Saving Water - Tips

tootles_2 · 30 April 2005 at 9:34PM

Oh Oh.... forgot we pay £14.15 per month and we have 3 large water barrels collecting the water from the garage roof, would also collect it from the house roof, but we have nowhere to put the barrel, shucks......husband washes the car with a bucket and sponge, uses a watering can to rinse it off.......

Curry_Queen · 30 April 2005 at 9:36PM

tootles wrote:

When I use the oven on Sunday I put a squirt of washing up liquid into the empty roasting pan and fill up with very hot water, by the time you have finished your meal, the grease and any bits stuck to the tin will have floated off, use a green pad to scour the rest and then rinse in the water after you have finished washing up everything else.

Don't you use that to make gravy??? :eek:

If you make the gravy in your tin and de-glaze it with wine or stock there'll be nothing left stuck to the pan and it just needs a quick wash out afterwards ... and you'll have much tastier gravy

Fastflys · 1 May 2005 at 3:47PM

Further to my earlier post: Is it worth the risk of blocked drains to save water?

We [2 adults + 1 teenager] live in a 4 bedroom detached house in Essex. We have two bathrooms with bath/shower, hand basin and toilet in each plus a third toilet and hand basin downstairs. We have a washer/dryer and dishwasher of the water saving variety in use every day. I wash the car using the hose and water the gardens likewise. We do not waste water but don’t go out of our way to save any either.
We bought the house as a new build 11 years ago so a water meter was installed from day one. I have kept accurate records of our water usage and here are some facts and figures.

This year [May 04/April 05] I used 22.92 cubic metres of water more than my best water saving year.

1 cubic metre = 225 gallons

225 gallons x 22.92 cm's = 5,157 gallons more water used per annum than my best water saving year.

Essex Water currently charge £0.7364 per cubic metre to supply water.
Anglian Water currently charge £1.0833 per cubic metre to collect and recycle it.

Therefore:

22.92 cm's x £0.7364 = £16.88

22.92 cm's less 10% [Anglian allowance for water not returned to the drains] =
20.628 x £1.0833 = £22.35

Total extra spent on water this year than best water saving year:

£16.88 + £22.35 = £39.23

As I said in my earlier post, Yes I could have saved £39.23 per annum
[£3.27 per month] but blocked drains would have cost me far more if I had to call in the so called “Professionals”.

My total water bill for 12 months ending 30th April, is £233.73 [£19.48 per month] which includes £2.50 per annum discount for paying by Direct Debit.

squeaky · 1 May 2005 at 4:03PM

You might just have lousy drains, you know

Despite the measures I listed above as to how to save water it's still true to say that the vast majority of my water goes down the drain.

There's only one of me, I much prefer shower to bath, so my effluent production has traditionally been very low (much lower than yours since there are three of you) and my drains are fine.

I don't really skimp on flushing the loo because cleaning out the limescale build up costs more than the water for a healthy flush. And when I do clean it I flush several times in quick succession to make sure everything's cleared away.

It's not as if I'm down to a litre a day going down the drain. Honest guv

Fastflys · 1 May 2005 at 4:21PM

I’m not having a pop at your posts, simply trying to illustrate that water being a relatively cheap commodity, the savings achievable by scaling down your water usage are relatively small.

However I do agree that if every penny counts a saving can be made by thoughtful use. Try telling that to a 16 year old!

I may well have lousy drains, I wasn’t present when they were laid. Perhaps too many sharp turns.

As for your cleanliness, Squeaky by name, squeaky clean by nature. :whistle:

squeaky · 1 May 2005 at 4:38PM

I'm not knocking yours either

In fact if you pop back up to the first post you'll see for yourself that I'm not.

My water usage as a single person, and so my flow down the drains, would be roughly a third of yours - so even with your very best water saving efforts the flow through your drains would still have been at least double mine. So if your drains block on that flow rate yet mine don't on my rate... I mean, we know drains are different from property to property. Maybe I'm a lucky one. Maybe you're unlucky. But there are lots of single housholds out there and they can't all be blocking up.

Nonetheless you've raised some good points for people to consider...

For me every penny does indeed count. I'm on benefits at just on four grand a year. My rent is covered, but I still have gas and electric and phone bills to pay just like everyone else.

But I do try to avoid false economy - which is what you are really saying in your posts. Fine

culpepper · 1 May 2005 at 6:13PM

still fastfly has 3 peoples 'solids' (sorry cant think of what else to call it), to wash away not just 3 peoples water useage and they dont all use 1 loo so that means more pipework to clear with water. It might easily take more water to clear all the houses waste away than one person multiplying by 3.
I try to save water but OH will happily blast his motorbike for ages with a pressure washer.

Loadsabob · 18 July 2005 at 2:34PM

After my week in the woods I am more conscious than ever about the amount of water we use. It's great how focussed on water use you become when you have to collect it every coulple of days!

I don't have a water meter, so have nothing to gain financially by saving water, but as I try and live as lightly as possible, I think it's important that we all try and be more responsible water users. It's NOT an infinite resource, and we're going to run into problems sooner rather than later if we all keep abusing its availability.

SO, I am going to make a few little changes to really reduce my water use. I think this is OS in the extreme, because before people had running mains water, I think they were probably a lot more careful and clever with the water they had collected for use.

My plans:

I stopped letting the tap run when I cleaned my teeth, long ago. Now I'm going to just use half a beaker of water to clean my teeth, like when I was in the woods.

I have a "hog" thing in the cistern of the loo, but now I will only flush every other time, for "light use"!

In the woods we had a rainwater flush toilet and had to think carefully whether to flush or not. It wasn't horrible, didn't smell at all, and we must have saved gallons of water!

I will stop pouring water down the sink (abandoned drinking water, old kettle water, vegetable water not being used for cooking), and instead pour it straight into the watering can outside my kitchen door. I often use the dregs of water in this way for indoor plants, but I think that way I'll be pouring a lot less down the sink.

I will mulch all of my garden plants where possible to prevent evaporation of water from them, meaning they will need less watering and retain more of it.

I will pour left-over hot kettle water into the sink for dish-washing, when appropriate, to save on hot water.

I will consider a small water butt, and possibly even diverting my bath and sink water (as per recent thread!) into it for watering the garden...

Any other suggestions? Things you do or would like to pedge to do?...

squeaky · 18 July 2005 at 2:41PM

We have another thread on water saving somewhere - I'll see if I can find it.

Edit: Here ya go... Saving Water

caffeinehit · 18 July 2005 at 2:50PM

If you're doing all this then you'd almost certainly save money by getting a water meter, especially if your house has the same number or more bedrooms than people. One of the Government's options for dealing with the current drought is to give all metered customers a 'free allowance' of water followed by higher charges once you use more than a certain level. So you might even end up getting free water.

South West Water should have a calculator thing on their website...

PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING

Saving Water - Tips

Comments

Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply

🚀 Getting Started

Categories

Is this how you want to be seen?

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free