Our house again

So, here are some photos of Osh's room and my room (right next door to each other).





The washing machine is a strong work horse and not the prettiest appliance...but it does what it should do (wash clothes) so no complaints. The buckets around the machine are to catch the water. Although the machine would empty the water down the pipe (and out into the bush) this is a gross waste of water in a country with precious little of the stuff. So, the grey water from the rinse cycle is used to wash the next load, the grey water from the wash cycle (which has now been used twice) is used to water the plants/flush the toilets and fresh water is used for the rinse cycle. Our water is delivered by tanker and we get through a tank about once a month - if we didn't conserve water like this we'd get through much more and it would cost twice as much. Sounds primative but at the end of the day we have clean clothes, healthy plants and we don't spend a fortune on water! Many properties have piped water but the pipes don't get this far up the road, hence our drinking water coming by tanker (and at 6 cents a gallon rather than 3 for piped water). You certainly get a good feel for how much water a washing machine can consume when you see it all in buckets (about 4 of those big buckets full each cycle!).



And here is a view of the bedroom end of the house from outside - the continuation of the wall with the shutters is the front door (where you saw the green chairs in the other posting). The shutters are left open except when the rain is coming from the wrong direction in which case some poor so and so has to dash outside and whip out the sticks that hold the shutters open. No glass, remember, so plenty of rain can get in if you forget to close shutters.



We have flush toilets - the water that flushes them is the irrigation water (ie cleaned up and filtered sewage water....sounds disgusting but it doesn't smell and is the colour of weak tea) but the pump is consistently turned off by the workers and rather than go outside and turn the pump back on, we flush the toilets with grey water (just in case the more plumbing minded of you were wondering!).

As you can imagine, living so, erm, basically could take some getting used to but we love it - although Nicky is half way through building a concrete house with stairs and everyfink!