Living without indoor plumbing

[ashling]

Nationwide nearly 630,000 occupied homes - 0.5% of the total - lack complete plumbing facilities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Census considers a home to lack complete plumbing facilities if it is without any of the following: hot and cold running water, a flush toilet, and a bathtub or shower. Hover over the map for details; click to zoom.

interactive map of US counties

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/county-plumbing-facilities/index.html

[scarletwoman]

1. That would be me.

I haul all my water. I have an outhouse. I do not have any plumbing whatsoever.

It's inconvenient, and rather more work than having plumbing, but it's not impossible. I've done without plumbing since 1997. You deal with what you've what you've got.

My tradeoff is that I live in the woods, surrounded by the natural world - and I never have frozen water pipes or an overflowing septic tank.

[oneofthe99]

3. How far is your well from your home or do have a natural spring ?

This I think will also be me one day.

[scarletwoman]

6. I don't have a well, unfortunately.

I haven't been able to afford to have one drilled. There's about 250 feet of bedrock to get through before hitting decent water here.

There used to be a free water pump in a very small town about 9 miles away, but it was closed down a few years ago. Now I have to pay 39 cents a gallon to get water from the grocery store. There's a natural spring about 5 miles from here, but it's impossible to get to in the winter without a snowmobile.

You just learn how to be very frugal with water. I generally get by with using about 10 gallons a week - less in the winter when I can melt snow for wash water. My saving grace is that I have a sister who lives about 10 miles away who lets me shower and do laundry at her place.

[oneofthe99]

8. I can see how that would be very costly to have done

Do you have a system setup to also catch rain water?

That's nice having family close like that , my friends said it's amazing how fast you adopt to not
having indoor plumbing . They are lucky in the fact their well is less than 75 feet from their back door though.

[elias49]

10. Not an easy life!

How about electric and heat?
Well, obviously elec...you're on line.
I must say, I'm somewhat awed. Many, many years ago I spent most of a year on a small mountaintop in Temple, Maine with the woman who would become my wife. No nothing...a small wood cookstove and kerosene lamps. Bathed in Temple Stream...f'n cold!
But we were young and in some respects it was a trial in romance.

[oneofthe99]

2. I know two people right now without indoor plumbing

They live in a cabin in Maine and use an outhouse . They do have a dug well and a stream and small pond on their property.

It was originally built as a type of hunting log cabin by the original owner and sits on 48 acres .It's pretty damn nice.
I think they will eventually put a septic in but it's not first thing on their list They seem more concerned about building a barn first.

Sometimes I really envy their lifestyle.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. sounds lovely

[oneofthe99]

9. It really is

It's an open design with one bedroom down stairs and a bedroom in the loft

The first time I visited them , I fell in love with it and the peace and quiet of the surroundings.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. That's very, very common

in the Alaska Bush and many of the Native villages. Our governor has no problem giving the oil companies a $2 billion a year tax break while our rural citizens don't have basic infrastructure.

We had no indoor plumbing when I was a little girl in Southwest Ohio, but most of our neighbors didn't either so it was no big deal. I was fascinated with my grandma's flush toilet.

[hollowdweller]

5. I know quite a few.

Funny you say that about the frozen pipes. I live in a really old house, poorly insulated and have trouble with the pipes freezing. Drives me crazy. I always tell my friend who didn't that she was lucky. But now she's got gravity feed. They dug a big hole in sort of draw above the house, rocked it all in, covered it and it does pretty well.

We have a dug well, but it's hooked to a pump. Then we have "city" water. Then we have a drilled well over across the hayfield from my house with a hand pump on it.

The had pump goes with a cabin on my place. It doesn't have indoor plumbing.

Our place still has the old outhouse on it but we have indoor plumbing.

[DreamGypsy]

11. Did you find number 1 on the map??

It's the Bethel Census Area in Alaska. 39.215% of 4,307 occupied home lack complete plumbing facilities. Rank 1 out of 3,143 counties.

From Wikipedia:

The census area has a total area of 45,508 square miles (117,870 km2), of which, 40,633 square miles (105,240 km2) of it is land and 4,875 square miles (12,630 km2) of it (10.71%) is water. Its territory includes the large offshore Nunivak Island in the Bering Sea.

<snip>

As of the census of 2000, there were 16,006 people, 4,226 households, and 3,173 families residing in the census area. The population density was 0 people per square mile (0/km²). There were 5,188 housing units at an average density of 0/sq mi (0/km²). The racial makeup of the census area was 12.53% White, 0.38% Black or African American, 81.93% Native American, 1.05% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.19% from other races, and 3.85% from two or more races. 0.87% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 4,226 households out of which 51.00% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.20% were married couples living together, 15.20% had a female householder with no husband present, and 24.90% were non-families. 19.90% of all households were made up of individuals and 2.80% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.73 and the average family size was 4.41.

In the census area the population was spread out with 39.80% under the age of 18, 9.70% from 18 to 24, 28.90% from 25 to 44, 16.40% from 45 to 64, and 5.20% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 25 years. For every 100 females there were 113.20 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 112.80 males.

Bethel Census Area is one of only 38 county-level census divisions of the United States where the most spoken language is not English and one of only 3 where it is neither English nor Spanish. 63.14% of the population speak a Yupik language at home, followed by English at 34.71%.

Note the population density of 0 people per square mile is obviously rounded down. Actually there are 0.1357936709934674 people per square mile.