SJP, This is a real puzzle because of the number of unknowns. Why do you carry empty milk jugs to water your plants. The jugs could be quart size or gallon size. The plants seem to be awful thirsty for watering two or three times a day. Not knowing the number of plants, their size and the bed size adds a special dimension to the problem. I am going to take a stab at this anyway. If someone else has a better solution please chime in. Lets see; 3 times a day at 2 one-quart jugs is 1 1/2 gallons per day for 5 days comes to 8 gallons while you are away. That is a lot of filling 2 liter bottles for your soon to be ex-roommate during this vacation. Hang 2 each 5-gallon buckets with hose attachments connecting each bucket and the last bucket has a pipe connection for a hose-bib battery operated controller which then has a manifold drip system to each plant. Problem solved cheaply but labor intensive. Does your roommate share your water bill? Go with burdening your roommate with responsibility and take her out to dinner when you get back. Aloha

Lurker-- Thanks for the help.....i think you helped me when I got my softener a few years back...hopefully you can help me fix my mom's water.... Retested the water..... results are still the same. Low Ph, High Iron. No bacteria. Let me ask a quick question upfront: Are there any health hazards to continue using this water as is? I understand the high iron can cause staining on surfaces (it already has) and the acid can ruin copper pipes (although most of her pipes are PVC or some sort of plastic), but can it cause health problems? Also, this condition of high iron is recent. Over the summer, the water from all taps started sputtering, seemingly cause of air in the lines. The plumber/well guy came out and tried the simple, cost effective solutiuons first. 1. Compressed air in the well to clean the well screen. She has a shallow well. He did this quite a bit. The screen was dirty and we thought that solved the problem....Nope. 2. Changed the pump, retention tank. Nope. 3. Then changed all the piping from the well to the retention tank. The problem in the end was a collapsed pipe that ran from the well to the tank. Could the repeated use of the compressed air down the well (in order to clean the well screen) caused some sort of change in the water, like an influx of iron? The iron (at least to the naked eye) has decreased somewhat since the summer, although it is still there as evidenced by the water test. A couple of months ago the iron would settle out of a cup of tap water within a week....now you put a cup of tap water on the counter and the orange iron sediment settles out in a few weeks. But the water still smells like a cup of loose change....the metal smell. She's had some estimates so far. One local guy came to the house, tested the water and said a "neutralizer and Conditioning system" would be about $1900. CAI online suggested a "chemical injection system with a downstream carbon filter." About $1000 for the equipment, plus the cost of labor for a plumber to install. Like I said in my original post, unfortunately, she doesn't have much disposable income right now. The quotes of $1000 plus caused her some sticker shock....and some serious agita. Pllus, on an aesthetic/practical side, the local guy said he would have to install it in her kitchen pantry (where the water heater and current sediment filter is) and it would cause her to have to remove almost all the storage/food shelving in there.... Ugh. I've gone on long enough. So does she have any options here??? Thanks again. If you need any other info, let me know. mike

I have about 4500 sq ft of interior wall I will have to do. Large format tile or a sintered product like Neolith has an interesting appeal - but.... it needs to be mounted on something, or if you get the thicker stuff it's pricey per sq foot. My architect sent me some pics - I'll upload and share them here and see what you think - I truly believe that we will need a wood or wood look product in order to warm things up and be somewhat cost effective - but we're also discussed some backlit plexiglass / colored accent areas, too - it's so easy / cool to do that these days with LEDs. My house would look like the Partridge Family bus! Stay tuned.

Vith - sorry to confuse! I attached a picture of the front of our house which has the walk door. which is the front of our house. This is where the original garage door was when we moved in. The walk door just barely fits - goes from the bare ground to the roof. I've considered using the existing entry door on the front of the house (photo below) but the garage floor is 80 year old cracked, uneven concrete. Only recently has it occurred to me that if I eliminate this entry the floors could be brought up to the level to be similar to the rest of the house. If I put a dormer over the new door placement - as numbersjunkie suggests - won't I end up with a problem area up next to the house (where I already have mold on my shingles? My husband thinks that will create a water/snow trap. We haven't talked hip roof yet. His suggestion is to take the front slope of the roof up a couple of feet so the peak moves toward the back of the house. The new peak would cover my upstairs windows which I am set against. Thanks so much for helping! It's good to have other minds looking at this! The below photo is where the original garage door was. Along the wall which joins the garage to the house is a huge concrete fireplace and a bathroom. You can tell me to give it up. We're not moving any time soon, It's just a shame we can't use this.