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Comment by ars | Hacker News Reader

I have to say I really like all the wood.

But did I hear him right that he just dumps the water from the shower? That's not good. If you put the water in the sewer it gets recycled.

It's basically impossible to waste water from a shower if you are on a public sewer, since the next city downriver uses it. Also, never use a septic system, those are bad for the environment since they waste water.

Very cool house though.

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Where does the water go if it doesn't go in the sewer? Is it somehow destroyed, never to enter the environment again?

I think he was talking about how he has to carry water up to the loft in order to use his shower. It's a gravity system with just a jug of water above the shower which falls when he opens the tap (or it looks like just a PVC tube in his case). Though since he's in a trailer I'd guess he's not hooked up to the sewage system.. would guess it's similar to an RV in that sense. But he never discussed that in the interview.

It seemed that he just dumps it on the ground.

How is that significantly different from any other method of disposing mostly-clean water? Either it goes through another use cycle downstream (if the sewer system drains into a river), evaporates, and is recovered as precipitation, or it just evaporates and is recovered as precipitation. The water is still part of the water cycle.

The water cycle sure. But that's of no help to places with water shortages. If you return it to the sewer then other cities down the line can reuse the water.

If you remember a while back when atlanta had severe water shortages. Part of the problem is that something like 40% of houses had septic systems, so cities downriver from atlanta did not get enough water.

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