The Great Use Less Water Hunt

gromituk

Interesting device. They neglect to warn you that if you store used grey water it will start to stink very quickly.

"Contact your Water Company to inform them you have fitted a Water Two, that you are re-cycling your bath and shower water, that you are saving them money and deserve a rebate on the sewage treatment side of your water bill."

Yeah right!

veruccasalt

My year 3 daughter came home with a slogan that she has been taught in Assembly today:

If its yellow, let it mellow
If its brown flush it down

Enough said, methinks

thingamajig

There's a great article on how to save water from Lucy Siegle of The Observer at the link below:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1777590,00.html

The thing that caught my attention most is a new (cheap) device to control the amount of water you flush down the loo:

http://www.interflush.co.uk

Beluga_2

We've been using an Interflush for nearly a year now. It saves a lot of water, and the toilet seems to flush better than with a hippo/saveaflush/brick, etc.

Note, however, that it won't work on newer push button toilets, including the "low flush" ones. But I'd much rather have an Interflush than have a new "low flush" toilet with a valve that starts leaking water after a few years...

Ken68

I might upgrade from this leather bucket. :-)

boyznus

Saving water , well here is a great one , I set up a water butt, outside the bathroom above the height of the cistern, in the bathroom I added some extra pluming, to the mains in pipe it has a turn off valve , and then another valve and pipe going outside to connect up with the butt .The water butt takes water from the roof as well. Turn off the mains in valve and turn on the valve from the butt , gravity feeds the water in to the cistern simple.

So in the winter months when there is plenty of water, mains water is not required to flush the toilet.

But as it is much dryer now I fill the bath with the water from the washing machine , and pump it from there with a hose into the butt through the window using a small drill pump , it takes about 10 min to empty 75 Litres, add a bit of bleach while the water is in the bath this stops it smelling . That gives enough flushes for about 5 to 6 days .

The reduction in water consumption has been great , bill went down from £65.00 for 6 months to £ 21.50 , and the last bill for the winter 6 months was £13.45. So you see it works.

The saving on my water has off set the rise in my other utilities gas and elec.

Go give it a go. Cost £ 60.00 to set up last year , and most of that cost was for the plumber.

gromituk

boyznus wrote:

The saving on my water has off set the rise in my other utilities gas and elec.

Yes - all that electricity to operate the drill pump

LOISANNE

Grey water recycling is all very well but the chemicals used use a lot of energy to produce. The best bet is just to divert the bath water and use is on the garden.

We cut the pipe that takes away the dishwasher water and diverted it into a plasic bin and I use that on the garden; oh and yes the dishwasher does use less than handwashing.

Cardew

LOISANNE wrote:

oh and yes the dishwasher does use less than handwashing.

That is surprising. I have a Bosch that purports to use much less water than normal and that uses between 17 and 26 Litres depending on the cycle

Thats more than I use for handwashing. Mind you its several meals worth in a dishwasher.

Not that you or I should need to defend the use of dishwasher

gromituk

Exactly - if you fill the dishwasher then it is several meals' worth, which will be 20l+ of water - so it does use less after all.

I think your dishwasher uses more than the average amount of water. Mine uses no more than 20l and it is ten years old. More modern ones use even less.

But using dishwasher water on the garden? All the advice I've heard is that you shouldn't, because the detergents are too poisonous.