The water situation

First. Don't drink the water. Even the Thais drink only bottled water. The drinking water can come in liter sized bottles or smaller or they buy bulk with some big bottles of filtered water that are really about 20 liters I would guess. These bottles of water run about 36 cents if you have a bottle to turn in. The deposit on the bottle can be $3. Plastic is expensive here. More on that another time. Water from the tap LOOKS clean. It is used for washing clothes, showering, washing dishes and the dog and watering the plants. The main problem with the tap is water pressure. They do have some water towers around but I have had many complaints from different people that they have no water pressure at all during certain days and times of day. My visa consultant, Roong (more on her later), had a beautiful and expensive house in a new development. She moved out not long after moving in because water was not available most of the time. She did have a water tank but the public feed to the tank had no water pressure so she had to pay someone to come in every other day to fill her tank at a cost of about $6. So what about the tank. The way that people over come the water pressure problem is to have a tank that holds about 50 or 100 gallons of water (they come in many sizes) and a water pump attached to it. The pump detects bad pressure and kicks on to supplement water pressure. If there is not sufficient water in the public feed line the water is drawn from the tank. When you are not otherwise using water the slow/low pressure fills the tank up again. In my tank at my new house the tank has the same mechanism you find in the toilet tank in the USA to detect water in the tank and shut off the public water feed. (The old floating ball in the tank). What do they do out in the country? In the country the old way is to use a huge clay jar. I think it must hold 200 gallons. When it rains, rain water is directed from the roof into this jar for later use. When the rain stops there is a cover placed on the top of the jar. When water is needed it is dipped out of the jar. To shower you splash yourself with the water from a bucket with a shallow bowl. It is primitive but it works. Have to keep that jar covered or it will fill with bugs and mosquitoes.