Well - done (2025 Update)

Good flow rate. Wells often have advantages if you have good water and no treatment needed. Before I added filters in my CT house we used to fill jugs from a friend's well for drinking. So far, the water here has been good.

Water and sewer will cost about $800 a year. Our sewer rate is much higher than what we pay for water. Water last month was $18, sewer was $41. Trash collection was $14 for twice a week pickup.

twice per week ! ? garbage. We're once every 2 weeks ... John T.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: snipped-for-privacy@netfront.net ---

I was surprised at that. Recycles once a week but regular trash is Tuesday and Friday. You can put out one large item too, like a sofa or mattress, or two tires.

Normally, we have a bag a week for the two of us so not a big deal.

I think sewer rate here is a little lower but water much higher. A bachelor friend pays about $40 and families about $100/month. Over the long haul you can save with well and septic but when a fix is needed you get socked all at once. I think I would prefer the stable route in part because government specifications change. Two neighbors when they sold their houses were forced to put chemical treatment facilities in that take grey water from septic tank into a tank that removes most bacteria and heavy metals before hitting the leach field. County must have tightened up on perk rate of septic fields. Fortunately I have evaporation beds. It cost these neighbors $25,000 each.

Trash and recycle removal once a week cost about $60 for 3 months.

Our old well when installed had recovery rate of 30 gpm. Water was great with no treatment. When my parents were alive and their city water got over chlorinated because of a spill they would get their drinking water from me.

My trash and recycle used to be twice a week. Now it is just once a week and heavy trash on the sidewalk is every two weeks.

In my city, you cannot have home water turned on without mandatory trash services. (move in)

I'm familiar with that from a friends hunting camp in central PA. You could not drink or cook with the water. We had to go downhill a couple of hundred yards to get spring water to drink.

This is gas and coal country and in fact when they bought the camp they did not know mineral rights were separate and they got sold to a gas company before they found out. The gas company came in many years later and put 2 wells on the 40 acre property. The camp gets free gas.

I used to live in the country, and we had well water. It was really good for drinking, but bad for washing (takes too long to get the soap out).

Hard water, lots of calcium, does that.

I have to test my water and will get a kit and do it myself. The state can do it for $4 but it will take a couple weeks to get full results and over a week to get bacteria. My wife will not drink or even wash with it until we get the bacteria test.

Old well water was border line calcium and plumber wanted to put in treatment which exchanges calcium for sodium. I declined but a neighbor was treating his and discovered he was not allowed to put the sodium flush effluent into the septic and had to put in a separate drain field.

A stinky way of doing things, clearly backwards. What's wrong with Trudeau and you Canadians?

On 07 Feb 2019, Clare Snyder snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca> wrote in alt.home.repair:

Huh! Seems backward. Here in my Boston suburb, garbage is weekly and recycling is every 2 weeks. That works out about right because if I ever come close to filling the recycle bin, it takes at least two weeks. And I'd hate to keep stinky garbage around any longer than a week, especially in the summer.

Here we have "blue box" and "green biox" recycling so there is no "smelly garbage" all food waste is "green box" all paper, tin cans, and plastic is "blue box"

Works out pretty good even in 90F humid summer - although 2x per week for the green box wouldn't hurt. Some people keep a bag in the freezer and toss the "cube" on pickup day.

The ironic thing is I bet most of the green box stuff ends up in the same landfill as the blue box. Since China stopped taking our recycle they don't have much else to do with most of it. Metal still has some value but the typical unsorted paper and glass is useless and they really only recycle #1 & #2 plastic. Where we are, the most useful thing to do with it is burn it in a waste to energy plant.

Nil snipped-for-privacy@REMOVETHIScomcast.net wrote

Same here.

I only do that in a big cleanup.

I keep anything like that in the fridge until bin day and its only stuff like the bone in a roast leg of lamb etc and stuff that has been in the fridge too long and went mouldy.

No, all of our "green box" goes to a composting facility. Some also goes to a biogas plant. The blue box stuff gets sorted and some DOES end up in landfill, but very little. Metals are all recycled. Glass and plastics are a bit more problematic. Waterloo Region was the "home" of bluebox recycling.

Trash to energy plants solve many landfill problems. Technology has drastically cut air pollution from the burning.

OK I misunderstood. I thought green was recycle and blue was trash (everything else). There is no compost here unless you are talking about horticulture waste and they don't know what to do with all they get now. They try to make mulch out of it but they can't even give it away. There is about a half million cubic yards piled up since the summer of 17 and air pollution rules won't even let them burn it.

Put "lawn and garden waste" is mulched - and used extensively in the walking trail system as well as being made available free for homeowners who want it. Mostly wood chips.

We already had this conversation but mulch is just not that popular here. I never see it in the park system and most homeowners want better mulch than you get from yard waste. Too many weeds and other things that will create exactly what you are mulching to get rid of. Palm tree mulch is pretty much useless for anything. Mulch also seems to attract a lot of carpenter ants and the ones people are scared of like scorpions or those cockroaches the size of your thumb.

That sounds like one big, hot mess to me. For starters, once you mix cardboard, mixed paper and garbage together, that's the end of the recycling for the paper. Nobody wants paper product covered in tomato sauce and grease. China, where much of this goes, including the plastics, has tightened their standards so that unless it's pretty much clean and pure, they don't want it. Already municipalities here are in crisis, having to re-evaluate what they are going to do and we keep garbage and recyclables separate and that isn't clean enough for China anymore.

You don't have to make money recycling it. It just has to be the same net cost or cheaper than putting it all in a landfill.