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No running water? Schwarzenegger
- Thread starter Jumi
- Start date
A couple times, visiting family in Fiji.
On holiday as a child in a mountain farm in italy. Washing was via a bowl of water collected from the stream, you dont want to know about the toilet.
Which reminds me, i was in the chemist a few weeks ago, the old gentleman in the queue in front of me was ecstatic, "nous avons l'électricité, aujourd'hui ils ont connecté ma maison à l'électricité."
Translation - we have the electricity, today they connected my house to the electricity.
Which reminds me, i was in the chemist a few weeks ago, the old gentleman in the queue in front of me was ecstatic, "nous avons l'électricité, aujourd'hui ils ont connecté ma maison à l'électricité."
Translation - we have the electricity, today they connected my house to the electricity.
sooda
Veteran Member
Most of Europe and small town US didn't have running water before WW2. I have known a number of people born around 1919 who took baths behind the stove or washed up on the porch.
I can only imagine the hardship. The closest we have come to this is when, for 24 hours we had a plumbing problem and water was shut off. But there are municipalities that will shut water off if bill is not paid. If someone cannot pay the bill how are they going to pay when interest and fees are added?
As a child in the 70s my grandparents still kept their tin batt like this one. No longer used for bathing though.
They have become quite collectable now.
Daemon Sophic
Avatar in flux
Yep. Growing up in the woods in Alaska, before we got the well installed. We hauled 5 gallon drums of potable water back from UAF (University of Alaska, Fairbanks) every couple of days. That was our drinking water and shower water (boil a pot over the fire and dump it into a metal basin that was supported over another basin (which you stood in), and a tap on the bottom of the suspended basin allowed you to run hot/warm water down like a shower. But you had to be sure you had enough up there to rinse off......I finished several times with lathered hair and no more water to rinse with. 
Nowadays that wouldn't be such a problem, since I have so little hair left to lather.
Oh. and of course we had an outhouse over a pit. At -40 degrees in the winter, you tended to make only quick visits, and hold your poop in until you made it back to school or my parents workplace.
Nowadays that wouldn't be such a problem, since I have so little hair left to lather.
Oh. and of course we had an outhouse over a pit. At -40 degrees in the winter, you tended to make only quick visits, and hold your poop in until you made it back to school or my parents workplace.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
One set of grandparents did not have an indoor lavatory until the 1970's. In northern Minnesota. Where it got down to -30 Fahrenheit almost every winter. That is -35 Celsius for you metric folk. They had an unheated outhouse. That made for some very quick trips to the bathroom.
Cleanliness was not an issue. They had a separate building with a sauna in it. A proper Finnish sauna that got very hot. One would wash outside of the sauna room and then sweat out anything left in the sauna itself. A small room is easy to heat to near boiling point temperatures.
Cleanliness was not an issue. They had a separate building with a sauna in it. A proper Finnish sauna that got very hot. One would wash outside of the sauna room and then sweat out anything left in the sauna itself. A small room is easy to heat to near boiling point temperatures.
Audie
Veteran Member
I visited a friend's home in rural Philippines,
where they had neither electricity nor running
water.
They had worked out ingenious and simple
ways to cope, and, really, it worked very well.
Northern Europe in the middle ages was probably
not very nice.. I hate to think.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
There is one positive to using an outhouse in sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures. Odor is not a problem any longer.
BSM1
What? Me worry?
Well, duh...living in my grandparents house in the 1960's; thankfully they had electricity but no running water. They had a well beside the house and one of my chores as a ten year-old was getting that heavy bucket out of the well without spilling it. Another one of my chores was starting a fire out back to heat the water for washing and bathing. And, yes, we took baths in a washtub; and, no, these were not "the good ol' days...".
Jumi
Well-Known Member
Fiji? That's interesting.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
My only experience with this was at my other grandparents' place. You would need to go to well some couple of hundred meters and sometimes you needed to boil the water before use. They did have some water storage starting 1980s though and there was always full barrels for washing up in the sauna.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
Sitting outhouse or one of those landhole things?
I can imagine the happiness...
Audie
Veteran Member
A professor I had was from the hills of West Virginia.
Grew up on a farm. Very hardscrabble.
He said he had zero interest in living the "mother earth"
life! Same with my Filipina friend, who did not
want to work on a subsistence farm!
She had her one chance to get out, and get a college
degree, and she took it!
I visited one time, at her PI home. (she lives in the US now)
One thing I really noticed about being "on the farm"
in Philippines was, how uncomfortable life is. They
are used to it,but, it is so hot and humid there,
Sleep on a very thin straw mat on a hardwood floor,
in a mosquito net.
All these different animals that get in the house,
bats, mice, rats, lizards, even toads! Never mind
all the cockroaches. They had one of the nicer
houses, well cared for, but that is just how life is.
The water is not safe, and the air was surprisingly bad,
for a rural area! But, no wind, dust from the road,
and everyone making smokey cook fired,the air. was
pretty thick.
In a way I should not have visited, they were so
concerned about this rich city girl, but for sure
I never complained in the least.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
They're great in winter. Go mostly naked and walk bristly into the sauna 100 meters away in -30 Celsius, perhaps when coming back you will need an "oatshake" (=beer).
I think we are all going to have to practice water conservation. There are appliances now that can save rain water that can be used for activities other than drinking. While we do not have this problem in the east, it may be only a matter of time.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
Things have developed quite fast in our generations time, haven't they... it's quite hard after living in a city for 30 years to go back to how it was back in those days...
Jumi
Well-Known Member
I think your post just won the thread...Oh. and of course we had an outhouse over a pit. At -40 degrees in the winter, you tended to make only quick visits, and hold your poop in until you made it back to school or my parents workplace.
Jumi
Well-Known Member
If you had food and sauna it could be bearable. Though it's easy to understand why everyone drank so much beer in those days. My great-grandparents lived on top of some hill and had to climb down to some river a kilometer away to wash clothes, there was another spot for water. Needless to say, the weak often died in those times just of normal life.