Our water systems are just boneheaded, the indoor outhouse was only invented yesterday! Here in San Francisco, our water comes from Hetch Hetchy[1][2] two hund

Our water systems are just boneheaded, the indoor outhouse was only invented yesterday! Here in San Francisco, our water comes from Hetch Hetchy[1][2] two hundred miles away. You turn on the tap, it flows into the drain and away again, to a processing plant and then, I think, the Pacific Ocean. That is objectively insane. A less insane system would capture and store water on the way in and the way out, keep some of it in a large (house-sized) tank at ~120°F (storing low-grade thermal energy, typically waste heat from other systems plus solar) and feed the showers through a small continuous-flow heater (JIT heating). Waste water from the shower can go right into the garden if you use the right soap. (Lavender flowers work great as soap. "Its late Latin name was lavandārius, from lavanda (things to be washed), from the verb lavāre (to wash)."[3] The English word "lave" is of the same root.) I lived off-grid in the woods for a time and we had long-as-you-like hot showers. That's half the benefit of civilization right there in the bathroom! Just think things through and yu can have a high standard of living without the ridiculous waste. It's fun, cheap, and easy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetch_Hetchy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Shaughnessy_Dam_(California) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Shaughnessy_Dam_(California) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavandula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavandula