After last weeks bout of loadshedding and concurrently my building is busy upgrading our hot water system, which has necessitated some water disruption. I’ve come to the conclusion that I would rather have no power rather than no water. Especially living in an apartment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have both. But at the moment in this country, you can be sure that at some point you will not have one or both at some point.
So if you had to chose which one would you rather go without?
It is probably cheaper to truck in water than run a generator/inverter for an entire household so I would say water.
I guess I’m looking at it from a perspective from living on the 10th floor. To go down to fetch water isn’t great, so running water in the taps is preferred. I can live without power for a little while. Cooking is possible on gas.
Both suck but 3 days without power is a lot easier to manage than 3 days without water.
In my situation, no water is much simpler to manage.
I haven’t had water since the 12th. If I had no power, I still wouldn’t have hot showers, dishwasher, washing machine, and the stuff in the freezer would be ruined. I’d also be really really bored.
Was in Kzn for last week and had no water the entire week. Not pleasant especially during the 2 hour loadshedding sessions where we had neither. The irony is that most of the south of Scottburgh has been without water for over a week, but there are some burst pipes or something so there are multiple places where there are thousands of liters of water just running down the street.
It has been an interesting experience though, especially noticing just how much water you actually use for bathing from buckets, filling up toilets, etc.
Personally, I’d rather go a few days without water than power though. If there is no power, I can’t work or keep the kids occupied when we need a break, etc. This has been my first time without power in quite a while but since I was on vacation, it wasn’t a big deal this time. With water, you could at least go to the gym to take a shower or visit someone who do have water (depending on the circumstances and how far-spread the water issue is).
I am planning to install a rainwater collection system, but in the event that there is no water from municipality, that would only last a couple of days if the tank was full to begin with (unless it keeps raining, then you’re good). I think the “guidelines” are that a household uses approx. 1500L per day. At least, when you’re buying / selling a house with only a borehole, that is the minimum requirement per household before the banks would consider financing.
To be honest, I cant handle either, having lived with that water restriction we had in the cape, using the pool water to flush the loo and so on, was madness, but without power I will go nuts after a while…