During a recent storm we lost power for about a week. Our fresh water is supplied from a well, which needs power to run, so we had no running water while our power was out. Without running water, toilets don't flush.

Modern toilets have two basic sections; the tank and the bowl. The toilet tank holds one flush worth of fresh water, and the toilet bowl is where we do our business and see the toilet flush in action. In order for toilet flushing to work properly, the toilet tank needs to be full before the flush, and refilled after the flush. Since we didn't have running water, we needed an alternate way to refill the toilet tank after each flush, so we would be able to flush the toilet again.

We have a hot tub which holds about 450 gallons of water. Using a garden hose with an on / off valve on one end, I created a siphon that delivered water from the hot tub to a container that held about one flush worth of water. When we needed to refill the toilet tank after a flush, we simply dumped the container of water into the toilet tank, and then refilled the container from the hot tub siphon by opening the siphon valve until the container was full again, then closing the siphon valve.

We were able to flush toilets for almost a week, using only a fraction of the hot tub water.