3 ms·

just fill up a bath or washbasin and you should have plenty of water to last 5 hours, even in a heatwave...

neilv 1y ago
I actually sent that advice and a few other tips to people on my building's email list already. Unfortunately, with ~100 people, and a general culture in the university neighborhood of non-cooperative, non-engaged, disconnected... there's a real chance that not everyone is going to do all the right things, and someone will get heat exhaustion or heat stroke.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  >unfortunately, with ~100 people, and a general culture in the university neighborhood of non-cooperative, non-engaged, disconnected It's not the neighborhood, it's the people who inhabit it. Just remove the word "university" and trade all the street parked Prius's in for driveway parked Tacomas and you've basically just described every snooty neighborhood in <shuffles cards> Wayland or <shuffles again> Dedham. I assure you that just as many people in the suburbs are "not doing the right thing" or are otherwise completely surprised by outlier weather events. 100deg temps just have less consequences when you're not 22, living in an apartment with no A/C and drank yourself to a .3 the prior evening.
stavros 1y ago
I don't know what the purpose of the shutdown is, but filling up a bathtub would probably lead to way more usage than if they hadn't cut off the water supply.
- bluGill 1y ago
  Bathtubs are tiny users of water. Anyone city with a water supply problem is worried about people watering lawns which will use orders of magnitude more water.
  - simoncion 1y ago
    In addition to that, if this is an old building, then I'd bet that the reason for the water shutoff is to fix a leak. If there's a leak, it's likely that the leak is leaking into the structure somewhere. Might be that five days of leakage are much, much more water wasted [0] than if everyone in the building stocks several gallons of water for use during the shutoff period. [0] And in this case, actually wasted because they'll not make it to a drain to get to a water treatment plant.
  - stavros 1y ago
    Ah yes, I forgot you have lawns, thanks.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - walthamstow 1y ago
    Grass lawns for pleasure were invented on a wet rock in the North Atlantic, and even we here have to stop watering them during drought conditions (aka hosepipe ban). It baffles me that people have them in parts of the USA.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      Grass lawns grow very well without any added water in most of North America. It will go brown in dry conditions, but as soon as it rains it comes back. Of course as a large continent there are deserts where a lawn cannot grow without constant watering, but the vast majority of North America is plenty wet for a lawn to grow. A significant minority wants green grass year round and those people water their lawn. It is not a majority though.
      - beej71 1y ago
        We don't live in such an area (we live in the high desert), but a lot of people around here have lush, green, watered lawns. It's the opposite of the places where people have to fight encroaching plants. :) About 6 years ago we let our lawn die off (it was at it's EOL anyway; the soil beneath was sand). We replaced part of it with rough pavers spaced 2-3 inches apart and we let the grass and whatever else grow in the spaces, and keep it mowed. It's not as nice as a lawn, but it's greenery. I do have to water it, but it takes a tiny fraction of the amount a lawn would take. The hypothesis is that the pavers prevent evaporation, trapping the moisture in the soil. I was inspired by the hearty, unwanted plants that would always manage to grow between the pavers with zero water.

I actually sent that advice and a few other tips to people on my building's email list already. Unfortunately, with ~100 people, and a general culture in the university neighborhood of non-cooperative, non-engaged, disconnected... there's a real chance that not everyone is going to do all the right things, and someone will get heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

potato3732842 1y ago
>unfortunately, with ~100 people, and a general culture in the university neighborhood of non-cooperative, non-engaged, disconnected It's not the neighborhood, it's the people who inhabit it. Just remove the word "university" and trade all the street parked Prius's in for driveway parked Tacomas and you've basically just described every snooty neighborhood in <shuffles cards> Wayland or <shuffles again> Dedham. I assure you that just as many people in the suburbs are "not doing the right thing" or are otherwise completely surprised by outlier weather events. 100deg temps just have less consequences when you're not 22, living in an apartment with no A/C and drank yourself to a .3 the prior evening.

stavros 1y ago

I don't know what the purpose of the shutdown is, but filling up a bathtub would probably lead to way more usage than if they hadn't cut off the water supply.

bluGill 1y ago
Bathtubs are tiny users of water. Anyone city with a water supply problem is worried about people watering lawns which will use orders of magnitude more water.
- simoncion 1y ago
  In addition to that, if this is an old building, then I'd bet that the reason for the water shutoff is to fix a leak. If there's a leak, it's likely that the leak is leaking into the structure somewhere. Might be that five days of leakage are much, much more water wasted [0] than if everyone in the building stocks several gallons of water for use during the shutoff period. [0] And in this case, actually wasted because they'll not make it to a drain to get to a water treatment plant.
- stavros 1y ago
  Ah yes, I forgot you have lawns, thanks.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- walthamstow 1y ago
  Grass lawns for pleasure were invented on a wet rock in the North Atlantic, and even we here have to stop watering them during drought conditions (aka hosepipe ban). It baffles me that people have them in parts of the USA.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    Grass lawns grow very well without any added water in most of North America. It will go brown in dry conditions, but as soon as it rains it comes back. Of course as a large continent there are deserts where a lawn cannot grow without constant watering, but the vast majority of North America is plenty wet for a lawn to grow. A significant minority wants green grass year round and those people water their lawn. It is not a majority though.
    - beej71 1y ago
      We don't live in such an area (we live in the high desert), but a lot of people around here have lush, green, watered lawns. It's the opposite of the places where people have to fight encroaching plants. :) About 6 years ago we let our lawn die off (it was at it's EOL anyway; the soil beneath was sand). We replaced part of it with rough pavers spaced 2-3 inches apart and we let the grass and whatever else grow in the spaces, and keep it mowed. It's not as nice as a lawn, but it's greenery. I do have to water it, but it takes a tiny fraction of the amount a lawn would take. The hypothesis is that the pavers prevent evaporation, trapping the moisture in the soil. I was inspired by the hearty, unwanted plants that would always manage to grow between the pavers with zero water.