessed to have a support system here and people that welcome us! If it wasn't for the generosity and hospitality of our friends, we would be smelly and dirty messes.
It would be nice to someday be able to shower in Lil Blue and have somewhat more of a normal routine in our own home. But we don't know if that will be possible while we are parked where we are. And since we have no desire to move to another location, it looks like this is what our two-year (or longer?) stint will look like. This does, however, ensure some good hang-out time with people that we love, and that makes it all worth it.