Day Zero, Capetown.

[Whateverist]

I've been running the water into a 5-gallon bucket to wait for warm water for a shower. The gallon and a half or so that I collect is used for flushing water. I've done this for decades. We had to completely quit watering our lawn with the new(er) water restrictions in southern California, because the only way we were going to get a 20% reduction was to do so. I have contemplated building a cistern that takes runoff from the street gutter, because of all the runoff from other people's sprinklers, and using that for flush water. Leaves and all.

I keep eyeing the water in the year around creek that runs along my Northern boundary with larceny in my heart.  When it runs into the culvert that goes under my street it stays underground until it gets to the bay in about a mile.  Seems such a waste when my garden could be a lush paradise if I had a certain water supply.

Apparently there are laws against capturing runoff for reuse in many places now.  If I do start .. detaining .. the creek water, I'd need to get a large cistern to store it in.  I've talked to an expert here on these forums who has given me a pretty good idea of what is involved.  The thing is people love to walk up the creek from the park behind us and someone would report me or mess with it if I tried to leave a pipe down to a sump in the creek all the time.  So I'd probably have to have something I could lower at night to pump water up.  Then disappear it during the day.  Not sure how often.  I'd have to work that out.

This is a picture of the creek after a heavy rain a few years after the park was built.  Our place is just the other side of all that ivy down stream, beginning where you see that tall shiny silver metal pole just right of the red lamp pole.



This is a picture taken when the creek was daylighted back around 1982.  The Santa Fe train used to run through here and the creek was buried in a culvert under the tracks.  The creek where it goes past our lot has never been built over, though the land has been filled and leveled using crude rip rap.  

File all of this under "too much info".

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This is our bank now which I recently fenced in and started planting.  It gives me a backdoor entrance to the park.

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