Good news on water restrictions

What interests me is how the amount of water used in a day seems to drop on rainy days (according to the lit up boards by some Canberra roads). Who do you suppose is using so much water on only sunny days?

Reprobate: There’s a couple of commercial hand car washes available – I use the one in the Canberra Centre carpark.

water conservation should be started at the high end, it won’t matter a tinker’s if I recycle my water, when I can, if the big players continue to have running toilets, taps and other leaks – they consume far more than I.

My garden is green at the moment, not because I am watering it with grey water (yet I am), but due to the amount of rain we have had. We drain the bath into a watering can and water a small area of grass that we have created near our pergola, for my children. We don’t hand water unless it is from the tank, and the rest of the garden has been left to its own devices.

seeing big businesses with sprinklers running into the gutter, neighbor who turns on the tap and leaves the hose running until the entire front garden is saturated really sh!ts me.

an election promise should be a tank for every home, gratis.

It will reduce the amount of storm water flow, but as I use tank water for the garden or my windows (cleaned for the first time after years of peering out between the streaks of ash and dirt, I haven’t cleaned them since the fires) instead of letting it cascade down the drain…

I agree with Holden about car washing. I believe that under the current Stage 3 restrictions car washing could reasonably be permitted one day a month under the same conditions of Stage 2 restrictions (ie washed from a bucket, on a lawn/garden area, rinsed with a trigger hose, no runoff permitted). Of course, everyone knows it always rains after you wash your car so the more we wash our cars, the more rain we get, so the better our dam levels QED…

Seriously, even though I use grey water in a labelled bucket and a watering can to wash and rinse my car at home (which IS permitted under Stage 3) and only do so when really needed (about every 6-8 weeks on average), I always feel every pair of eyes passing by my house is about to dob me in to the Watermeister on “suspicion” of using drinking water. Havn’t yet worked out how I could prove my case if I get a nasty letter/fine in the mail. I don’t like using commercial washes as either the brushes cause microscratching and the Brushless ones have very strong detergents. And you’ll often see so much water spray at carwashes going out of the bay to evaporate in the sun, not being recycled…

I agree with RAGD and LH, and I practice water conservation as best I can. The grey water from our front loader goes on our back lawn, the dish washing water supplements our pot plant watering and so on. That said I do wish I could wash my car at home from time to time. Even just once a month would be great.

I agree RAGD. We should still be cautious with our water, even if our dams were at 100%. Just because it’s full now, does not mean it will be in 6 or 12 months time. We should not go crazy and binge on water for one summer, if it’s going to effect our water levels drastically for the next 2 years. Water conservation is a long term commitment and strategy.

http://www.actewagl.com.au/water/facts/damCapacity.aspx

Easy to check every now-and-then.

Maybe they should be “dancing” about it when it reached 80% not 50%… 50% is still dangerously low in my book.