Water and waste at a cabin

Getting water in, keeping it from freezing, and putting the dirty water and the rest out of the way.

What you need

Take the water from above the cabin and put the waste below it. That one rule solves most of it.
Keep the drinking water in its own closed container with its own dipper. Wash water lives separately.
Treat any surface water you drink: boil it a full minute, or filter and treat it. Beaver country means giardia.
Run the sink drain out through the wall into a soak pit of gravel and rock, at least 30 m from any brook, pond or well.
Strain food scraps out before the water goes down. Grease and scraps clog a soak pit in a season.
Site the outhouse 30 m or more from water, downhill and downwind, with the pit above the water table.
Throw a scoop of lime, ash or sawdust down the outhouse after each use. It handles the smell and the flies.
Before freeze up, drain every line, drain the pump, and empty the barrels or bring them in.

Keep a full barrel indoors in winter so you have water when everything outside is frozen.
Cover the rain barrel so it does not raise mosquitoes.
Wash and rinse well away from the shoreline, even with plain water.

Don't

Danger

A frozen line that splits is not found until the thaw. Drain it properly.
Water that looks clean off a barren can still carry giardia from beaver and caribou.
A soak pit too close to a well or a brook contaminates it, and you will not see it happen.
Antifreeze in a water line is only the plumbing kind marked non toxic, never the vehicle kind.

Water above, waste below, and 30 m of ground between either one and the pond. Everything else is comfort.

A cabin that is easy to close up for the winter gets closed up properly. Build the drain so it drains itself.

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Updated 2026-09-20