A Week Without Water

Here is our account of a week without water...

Last Thursday, the temperatures dropped to 15 below zero (which was a drastic change from this unusually warm winter up here) which caused the sewage pipes to freeze at four of the teacher housing units.  

The above ground pipes are also usually insulated by 5+ feet of snow by now, but with our lack of snowfall, they froze up solid.

We were told this could last anywhere from two weeks, to May (when the weather warms up).  So... we had to find alternative ways of using the toilet, showering, washing dishes, getting drinking water, and doing laundry.

Pictured above: Our toilet for the week, a honey bucket.  I covered it with aluminum foil to block the odor.  When the trash bag got to 1/4 full, we tied it up and set it on the porch to freeze.  Then, our maintenance men took it to the dump.

     

Half of the houses in the village were also in the same situation, so the City of Alakanuk Water truck drove around and filled up totes for people to have water.

 Our faucets didn't have running water, but I put foil in all the drains so we could remember to not put anything down the drain (because the sewage pipes were frozen, it would have come right back up, ew!)

On the third day without water, we woke up with no heat.  I thought it was pretty funny because we still had cable television and power.  No water, sewage, or heat, but darn it we can still watch the Olympics!

(Coincidentally, a man who does maintenance for our school district flew in that day to do routine upkeep on things like this, so he came in our house and fixed it that same day. Hallelujah!)

The teacher houses just a few steps away had running water, so we went to their houses each day to take our showers.  It was a lot of fun because we would end up hanging out for a while at their houses, talking or playing board games, which we hardly do. 

Nathaniel usually takes showers in the morning, but he didn't feel like walking over to another house one morning, so he just dunked his head in this tote to wash his hair.  

In the middle of the week, just after 10pm, we got a text from our friends that said, "lights."  I knew what that meant, so we threw on our winter gear and walked down to the slough.  One by one, our friends gathered down there, were we stood to watch the Northern Lights!

My camera didn't capture the green glowing lights, but here's us all bundled up watching the show.

We saw the lights two nights in a row! 

Last weekend, I had dirty dishes and laundry overflowing in our house, so I loaded them up in totes and took them to my friend Culea's house.  Mid-week, I learned from my friend Becca (who also was out of water) how to do dishes on the stove.

Get two large pots, and fill them with water (from the tote).  Then heat them up on low, just hot enough to not burn my hands. Fill one pot up with dish soap and rinse in the other.  Dump the dirty water into an empty tote, and pitch that water outside.

Dirty dish water

Now I have clean dishes!  It only took 2 pitchers of water.

Drinking water: We filled up this blue 6 gallon dispenser at our neighbor's house.  

We opened the valve and poured water into our Brita pitcher.  

I've got to admit, I starting getting used to the "pioneer" life.  It was a good learning experience, and I definitely now have nothing to complain about.  It's also amazing how "comfortable" our life is with running water and sewage.  There are people across the river in our village that live like this by choice.  We are fortunate to have this luxury when there are places around the world that don't have running water.

On Thursday, after 5+ men had been working outside all week on our pipes, our water and sewage came back on.  Let the laundry marathon begin!