I have a Triangle Tube Series 50 (45 gal.) in a 2,000 sf house with 2 bathrooms. My plumber said I should put in a smaller unit and I wanted a bigger one. We compromised on this unit, because he said a bigger one would consume a lot more energy. I take a 25 min shower with a 5 gpm shower head, and I get enough hot water from this unit, but it took some doing. The first thing I would suggest is to turn the temperature on the water heater all the way up. We have an L-shaped ranch with the water heater on one end of the house, and the master bath on the other (over an unheated crawl space). So we need to keep the water very hot to get enough hot water at the bathroom. The hotter the water is, the more cold water you'll mix in, and the longer your hot water will last. Despite this, I was still running out of hot water after about 15 min. As my shower valve doesn't have a volume control, I put a small valve on the shower arm which allowed me to slow down or shut off the water when I was soaping myself. This allowed the hot water to recover a bit before I finished my shower. The real breakthrough came last summer though, when I had a new boiler installed. The installer told me that the circulator pipes between my boiler and water heater were only 3/4", when they should be 1 1/4". He also set up the new boiler so that the water heater gets priority over heat to the house, and the boiler automatically heats up to 180 degrees whenever the unit calls for more hot water. Now I have plenty of hot water for a 25 min shower followed by a shave, even without turning the volume of hot water down during my shower. I think you should be able to get enough hot water out of this unit provided you use it to its full capacity. You may need to have someone do some work on your boiler though. One rule of thumb I live by, is to never let a contractor tell me how much water or hot water I need. Aside from this, do you have separate shower valves for your 2 shower heads, and are you satisfied with the water flow? Many newer shower valves limit the flow to 2.5 gpm or less. You can check your actual water flow with a 2.5 or 5 gal bucket and a stopwatch. If you're getting enough flow out of the shower arms, but not out of the shower heads, there are some places that sell shower heads with easily removable flow restrIctors.

We are having a drought. We are in a low lying area that is a bit marshy to the east of the house. If we get a lot of rain (usually in the spring), there are some areas that don't drain well in our front yard garden area. When we planted a large viburnum, the planting hole filled with water. At least twice a week, I use an oscillating sprinkler to water a garden bed. I rotate thru the garden not more than 3 hours a day since we have a well. Vegetables put down deeper roots than we realize. I have a tomato in a very large plastic planter (at least 10 gallons) that needs at least 1 gallon of water a day or I see leaves wilting. I do not water perennial beds. They are surviving but not doing well. When I pulled back straw mulch on a potato bed, I found a frog, not a toad, who probably found enough moisture. Your high water table together with good mulching might be sufficient for occasional watering. A perennial bed nearest a seasonal street shows a decent amount of moisture and plants doing fine. My herb garden next to the house is all extremely dry soil. It only gets water that drips out of a hanging planter. Lovage isn't thriving but it's alive. Sage, tarragon, chives and thyme are doing fine without watering. Our old house was built on a slightly higher area, possibly backfilled because of the high water table (we have a full foundation). If you have sufficient rain, you might not need to water your garden except when you are sowing seeds. I find poor germination is usually the result of not keeping a bed moist. Farmers in our area seem to have pretty good corn and they haven't irrigated. Blueberry farmers are reporting an excellent crop. I went to a PYO place last week and found very plump blueberries despite no irrigation, no watering and at a higher elevation than most farms. A friend who works at a farm said their blueberries and raspberries are very plump this year, too. Which doesn't make sense in a drought year. Farmers south of us (I'm in NH) have lost crops due to drought. A neighbor who farms who planted a new corn field (cow corn) on former pasture used a no till method and his corn looks great. This field probably also has a high water table (seasonal stream and wet areas). Hay crops this year are very poor. Our neighbor is not selling hay this year figuring he'll need all that he has for his own beef cows. So, basically, I think lugging water and good mulching will be your answer. We have a yard hydrant that gives me a faucet right next to my veggie garden so I don't have to haul water. I use a 100' hose and an oscillating sprinkler. I like this kind of sprinkler because I use low water pressure and set the sprinkler to barely move when I just have a small area to water. The water line from the house is buried so the hydrant can be used in the winter. I'm very lucky that the old hydrant was left in the barn and my husband has a backhoe.

If this is as small an area as it looks, a smallish dry well might resolve it. Dig out a hole (three feet wide and deep, perhaps?), put landscape fabric in the hole (a large enough piece to cover the bottoms and sides and top), fill it with rough gravel or rocks, fold the landscape fabric over, cover with dirt and your sod. You can search for dry wells to get a sense of how they work - largely some extra space between rocks and gravel to give some buffer while it drains into the soil. It's not magic, you can still get too much water. I don't know about how close one can be to your garage or driveway. Before doing that you may also want to check how any gutters from the garage and house are throwing water out, ie redirect them or further out if it's easy.

Thanks, party_music50. Well, chopping ice out of the lake is a little more than I'm quite willing to do, hah, and it's dangerous. Snowmelt water takes a lot of volume (big buckets) and a good deal of time to melt it. I've tried this. One foot of snow is about one inch of water unless it's the really heavy wet stuff. If I got really desperate of course I'd do it. The lake isn't frozen yet, but it's getting there. I'll be heading down to refill all my plastic jugs and also fill up all my watering cans and big buckets, and try to get as far down the winter road as I can. You're right, I do have some spare plants around here, I could mess with using the hard water on them. Good idea. But still wondering if anybody uses really hard water for their violets. Or maybe even other tougher plants, just to get through the winter.