Hmmm stirred up a bit of a hornets nest here by posting that. Plus I didn't know he was a scam artist with this phone line at premium rates. Anyway casting judgements aside I don't really get his logic bu having the water turned off, seems to me he'd save money if he used it more economically.
I recently bought a small bungalow here in rural Normandy so I am playing and experimenting with different methods of basic living in order to make as little impact ecologically and also try and keep the bills down to a minimum. I won't go as far as turning off the water supply and buy in bottled water though.
So far my only utilities coming into the house are water, electricity and phone. I have a septic tank which means I don't pay for sewage and the septic tank works pretty well if you look after it and keep feeding in the bacteria additives it could last many years. Besides I need to upgrade it next year, but that's already on the cards to be done.
My cooker is a Butane gas hob and oven and bottled gas over here runs to about €26 for a bottle, Just one of those running the hob will last me 9 months, maybe even a year if I'm frugal. My cooking needs are very basic. My heating will be a woodburner and I can buy cubic meters of wood for as little as €40, but being a carpenter I also bring home lots of scrap wood from jobs to feed the fire. At the moment my hot water is electrically heated but I am planning on fitting new a 100 litre very energy efficient hot water immersion heater, though I am considering a heat exchanger system combined with the woodburner to preheat the water as it comes into the house so the immersion heater doesn't have to heat cold water. However if my needs for hot water get low enough in the winter I'll just put a big pan on the wood burner and use that to heat the water for washing up and baths. As a kid I used to bath in a tin bath and it wasn't until I was 9 years old that we moved into a house that had a bath in it and inside toilet. Luxury!
I am currently doubling up on the insulation in the walls of the living room and that's going up rather well too. I found out the loft got new fibreglass fitted to it in 2006, though I would like to upgrade that to solid insulation like I'm fitting in the walls now.
So getting back the unclean nocturnal hermit in the article. In my opinion he seems to have too radical an approach when just simple cost saving methods could work in his favour. Buying water and hauling it home seems a bit dim if he could have it plumbed directly in but just use it more wisely, like scavenge the water he uses in his strip wash tub to flush his loo.
Thanks for your input and comments.