The council would love to hear more about plumbing. They convene again to ask her about it. How much water could she provide in a day? Would the water tower have germs in it? Where would the sewer put the waste when it was done with it?

"Thank you! I was going to miss you."

Average water use for ancients, who were impossibly rich by Iron Heart's standards, was about 100 gallons a day. Not accounting for gardens and crops. She estimates that their demands will be about forty gallons per person per day, tops, and that will seem like total luxury by comparison to how they use water now. She can build something to provide 80,000 gallons a day fairly quick and it might not even need an actual water tower, the tower is just convenient for storage because of water pressure. She'll definitely need to keep the tower clean, probably by putting small amounts of (safe! definitely safe, they did this for over a century!) chemicals into it.

The sewer can either put the waste through a series of very exhaustive and thorough-sounding filters and chemical vats and so on that will chemically break it down and make it not waste anymore. It takes a while and it might take a big complicated facility to do it properly but even basic treatment might be better than what they're doing with waste now. What are they doing to deal with it now?

"I would have missed you too! This way we don't have to miss each other. Communication tech is nice like that."

They'd like to know if that figure is for Iron Heart or an average of them and places with more crops and livestock to water. They'd like to know if they can get the chemicals back out of the water safely just in case. Someone points out they can just boil the water instead of trusting ancient chemicals.

Currently they compost it. Not in the very easily accessible compost heaps in the middle of town, those are mostly kitchen scraps, they keep the sewage away where kids won't try to play in it. They'd like to know what chemically treated sewage is if it isn't waste. Someone would like to know if she's going to break it down and use it in the synthesizers to make food. Someone else would like her to definitely not do that, please.

That was just for Iron Heart, she'll need to see their fields and animals to estimate water needs for livestock and crops, unless they already know them. There should totally be a planning process if she's going to be building water infrastructure, this isn't something she's going to throw together tomorrow morning.

She was planning on essentially composting it. Sewage goes into food eventually if compost counts. She'd be doing the same thing but more automatically and cleanly. Heavily processed waste becomes clean-enough-for-crops water and compost and small amounts of other stuff. She has videos!

They're a little confused about what things she can do in how much time, honestly, they're not used to robots. But if she thinks this is a major project they can schedule another meeting about it later when they've considered where a fountain would be most useful and she's scoped out the nearest rivers and talked to people out in the country.

They know that doing it the way they're used to ends in safe compost. They've never seen anyone use chemically-treated artifact compost. Automating moving it away from people's homes would be nice, though. How does that part work?

Sounds like the outline of a plan. There should be a to-do list maybe? Multiple fountains isn't much extra effort compared to building the tower and pipes from the river and so on. One every block or two would be fine. Running water in every house would be a lot of extra effort.

Here is how flush toilets work! If it's too much effort to put one in every house public restrooms with locking stalls everywhere there's a fountain would still be good? And it's easier and cleaner either way.

Then they'll look for all the good fountain locations instead of picking their favorite.

Well that sure explains why the ancients needed so much water.

Meanwhile Vaayo takes the tablet and walks. And walks. And walks. It's slower on foot. "What else are you up to?" he asks Lin.

When water is cheap, doing it this way is easy and convenient and clean. There are less profligately wasteful models of toilet though.

"I'm talking to the council at Iron Heart about water systems. They're a pretty big thing I could build to be convenient for you all."

"Clear Spring's called that for a reason, we have to be careful but we have what we need. I don't think Iron Heart has a spring, but I know sometimes we send some water up when we trade there. What are you considering building?"

"Pipes and a water tower to carry water in from the river, and store it, and fountains everywhere, and also toilets like the one in my ship. Maybe not showers yet. They seemed appalled enough at the toilets." She laughs.

"I'm sure they'd love fountains. If you could put fountains everywhere there are people it'd be amazing. Can you reuse the water like you did with the shower?"

"I didn't realize until today that you were living without easy access to water! I'm gonna work on it! And, yeah. I'll have to make some things to clean it before we install everything first, though."

"What'll you make to clean it?"

"Filters and stuff. I can give you more detail if you want but it might be kind of boring."