Question for mamas on propane and septic systems

[BHappy]

good morning all,

i need some concrete evidence about the cost of cloth diapering in certain circumstances:

1) we currently wash in cold only. our water is heated by propane, which is very expensive. can you safely and effectively wash diapers in cold only?

2) we have a septic tank. the more water that flows through it (i.e., the more it is used), the sooner we have to have it emptied. this also costs money.

3) we have to pay for our water, and the rates just increased 20% because our area has been too conservative (yes, i'm serious ).

with all this under consideration, i am trying to figure out if it is actually less expensive to cloth diaper. i don't want to do a service. if we go with cloth, it will be wash at home.

if we have tons of diapers and can wash less frequently, i suppose that would help?

if we go with disposables, i would choose the most environmentally friendly/no gel i could find. i suppose those are pretty expensive.

if there's anyone out there who has gone through this or similar path, please, i would appreciate your input. thanks

xo

eta: if it were completely up to me, i'd be cloth diapering no matter what. dh is wanting the cost analysis...

Edited by BHappy - 3/27/11 at 2:22pm

[Perdita_in_Ontario]

I'm on septic, but not propane.

My thoughts - yes, up to a point, doing as full a load as possible will reduce your costs. DS is 13 months, and my HE washer is full of diapers after about 3 days max.

Washing on cold - hmmm. I really think you need at least warm water to get them clean - we're talking fecal matter and stink. I'm sure there are people out there washing on cold... but honestly I think warm at least is better. If you do wash on cold, you'll need to really get as much poop off as possible (perhaps use disposable liners?) and you will likely want a diaper that's very washable - flats or prefolds I would think.

Yes, the so-called eco-disposables are very expensive. I'd say they'd be close to prohibitively expensive to use exclusively. I would resent every diaper change if I was using something like Tushies. As far as I know, Tushies and maybe NatureBaby (?) are the only ones that don't use the gels - 7th Gen and Earth's Best and gDiapers all use gels.

One thing to factor in - if you use disposables, there's a high likelihood you will be dealing with poop blowouts. Which means extra yucky laundry anyway, and even potentially more baths, if you really want to factor everything in!

There are calculators out there that you can google to figure out how much of a difference there is between disposables and cloth. While you're at it, google the materials that make up disposables and show your DH if you think it will sway your argument!

[Perdita_in_Ontario]

Oh, another thought - give some thought to part-time EC-ing. You can cut down your diapering a LOT doing this!

[StoriesInTheSoil]

Perdita, Nature Babycare uses gel too though it's a "different" gel.  Tushies still doesn't AFAIK.

I am not in your situation, OP, but I do recommend that you do at least one hot wash each time you wash your diapers for sanitary reasons.  How is your stove powered?  You could boil pots of water to add to the washer instead of using the propane-heated hot water from the tank...

[somegirl99]

We also live in the Santa Cruz mountains (*waves hi*) and use an electric water heater and electric dryer and have our own well with electric pump and septic system, so I know the pain of costly utilities.  We have had some higher electric bills in part because of diapering (other electricity usage has increased as well, so it's hard to quantify), but we have gotten better.  For us I believe the most expensive part was drying, so we have switched to line drying as much as we can (hanging them in front of the fire works great in the wintertime).  Using diapers that dry quicker also helps, we have either used prefolds and flats or AI2s.

As far as water usage, we have always used a hot water wash (with cold rinses), so I can't help there.  I think if we only had wet diapers I'd be more comfortable doing a warm or cold wash instead, but we still have the occasional poopy diaper.  We have found that using hemp/cotton diapers and doublers does help keep the bulk down, so we can get away with a smaller load setting on our washer.  I guess bamboo is also supposed to be very absorbent and trimmer as well, but we haven't tried it. 

We have been doing EC which sometimes really helps cut down on laundry, but sometimes (especially at the beginning while we were learning) it made us go through diapers quicker because we would change him as soon as he was wet, even if it was just a little. 

Finally, prepping diapers is pretty wasteful in terms of water and energy usage, so if you can find already prepped diapers (either used or new) it will help.

BTW, we sometimes have used disposables just at night, and even the waste for that adds up pretty quickly...I think we'd need an extra garbage can every week if we were to use sposies full time. 

[BHappy]

thanks, all, for your replies !

we would definitely line dry whenever possible, so that would help. the biggest dilemma is we currently have no hot water wash. we are on propane gas for everything, including gas burner stove.

thanks for the reminder on the trash increase. we pay for garbage pick-up, too... :)

i'm currently on a path of trying to convince dh to do at least some cloth diapering. my sil is giving me a bunch of diapers, and i made some flannel wipes. it feels especially important to cd a newborn, for me anyway. i just want softness on her skin as much as possible. :)