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Janet

In article >,
says...
>
> On 2018-10-22 5:58 PM, wrote:
>
> > It's something nobody ever thinks of until their drinking water is not
> > available or anything like that. I've never given my water heater a
> > thought until last year when it died on me. Same thing for most all
> > appliances.
> >
> > I hope everything is back to 'normal' as soon as possible.
>
> It's bad enough here when the power goes off. We life in the country
> and have a cistern and a well. It gets a little tight in the summer
> when the well runs dry and the cistern is low and the water company
> can't deliver for a couple days. If the power goes out there is nothing
> to power the water pressure system so there is no running water. No
> water to drink, not water to shower and no water to flush the toilet.

Our previous place had a shared private water supply that ocasionally
ran out for assorted reasons (always different, and as the fault might
lie anywhere across a mile of wild moorland, it took time and ingenuity
to identify locate and fix, which we had to do ourselves because no
contractor would even consider taking it on.
We had water butts filled by rain from roof, which we used for
flushing lavs and washing when the pipeline failed. If the butts ran dry
we fetched water in buckets from the river. My next door neighbour's
sole source of water, for everything, was buckets from the river. He'd
lived like that all his life and was fit and well so I was happy to
drink boiled river water.
In my teens we lived with my grandfather who also had a rural house
with zero plumbing (my Grandmother raised 7 kids and never had a tap,
washing machine or a flush lav in her life). It all came in buckets
fetched from a communal shared hand pump in the garden. Useful
experience for when our own water system packed in; I can bathe myself
(and children) standing in a plastic washing up bowl. I did the laundry
outside by hand in a tin tub and everybody wore their pants for two days
then turned them inside out and wore them again.
Here we're on mains public water supply (from boreholes) , what
luxury. Rare service interruptions are for a couple of hours during
maintenance work, with advance warning so I can fill pans and a bath and
have enough drining, cooking, and flushing water.

When I turn on a tap and clean hot water comes out, I often think of my
grandmother, who never had that experience.

Janet UK.