Have you ever wondered how your septic system works, where your water comes from, or how environmentally friendly your pumps are? Look no further than Max Burns’ Country and Cottage Water Systems.

If you live in the country, or even if you just visit your cottage during the hot summer months, Burns helps ensure that water systems are safe for the owner and the environment.

This book, revised from the first edition from 1999, breaks down the complicated world of plumbing, pumps, and purification to the average country home owner. Some new additions are off-the-electrical-grid solutions, such as windmill-powered water pumps.

“What brought me back to it was that there’s a lot of changes out there – technological changes and environmental changes,” Burns said.

Using hand drawn pictures and useful charts, the book includes ways to test your water, describing different types of pumps, the greener way to run your septic system and even a chapter on what will happen to your pipes over the winter.

One big purpose of this book is for cottagers to realize what luxury running water really is.

“Well most people think, particularly cottagers, take that stuff for granted, because they’re coming from a city environment where it’s a flush-and-forget society. They don’t know, they don’t care – they go to the washroom, do their job, they hit the switch on the side and it flushes away and they never see it again. At the cottage, there’s a chance that they will see it again in the lake,” Burns said.

The book touches on the ways to properly check and save water when there is the threat that it could be destroying the very lake you swim in, as well as how to avoid those pesky water problems like blue-green algae and zebra mussels.

Burns wants the readers to learn from this novel, just as he learned while building his own home from scratch. Burns wanted to see how the septic system really worked, and build it himself to answer his own questions, which is where his helpful tips come into the book. There are even blueprints for an outhouse – after experiencing some troubles with his, he decided to design on where all the quirks and issues had been fixed.

“I’ve always enjoyed picking a topic and reducing it to something that is understandable. I figure if I can understand it, anyone can,” Burns said.

A big part of this book is the environmental factor. Included are many way to keep your water system’s environmental footprint, and with an ‘Obligatory Environmental Plea’ in the back of the book, he makes sure to point out that we want to keep out Earth clean.

“We’re moving up here to the north, and getting a cottage, because of the environment. We want to be here. So why would you want to screw it up?”

In the end, Burns summarized the book by saying, “(the readers) should learn something and be entertained by it, that’s the goal.”

FOCA, the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Association encourages every country property owner to properly maintain their water systems, for the sake of their health and the health of the environment.

Terry Rees, the executive director of FOCA, wants to make sure that country home owners know the proper steps to maintaining their water systems for economical and environmental purposes.
“We’re a self-serving community, so it’s important that we understand how our home systems work,” Rees said.

Since water quality is a key interest to the association, all the information is available to home owners, in the form of fact sheets, videos and newsletters which are available online or in the FOCA head office in Peterborough.

The more homeowners know, the better it is for everyone.
“We’re hoping that everyone is mindful of their water when living around or playing in the lake,” said Rees.