They're a pest to operate, if you don't push the handle quite hard enough, it fails to get going, but slowly empties the cistern at a rate too slow to move the shit out.
They also take up a huge amount of space in the cistern.
Surface water? I grew up on a farm with a little creek running through it. Using it for drinking presents its own set of problems. Runoff from fields and cattle lots would make it undrinkable without treatment. Cattle on pasture walked through it. Pumping it from the creek to the house wouldn't be free. Cleaning it enough to use wouldn't be free. Water from underground is filtered by nature. It's much handier and won't freeze up during the winter like our little creek would sometimes. The Ogallala Aquifer is a gift for those in the Central U.S. It gives people a chance to make farms more productive, and water for towns. Not free, of course.
You don't have to clean it yourself, that's why civilisation has things called water companies that clean it on mass much more cheaply.
We had a creek too with most houses, including ours, dumping raw sewage into it. You learned to keep your mouth closed when swimming. We did pump it for irrigating the vegetables.
There was a dye works downstream. When they blew their whistle you got out of the water fast or you'd be a pleasant shade of orange or whatever other color was in the dye vat they were dumping.
I do like that. Watch out we're about to pollute you!
Hang on, free suntan?
It's every one. There has to be a certain value of force required to start the flow.
It costs money to get it from the source to the tap. Electricity for people who are on their own private well (13.2 million households) and electricity plus chemicals for municipal water. Plus maintenance on the infrastructure (pumps, pipes, etc.)
You seem to think that nobody should get a free ride (for example, health care). Why should I pay for my neighbor's lawn-watering habits?
Cindy Hamilton
We live in different worlds. Those guys wouldn't work for free plus it would make farmers/ranchers less self sufficient. Both are bad things.
Because it costs f*ck all and costs more to meter it.
So you bought a farm somewhere without a good water supply. Doh!
I pay something like $100 per month to have water piped into my house and sewage piped away and treated. The budget for the Detroit Water Department (which furnishes water to me through a couple of intermediaries) has a budget of $131 million. It's not "f*ck all".
This is in the middle of the Great Lakes, where water is abundant and costs are relatively low. I blanch to think what that much water usage would cost in California.
Cindy Hamilton
$100 a month is a bit much, since I pay £20 a month in Scotland. I would hazard a guess your water company doesn't know what it's doing, or is ripping you off intentionally.
October through May, about $20/mo for residential water. May through October, closer to $50/mo (it doesn't rain from early may to late october. At all); that's for city well water (sewage is bundled into the property tax bill) in a city of a million occupants. Most of the city gets surface water which is pricier (most of my cost is pump charges imposed by the local water district).
Country shared well (six 2.5 acre properties) runs about $60/mo (unmetered usage); Ag well is just electric costs.
If you live within a 100 mile radius of the Orlando mouse house, fresh water is almost nonexistant. It's basically all recycled tourist piss from the 20,000,000 visitors per year.
Then don't live there.
I did 5 years in suburban Detroit in the early 70's-- living about 75 yards from Union Lake in West Bloomfield Township-- and pumped my own water from a well.
It was really hard water too and had to use a big water softener to get anything that allowed soap or detergent to lather. Big expense buying salt pellets to feed the softener. Pump/well worked fine the whole time I lived there though.
Strange thing in that lake community/subdivision is people didn't have the value that the roads should be paved. All roads in the S/D were dirt and turned to mush during the spring thaw and dust devils in the summer.
I had moved to Detroit and bought the house in the dead of winter when the roads were snow covered. It never occurred to me to ask if they were paved.
I learned they were dirt in the spring when some woman knocked on my door and asked to use my phone as her car sunk up to its axles in the mud in front of my house.
ROTFPMSL!
A friend bought a house up in Vermont that was out in the country. Beautiful place with a lot of good land. Then the well went dry. He got through that problem then in the spring he found the local farmer had a cottage industry of towing people out of the mud holes. That was it; he sold the house and bought one in town.
You just need the right vehicle.
Does wheelspinning help or is it just for show?
Mostly show.
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