One of my coworkers is still without power, which means she is also without water. She’s been coming into the office and taking our spare 5-gallon water cooler bottles and bringing them home. I asked her how much water was she going through that she needed this many. And her response was….waitforit……”It takes a lot of water to flush the toilets.”
:::shaking my head:::
I grabbed an empty garbage can from under my desk and said “Follow me please”. We walked down the hallway to the maintenance closet where the slop sink was. I filled the itty-bitty wastebasket with about a gallon or so of water.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to show you how to flush a toilet with a bucket. Lets go.”
We walked into the bathroom. “Throw some toilet paper in there.”, I said, pointing to the bowl. She did as I asked.
“Ok, now watch. Slowly and then all at once.” I slowly poured the bucket into the bowl and then dumped the rest in. The water swirled, and -whoosh-, water and TP disappeared. I turned to her, “Ok, that’ll do the job and it uses a lot less water than filling the tank and flushing. Got it?”
After I got back to my desk, I forwarded her the YouTube video you see above.
It’s not her fault, I suppose. No one ever taught her this sort of thing, and its not the kind of thing that it ever occurred to her to investigate on her own. But, still, five-gallons of Culligan drinking water that we pay a guy to deliver should not be used to flush the toilet.
Shes also cooking on her grill but needs propane. Because I’m a soft touch, I pulled two barbecue bombs from my stash and four Scepter cans of water and brought them to work over lunch and loaded them in her truck. (Her husband is outta town on a job for the week and she’s left wrangling kids and job.)
We shall see if I get them back or not.
As for me, I’m using this learning opportunity to reinforce a few things. I’m picking up another couple flats of bottled water to distribute among my freezers, and I just ordered a bunch more Scepter cans.
Did your boss figure out how to open her garage door yet? lol
I love the septer cans, have several myself but as neighbor/co-worker handouts I have planned on giving them the far cheaper Reliance water jugs that are $12-15. I had given a couple of my good cans to someone to borrow and see how they liked them and haven’t seen them since even after numerous times asking for them to return them. Never again. Over the years I’ve amassed two sets of gear – mine and one I loan out. If I don’t get the loaners back, not a big deal.
II have Harbor Freight tools I loan out- funny I only ever get asked to borrow a tool once from each person. Good investment!!!
I’ve learned to never loan out anything unless you don’t expect it back. This includes loaning to family, close friends, coworkers, and neighbors whom you see regularly. Sheesh. Occasionally I am happily surprised and someone does return something.
After seeing CZ’s advice on the Scepter cans I bit the bullet and ordered 4 of the 2.5gal size. Way better than those blue cubes from Wally World. Two in my truck, one in the wife’s car and one on standby.
Option A: Learning has occurred, and next time there’s an emergency, she’ll have her own barrels of stored water, and stash of propane.
Option B: Next time there’s an emergency, she’ll be standing beside your desk looking for another handout.
Keep us posted on which lesson you taught her. :p
There are people who need to be shown this? People who can hold down job. drive, walk and talk at the same time? How hard is it to work out Toilet = Bucket + Water.
It’s even worst than the ones I know who have a stock of candles and are planing to use the electric stove to light them.
I color code my scepter cans:
Desert tan: potable stored full
OD green: potable stored empty, filled during prep for known emergency
Black: non-potable stored empty, filled from non-potable sources during emergency
Blue: water purified during emergency
Tan are stored inside. OD green and black in garage and shed. I have several 10L in each color for ease of handling including black for toilet flushing.
Hopefully you get them back full with a case of beer and a few thick juicy steaks. At the very least you taught someone a few things to help them be better prepared in the future.
If they are like 99%+ of people they are now thinking “We know who to go to next time”.
Seems like her husband should have known how to flush the toilets and then, you know, relayed that information to her…
Husband probably doesn’t know that trick either. You should know by now that simple common sense things for us are not so common for most of society.
I’ve only just notice that she was using Bottled Water that someone other than her paid for and not just re filling the bottles. I’d make sure anything and everything of yours is locked up as she seems to be the kind who thinks “What’s yours is mine”.
this attitude was so prevalent back in the day, our forefathers made it the 3rd amendment of the constitution. Not that it would stop them from taking our stuff.
I’m in the process of trying to empty my freezers, CZ, at least of meat. Yes, I have a gasoline genny that will handle all my freezers, fridges, but that’s only good as long as your stored gasoline lasts. Last year I bought a 23-quart Presto pressure canner and taught myself to can venison. I have a good supply of freeze-dried veggies and meals (stew, lasagna, other MH standards), but it’s hard for me to pay what they get for freeze dried meat when I can pressure can it for a small fraction of that amount. Yes, jars of canned meat or ready meals (stew, soup, etc.) are heavy, but not when you realize that dehydrated and freeze-dried meals must have water added.
Get remote reading freezer thermometers so you can tell the temperature inside of them without opening the door. When we had a four-day outage several years ago, I found I only needed to run the freezers for about two hours to cool them down from 25 degrees back down to five. I ran the generator two hours in the morning and two hours at night, that’s all it took to keep the freezers in the safe zone.
As with lending money to family members, consider it also a gift when ‘lending’ supplies to others. If the items are returned…great. If you never see them again, it was probably worth it.
I just found a 10-pack of the Scepter 20L cans for $225.99 with free shipping on eBay. I think I’ll order them, but I’ve got to find a place to put them first. GF
I worked in the emergency preparedness/planning/response and recovery field for over 20 years. I used to beg schools to allow us in to do disaster preparedness education, so did the Red Cross. Always told that there were more important and required things they HAD to teach- yep so Johnny or Jenna get taught gender confusion and how to put condoms on etc but how not to burn your house down in a power out etc isn’t important?!?!?!
I did have one little success with one school district. I was helping them develop their emergency plan and suggested that in place of one of their fire drills they do an earthquake education/drill. The assistant superintendent (phD type) looked at me and was like “Why, we don’t have earthquakes.” I said yes we do and “normally” they are very small magnitude but we can have higher magnitude quakes based on history. I also pointed out the age of homes/buildings in our county with the vast majority being built before 1950’s. Homes built before the 1950’s were not “normally” secured to the foundation and hence a little shaking could move a structure off its foundation- what doesn’t move is the gas lines, water pipes etc. I also pointed out that based on our county’s declining population and “brain drain” many of the school kids would move out of the area, perhaps into a higher earthquake hazard area. They did earthquake education/drills after that until she retired. But hey at least Johnny or Jenna know where to go if they at confused about their God given gender.
We had a large area blackout many years ago, and a neighbor walked by, saw me drinking my morning coffee and wanted to know how I was able to make it without power. I told her I have a stove top percolator for times like this. She said her stove wouldn’t operate without power. She had a gas stove, but the piezo igniter wouldn’t work. I asked her if she had a book of matches (she was a smoker). She didn’t know that you could light the stove with a match or lighter. (I did warn her to use a pair of pliers to hold the match or use a long-neck lighter so as to not burn her fingers). I can do it with a match, but I don’t think she would have figured it out on her own.
Better still, that night I was the only house with lights on. A neighbor from across the street rang my lighted doorbell (oh, the irony!) with an extension cord plug in his hand asking to “borrow some electricity”! The cord went across the street and into his house. I told him that my generator couldn’t handle the load. The next power outage several years later, and I was still the only house with lights on.
Some people never learn.
You know what’s even more crazy, almost all Piezo igniters don’t use electricity. Odds are she never even tried to use it.
Was without power 9 days during hurricane Isabel. Coworker lived on a well. No power no water. About day 5 or 6 she lamented not being able to flush and how rank it was. I said “you’ve got a swimming pool…..dump pool water in the bowl and flush.” She had no clue.
Commander: on The Zon, a coupla commenters cited an offensive odor associated with the cans, along with occasional reports of the green color leaching into the (“drinking”) water.
Have you had any issue like that?
First thing I do is rinse them out with a mix of hot water and baking soda, and then rinse with clear water. That eliminates any plastic odor. Never saw any color leaching.
Thank you, sir!
I’m told that lemon juice or lemon juice and salt works well as well.
If she’s like most people one of a few things will happen:
1/ You will not see them again and she will not keep them in case she needs them later, she will just dump them, but it’s OK she now knows where to get them from.
2/ When they are empty, at some time she will be saying when are you topping them up for her.
Any way it’s now all on you, and given how people are from now on you will be the own one who gets called out for not helping, and she will be calling you to people who have never helped.
I once had co-workers go nuts on me when after four days after taking Aspin out of my drawer (Given the number I started with he was taking them home), that it had run out, and should have gone out and get some more. One good thing was two co -workers went nuts back to him and pointed out that he could have got some himself, and I was just being nice with letting him have mine.
A second one went nuts on learning the Bandaids I had for my own use were My-Little-Pony ones, as they were on sale. I was the only one who offed him any, but the only one he went off about.
Well done. The smug “sucks to be you, loser!” attitude permeates the prep community. I truly despise it; and when I run into it I don’t hesitate to go full fusion bomb war against the pride that oozes from their hearts.
I am glad to read you chose a different tack. It is a nobility the typical prep hermit lacks because they are simply unwilling to strive with humanity. Which is average, I know.
You can’t save everyone but perhaps just one. Again, well done.
I understand where youre coming from with that comment.
Admittedly, I get smug but only after the fact and the problem is done.
However, the gal it work is someone who has always been nice to me, and been very accommodating of my sometimes-I’m-an-asshole demeanor at work….so, I feel a little bit of loyalty to her. But there are people in the office I have absolutely zero problem listening to them whine about their lack of water/electricity and keeping my mouth shut.
Well done, it sometimes comes down to allies or enemies. I for one don’t need any more enemies and try to help out when I can.
I had a friend here, at the other end of the state, that sold hand pumps for people to attach to their well heads when the power was out. I’ve sometimes thought about drilling a well just so I’d have something to attach the pump to.
If it is brown, flush it down. If it is tan, leave it around.