Water, Water Everywhere…

With droughts expected over the summer and hose pipe bans almost certain to take hold in some areas, I felt it necessary to explore ways to conserve water in the home and garden.  We begin in the home.  Water saving in the home is surprisingly easy and is primarily about developing better habits, such as fixing a dripping tap or thinking before you turn on the tap or use the shower about whether it’s really necessary.

Of course, however, there are gadgets and inventions to help you along the way.  For example, toilet cisterns produced after 2001 already adhere to a standard capacity of 6 litres but if your toilet is older than this, it could have a capacity of 7.5-9 litres, which is quite unnecessary.  So to the rescue comes the Hippo.  This is essentially a bag that replaces approximately 2.5 litres of the water capacity of your cistern with, well, the air inside it.  So a 9 litre cistern would only actually use 6.5 litres of water and thus saves water and money.

From toilets, we turn to taps.  I’ve already mentioned attending to a leaking faucet, which obviously saves water but you can go one step further with the Water Saving Spray Magic Cartridge.  This device reduces the amount of water that comes from a tap by 70% by a simple and easily fitted attachment to the tap, which produces a spray rather than a torrent of water.  So simple, great value at only £2.63 each and again, the savings will reach your water bill too.

And now, showers.  I take a shower every morning before work.  If I didn’t, my self esteem would be less than the drip it is now and my colleagues would have to have “a chat” with me.  It’s not as simple as taking fewer showers so we look towards reducing the amount of time we spend on each shower.  Investing in a shower timer is the first step.  For just a few quid, you can get yourself a timer, which beeps once it hits the predetermined time limit of your showering fun.

Using your waste water differently helps a great deal too.  I’m sure you’re aware of water butts, which collect rain water from guttering so it can be used to water the garden or wash your car but you can also channel waste water from your bath or shower by using a Bath Water Diverter.  Fitted to exposed pipe work, this device simply channels the waste water into a water butt, rather than seeing it go to waste in the local sewerage system.  It can be opened and closed by using pull cords so if you feel the water wouldn’t necessarily be effective to rinse your car, for example if your kids are anything like mine, what they leave in the bath has more mud in it that water, you can simply switch off the diversion and drain as normal.

These are only slight nibble into the water wastage pie but when there are parts of the world struggling to find any water at all and in a country with such excellent water processing facilities, I feel it is our duty to use the water we have responsibly and have our minds firmly fixed on conservation ideas and methods.