Recycling bath water to water the garden???

Primrose

Yes we did this over a period of several weeks some years ago during a heatwave and a hosepipe ban, but it was a bit of a performance. We used a winemaking siphon suction device to get the water flow going into a hosepipe and out of the bathroom window. It meant keeping all the siphoning equipment in the bathroom for the duration, and tying the end of the hosepipe to the bathroom taps so that we weren't continually having to load and reload it through the bathroom window so it was a little inconvenient but worth doing when water is desperate short. Incidentally if there happens to be another hosepipe ban again, check the restrictions on your respective water supplier's website site as there is a clause in some of them saying you can use a hosepipe to fill a container like a bucket or watering can etc. Because we had a large vegetable area we needed to keep alive, we took the hosepipe to the the edge of the vegetable area and used it to fill watering cans. For anybody who is disabled or can't carry heavy watering cans for any distance, this is worth remembering.

Primrose

I was just flicking through my latest arrival of Kitchen Garden magazine when I spotted a small feature about siphoning off bath water for the garden. Apparently The Organic Gardening Catalogue has come up with a simple device to enable you to do this called a Watergreen syphon. A few squeezes of the hand pump start the process and then gravity takes over. You attach it to any standard hosepipe with the universal connector. It costs £22.02 though, so isn't cheap, but if you are on a water meter or live in an drought area where water meters are going to be installed compulsorarily in the future it could pay for itself in the long run. This siphon will also remove water from a baddling pool or water barrell straight onto the garden
Organic Gardening catallogue Tel: 0845-130-1304.
www.organiccatalogue.com