Making water do more during drought

Since we in the St. Louis, MO region and other parts of the U.S. are experiencing drought, I thought I would mention two things I've started doing to make water go farther that didn't require spending any money. I got the ideas from Peter Bane's new book The Permaculture Handbook, to give credit where it's very much due.

First, I plugged the drain in the side of the kitchen sink where I rinse dishes so I can collect and reuse that water. I use a siphon (a plastic tube which is part of my DH's beer-brewing apparatus) to siphon the water out of the sink into a waiting 5 gallon bucket. Then I carry it to whatever plant needs it the most that can stand a little bit of detergent in the water and isn't something from which I'll be eating the leaves or roots. That plant gets a good drink, and as many others as I feel I can stretch out of that bucket. A day or two worth of dishes in our 2 adult household yields something between 7 and 10 gallons of such water. I might be using too much rinse water, but then again I get severe digestive distress from just a small amount of detergent residue on dishes, so I try to make sure I rinse it all off. The flexible plastic tubing is the same stuff used in aquarium set-ups, so your local aquarium supplier would have it if you don't have a home-brew supplier in your area. A few feet of tubing will suffice.

Second, I collected the water from a load of laundry washed in our washing machine and used that similarly. This was more difficult to make work due to the discharge hose's propensity to twist during the final spin cycle and also because I had a hard time sealing the drain in the washtub I used to collect the water. Here's what I did, in case you can rig up something similar. I used an old square washtub on a stand to collect the water expelled from the washing machine. The washtub is the kind used for washing clothes before electricity and washing machines came along. We bought it at a yard sale for a few dollars (you can buy new ones from www.lehmans.com but be forewarned, they aren't cheap). It has a rubber tube extending down from the drain. I positioned the washtub next to the washing machine and over the floor drain to catch leaks. I pulled the machine's drain hose out of the standpipe into which it drains and draped it over the side of the washtub, securing it to the washtub with a 3 inch C clamp and pointing it down enough to allow the water to enter the washtub instead of spraying into the basement, as it did when the hose wasn't secured to the washtub. (Our basement is unfinished and has a concrete floor so no damage was done.) I used a large round flexible disk sold for the purpose of stopping drains to cover the drain hole and held it down with a portion of a brick to keep it in place while the washtub filled up. The washtub filled almost to the top with water from the laundry cycle. After the cycle ended, I siphoned out one bucket of water, dipped out the next bucket, and uncovered the drain hole and set the rubber tube into the bucket to drain the remainder of the washtub. An incomplete seal during the latter operation lost some of the water, but I still ended up with about 15 gallons of water which I hauled to various plants according to the same criteria as I used with the rinse water from dishwashing. It's quite important to choose your plants carefully if you decide to do this; nonedible perennials and annuals, shrubs, and trees are best because you won't be eating anything the water might contact. You can use the water on shrubs and trees bearing fruit or nuts as long as you ensure the water won't splash up onto the edible portions.