We now live in a big, beautiful, bright cabin, with full, West-facing windows, an extra room, a larger loft, and a mere four miles from UAF campus. It's also $350 a month cheaper in rent! What's the catch? It's dry. Quothe the Arvay of nine months ago, "Seriously, call me a snob, but I just couldn't live without running water." Hahaha. Well how quickly things change! Not having running water seems a small price to pay now to live in such a beautiful cabin. Deciding that you absolutely must have running water in your rental home (I say rental, because if you own your own home, it's worth having septic put in because it adds value to your property. But no-one puts money into rentals!), generally limits you to two options:
1) A shoddy apartment in town. Seriously shoddy. Worse than housing projects in San Francisco shoddy.
2) A Very Expensive Cabin. You must pay for your landlords' having deigned to put septic on the property. Sili valley people think our rent was cheap in our old place, but by the standards around here, it was quite high.
Deciding that you can live in a dry cabin opens more possibilities, not just for quality of life within the place but also neighborhoods. So now we are closer. And it's really not that troublesome. I come to school every day anyway, so what difference does it make whether I shower here, or at home? As for the kitchen situation, we have a sink that drains directly to a five-gallon bucket. What most people in dry cabins do is we keep a bunch of five-gallon water jars, which we fill at the Water Wagon (more on this later). Then we put one over the sink, and use the spout as a faucet. We use only biodegradable soaps, and we dump the bucket outside when it is full. During the Winter, of course, you have to make sure you don't dump it where someone will slip on the resulting ice! The only thing is that we have no hot water, so you have to heat water on the stove for washing up and doing dishes. It's not significantly more painful than living with water like city folks.
Now all that being said, Dan still didn't like it, so he put in a grey water system with a 30-gallon storage tank, a 5-gallon water heater, and a full-on citified faucet! Our friends have come over and oo'ed and ah'ed appropriately. It still drains to the bucket though, heh, heh.
Okay now the Water Wagon. The Water Wagon is a water supply place where you buy water like gas. Dry cabin people fill their 5-gallon containers, and wet cabin people who have no wells fill their 1000-gallon tanks. ("Wet cabin" means they have septic, so they can have a shower and clothes washer, oooo the luxuries!) The water wagon also delivers to wet cabins, for people who don't want to drive to town with their water tank on their truck, but although it's only marginally more expensive, most people still haul their own. At 1.05 cents a gallon, you can't beat the price.
17 comments:
So I managed to catch the last 10 minutes of a "Tougher in Alaska" show on these water wagons. What's the deal with groundwater? Not good to drink? Why's everyone buying their water?
Had no idea you guys were fixing to move house - gosh! That's big news. And leave it to Dan to rig up some super awesome thing to give you guys running water. What a great guy.
So if you're showering at the university, where's Dan showering? And where do you do your laundry? Do you have to haul it into a laundromat every weekend or so? Where's the water tank located? It must take up a lot of room because I imagine you can't put it outside, right?
I feel like such a city mouse...!
Whoa! I could tolerate it in the summer, but come winter, I need my HOT showers before I get in bed at night, especially if I were in Fairbanks! Can you really not afford the difference for a wet cabin? It's still cheaper than Silicon valley!
It's not about affordability; the money saved is just a bonus. It's about availability. There simply aren't that many nice places to live in. You won't believe it until you visit. Seriously. There are huge swathes of undeveloped land, and a severe housing shortage. So renters can only choose between really run-down apartments that would put San Francisco housing projects to shame, or cabins. And 90% of cabins are dry. The 10% of cabins that are wet are really difficult to come by. We've looked for several months, not to mention the several weeks or so when we first moved here, and didn't see a single other one. Here we thought our former landlords were charging too much for rent, but their place is rare. So the availability is the main issue. The shortened commute and the money are pretty big bonuses, though.
And I don't shower at night any more. I haven't since moving up here. I kind of shower at varying times depending on when I run and when I do disgusting things in the lab.
Dan also showers in my building at the University. And yeah, we use a public coin laundrymat. The water tank is right in the living room. :)
And there is groundwater in the city, but as soon as you go so much as a quarter of a mile outside of the proper city limit, no city water or sewage! No garbage service either. We take our garbage with us and dump them at transfer sites that the city takes and hauls to landfill once a week. I actually love this--no garbage bill! And the transfer sites are literally right at every entrance to town!
I should re-emphasize, 90% of *rental* cabins are dry. It's actually a very common setup here for people to build on their lot a main house, with water, for themselves, and a rental cabin or several, which is/are dry. Our current landlords are exactly like that.
Hello! I found your blog via a reply you had in "Keeping it Real at 66 Degrees North Latitude," the blog from the lady in Kotzebue. I'm also a Fairbanksan, also arrived roughly the same time you did, though I'm up at the IAB without doing the grad-school thing.
I'm curious. I've been mentally designing a water system for a while now (Because it'd be neat to have hot `running` water without boiling it), and I was wondering if you used some sort of kit? Or did you cobble it together from multiple other sources DIY style?
Thanks!
You're a brave soul, my friend. Brave indeed. I could never do it.
Well, I look at it this way. Worst-case scenario, I could end up getting lazy about showering (easy to do in Winter, when you don't get dirty or sweaty, believe me!), and end up getting smelly like a hippie. Worst-case scenario in my old place, well, I don't even want to talk about. A longer drive in Winter is always worse.
Which brings up another thing... so many people think at first blush that a dry cabin would be more tolerable in Summer than in Winter. Well, it turns out to be the opposite. Summer is a tougher time to be in dry cabins because the run to the outhouse makes you fast food for mosquitoes. And showering is a bigger deal because you get dusty, muddy, dirty, and sweaty and have to shower more frequently. In Winter, if you skip a shower, it really doesn't matter. Of course, you have to be careful not to let this get to be a habit... There are quite a few people around here who really ought to shower more frequently than they do...
To kc- it was completely DIY. Email me if you want more details. :)
It is nice to be closer to UAF.
Daily showers promotes better blood circulation, skin cleasing (especially face), please take daily shower to maintain general health, winter or summer.
DO WASH YOUR FACE WITH HOT WATER BEFORE BED. Especially in the summer.
"So renters can only choose between really run-down apartments that would put San Francisco housing projects to shame, or cabins. And 90% of cabins are dry. The 10% of cabins that are wet are really difficult to come by."
So why not find a rental house? A lot of people in (expensive) silicon valley who have dogs rent small houses.
If that's not an option, then you gotta step back and ask yourself - what are you doing at a school where you have to live in a cabin (without running water or a toilet!!!), combined with the fact that there are mosquitoes in summer and that it is completely frigid (and dark) in the winter??? I mean grad student life is supposed to be tough, but isn't this is a little much? (Granted most Fairbanks students can live in the on-campus apartments since they don't have dogs, but still! It isn't that unusual to be a dog owner *and* a grad student!) Have you considered transferring to the U of Alaska at Anchorage or somewhere that actually has reasonable housing?
"many people think at first blush that a dry cabin would be more tolerable in Summer than in Winter. Well, it turns out to be the opposite."
More accurately put, I would say you are choosing between the lesser of 2 evils. Though it's not clear to me which is actually worse! Poor you. :(
(the two evils being: (1) having your ass attacked by mosquitoes versus (2) running in ice in the dark and then freezing your ass off (literally) when you go (Note that this is significantly worse for girls than guys here, who don't have to expose their posteriors to the elements every time).)
Have you considered one of those camper potties that you can empty out every morning? (I can't imagine having to live in a permanent situation with one of these, but it's better than nothing. This is what they do in China where the tenements aren't plumbed)
Anyhow, we'll wait for the winter to get the final verdict from you on which is worse (summer or winter). It's a little unfair to expect an answer from you right now.
Wow. You're right. Woe is me! I have a miserable existence. Oh well, I suck it up and manage to enjoy life all the same. :)
I'm just saying that had the university advertised that you'd be living in a cabin without running water in Fairbanks for student housing, I'm sure a lot of students would look elsewhere! And let's be honest, you probably would have too. But you're already there, so oh well!
Also, you don't have to live like you are resigned to your fate like you would if you lived in some rural village in communist China. You have the freedom to make your own choices to (hopefully) make your life less difficult (and not more difficult!)
I think one fails to see the obvious. She's different like that. Of course if it really were intollerable to her I'd like to think she could rely on the Engineer in her, take out the duct tape she always carries (or at least used to), and build what needs to be built.
And I for one am finding this Blog such a wonderful trip down memory lane...
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