The Great ' Extreme water MoneySaving' Hunt

Former_MSE_Debs

Great ' Extreme water MoneySaving' Hunt

We've heard of some extreme tactics when it comes to water bill savings (see Should I be on a meter?), from strip-washing to using the dog's drinking water to flush the loo. So what are your top extreme tips to cut bills?

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Mark_Beech

I think this is a really dangerous thread. I have always thought that the metering of domestic water supplies is verging on being immoral. Water is the staff of life. We can't survive without drinking it .... and we would be likely to become ill if we don't bathe and clean with it.
My solution would be to have unlimited unmetered INTERNALLY supplied water in kitchens and bathrooms etc but with encouragement to people to be sensible in their use .... but have metered EXTERNAL water supply to one or more outside taps which would be charged at a premium rate. It is use of water for washing cars, watering gardens and filling swimming pools that causes the most wastage. There would be heavy penalties for using INTERNALLY supplied water for EXTERNAL purposes.
Simples!

torbrex

Drain the washing machine/dishwasher into a tank then use this water to flush the loo.
Not a new idea but will be new to some

Fit rain butts to all downpipes available for use in the garden.

Avatar73

Mark_Beech wrote: »

I think this is a really dangerous thread. I have always thought that the metering of domestic water supplies is verging on being immoral. Water is the staff of life. We can't survive without drinking it .... and we would be likely to become ill if we don't bathe and clean with it.
My solution would be to have unlimited unmetered INTERNALLY supplied water in kitchens and bathrooms etc but with encouragement to people to be sensible in their use .... but have metered EXTERNAL water supply to one or more outside taps which would be charged at a premium rate. It is use of water for washing cars, watering gardens and filling swimming pools that causes the most wastage. There would be heavy penalties for using INTERNALLY supplied water for EXTERNAL purposes.
Simples!

Erm... how is it simple to impose penalties for using internal water externally? How do you know some kid just hasn't left the tap on. Not very simple at all.

Ken68

Using drinking quality water for use in the loo is the crime of the century.
I have been using rain and laundry water for years.
And with Anglian Water SoLow tariff the bill is £3 a month, er..tell a lie just been reduced to £2 a month.

scarlet_macaw

Another one that is far from new, use the washing up water, bath water and the cold water you run off from the hot tap waiting for it to run hot to water the garden.

eurovision_fan

When I went on holiday to Germany, I stayed with a family friend and she set a few ground rules, one of them being if I was to have a shower, I was to take the large red barrel in with me to collect any waste water.
The reason being out there, they get separate bills for the amount of water consumed and the amount of water disposed - so the purpose of the water was to flush the toilet during the day/night - since I had taken perfumed shampoos and soaps it also fragranced the bathroom as an added benefit.
Although it was tempting to flush the toilet and watch the water meter tick round.

The first day I had a wash, my host was worried I had used her toilet bleach for shampoo as they both had the same scent and my grasp of German was poor at best. :rotfl:

scarlet_macaw

Mark_Beech wrote: »

I think this is a really dangerous thread. I have always thought that the metering of domestic water supplies is verging on being immoral. Water is the staff of life. We can't survive without drinking it .... and we would be likely to become ill if we don't bathe and clean with it.
My solution would be to have unlimited unmetered INTERNALLY supplied water in kitchens and bathrooms etc but with encouragement to people to be sensible in their use .... but have metered EXTERNAL water supply to one or more outside taps which would be charged at a premium rate. It is use of water for washing cars, watering gardens and filling swimming pools that causes the most wastage. There would be heavy penalties for using INTERNALLY supplied water for EXTERNAL purposes.
Simples!

And how is this 'free' supply of water to be paid for? It costs money to treat water to make it available for use, to transport it to the user and then to dispose of the 'waste' water they flush down the drains. It is only right that this should be paid for by the user.

And incidentally you have the greatest waste of water wrong. The greatest waste of water is for washing machines and dishwashers - both 'inside' use under your system, whilst you would charge a premium rate for the use for growing vegetables an 'outside' use which covers that other basic human need of food, which incidentally I don't see you suggesting should be provided free in unlimited quantities.

marilou66

The one I use regularly is to reuse my washing up bowl water to water houseplants (not if it is greasy or too soapy) - I have one of those huge mineral water bottles which I keep in the kitchen for that purpose, then use a funnel (kept with the bottle to transfer the water from the bowl and water the plants with it. I have lots of plants so it makes me feel good to recycle the water.
But to my great shame years ago I bought a pipe system to empty the bath and reuse the water but still haven't used it.

phsci

It is very difficult to get accurate figures for wastage of water in the home, but it is possible to gather good quality data on domestic water usage. You may want to have a look at the report “At Home with Water” from the Energy Saving Trust published in July 2013 based on 100,00 households surveyed over the period June 2010 to December 2012.
http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/About-us/The-Foundation/At-Home-with-Water
Some of the households were excluded from the data set because of incomplete information but ultimately almost 39,000 households were analysed. The average household usage was found to be:
Shower 25%
Bath 8% (presumably people bathing did so less frequently than those showering)
Toilet 22%
Bathroom hot tap 7%
Other (cold taps) 22%
Washing machine 9%
Dishwasher 1%
Hand washing dishes 4%
Garden 1%
Car 1%
So, the big areas to target for saving are showers, toilet flushing and general cold water consumption. Incidentally, this study found that people on a meter (43% of those in the study) used just 3% less overall than those on an unmeasured supply. (The water industry usually says the difference is about 10 %.)

Gick

Pee into a bottle and empty under the shrubs in the garden. Rinse bottle in bucket of rainwater/washing up water, resulting in dilute nitrogen feed for the runner beans.:rotfl:
Alright, I confess, I live on my own:beer:except for my dog. What is good for her is good enough for me!:D