Hello Dear Reader,
We've been working on our garden. We dug up and moved plants and in turn, those plants need watering. The weather has warmed up considerably and our garden is bone dry. We don't have a 'down pipe' on our guttering as it's a terrace and don't have a drain in our garden if we did. Consequently, we can't have a water butt even if we wanted on. If you wonder why I'm worrying about the cost of water, I live in the most expensive water region in the country. Even if we are careful and use very little water, our bill is still around £600 a year.
So, what the problem and what are we doing to save water? The first problem with water useage and consumption in our new home is that our water is heated by the gas boiler in our utility area by the kitchen. This means that we have to draw a lot of water before it starts to run hot. To compensate for this, we keep two buckets in the bathroom and fill those as we are running the shower to get hot water. We use that water to flush the toilet as required. We also keep small washing up bowls in the bathroom and downstairs loo sinks for the same purpose. The very worst offender in our house, even though it is luxurious, is the power shower. For now, we have no choice but to keep it but in the future we will change it for a cold water supply electric shower. We are very thrifty with our showers and make sure that we are in and out as soon as possible.
We keep a careful watch on our water consumption. I've written about this many times before but my increased water consumption in the garden has me thinking about the ways I try and keep my bill down.
Bathroom - short showers, using the 'if it's yellow' policy, not leaving the tap running when we clean our teeth, in the winter when we have a bath we both share the same water.
Kitchen - I don't rinse dishes, I just scrape them and put the in the dishwasher and we only run that when it's full. If I run the tap for hot water then I keep the water in buckets in the downstairs loo and use that to flush the toilet.
Laundry - we only wash dirty clothes, clothes are often hung up and worn again. As I often have a bucket of water spare, I soak dirty clothes in salty water and then wring the clothes out and wash them in the machine.......the salty water goes down the loo for a flush.
Garden - we have installed guttering on the shed and collect rain water, I also leave bowls and buckets out in the rain and transfer then to the water butt. This is used to wash/rinse the car. I also use water butt water to wash the front step and if I'm scrubbing down the garden path. I always water with a watering can instead of a hose as I no longer have an outside tap.
Over to you Dear Reader, who else has some water saving tips? Who else lives in the South West Water region and has to watch ever drop? Who has un-metered cheap water and doesn't need to watch the taps?
As ever, I look forward to hearing from you,
Love Froogs xxxx
