Water conservation

[sorrelfilly721]

[QUOTE=dotneko;7804543]
We installed automatic waterers and figure we save, in our 29 stall barn, over 50,000 gallons a year. If each stall has 2 buckets and an average of 5 gallons is dumped a day X29 X365 gives you 59000 gallons[/QUOTE]

The waterers are great. When they work. The problem is if they get clogged, or the well pump stops working, the horse have only about a cup of water until someone fixes the problem. In 110 degree heat, that can be devastating. We have waterers, but we have water in tubs as backup. I don’t dump the tubs until they drink them down, but at least if the waterer goes dry (which happens fairly often), they have something to drink until I can get the pump working or get someone to deliver water.

[Horseychick87]

[QUOTE=Bicoastal;7805390]
I’ve never seen a dirty toilet bowl look like that. She is on a spring. Maybe it was sediment. I grew up on wells and the bottom of the toilet bowls never got black! (nor were we kids diligent about cleaning them :D)[/QUOTE]

Yup, she could very well have sediment either from the spring and/or from old lines. As for the wells, it really depends on how deep they’re dug and how much use they get. Also if your cap is cracked you can get sand etc, in the lines and then into your house and that is an expensive fix.

My well is a secondary well that the city had to have dug when they broke ours while they dug out our ditches in my neighborhood. Of course they did it on the cheap side and had a very shallow well dug, it’s about half the depth it should be, but we didn’t know it until it was too late. Now we have the black sediment that comes up sometimes and settles in the toilet and sand that’ll come up into the washing machine while doing laundry.

I try not to clean the toilet too often, it’s not my favorite thing, but when the sediment comes up I have to and it can be a pain.

[OTTBs]

I’ve had some plans for conserving water when I have my own barn. I’d like to have a way to switch the drain in the wash rack into a reuse mode for cold hosing (not for open wounds of course,) possibly with the pipes running through an ice container to keep it cold. I also want to set up a filter system connected to a tank to dump reasonably-clear bucket water into for watering arenas.

At home I collect the cool water while the shower is warming up and use it for the toilet. If you dump a bit directly into the bowl, you can flush the “yellow” for much less water than using the flusher–for those who can’t let it mellow.

[shakeytails]

[QUOTE=dressager;7794534]
We use buckets which obviously need to scrubbed. It pains me to dump them out (21 buckets x 5 gallons each is over 100 gallons wasted)…

We wash our feed buckets and then use that water to soak the beet pulp or pellets.[/QUOTE]

Why would you dump a full 5 gal bucket of water? If I don’t water and wait 'til an hour or so after I feed, the buckets generally have an inch or two of water in them. I only have one bucket per stall- unless it’s wicked hot out, filling them twice a day is plenty and they’re never dry, usually they have at least a gallon or two left.

As for feed pans…why wash them? I have corner feeders and the horses do a fine job of keeping them polished.

[UrbanHennery]

Are you scrubbing buckets every day? That seems excessive. I scrub my buckets once a week on Sundays. On a daily basis I just scoop out any hay bits and refill. Obviously if a bucket gets gross for some reason it gets scrubbed sooner but that’s a rare exception.

Also, I rarely wash my feed pans. They get used by the same horse every day and the horses do a pretty good job of licking them clean. If the mule pees in hers (so gross) clearly it gets scrubbed. But otherwise why are you washing them regularly?