When saving water is just not worth the effort

aidan said :

Water is heavy. Pumping it about takes alot of energy and costs alot of money.

If only it wasn’t heavy. Like gas.
Instead of desalinzation per say, use electrolysis – then pump the hydrogen and oxygen separetly, and then back into water (mostly) – I’m sure we could find uses for the hydrogen too 😉

As for power, there is some interesting work on artificial photosynthesis, using a supramolecular complex to split water using sunlight. (ie manmade molecule does the work using sunlight, no “power” required).

Down South in Mexico all new flats I believe are now individually metered as part of the new building requirements. Problem is retro fitting old flats and leads to some interesting fitouts. For example Flats on Beaconsfield parade where the only way to read or replace the meter is to hang out of a 2nd level window. Been there done that. Or another one done on the cheap in Frankston by dodgy plumbers where only the half the plumbing goes through the individual meters. Many flats are fitted with hot water meters as well with centrally provided hot water.

what attention? in the ignore this one basket?

I thought that I would take this up with the Chief Minister who is also minister for water. I have received a reply back,

Thank you for your email to the Chief Minister, your correspondence is currently receiving attention.

Kind regards
Chantelle Lustri
Personal Assistant
Office of the Chief Minister

Ph: (02) 6205 0104
Fax: (02) 6205 0433

And Thumper could call the roos from the deep desert. OK, I’ll stop nerding out now.

I just had a vision of Canberra’s future – a vast, salinated desert, the people living underground in abandoned car parks, recyling their own waste with special suits, and riding to work on giant mutant Defence-experiment kangaroos, fighting with off-Territory invaders who want our most precious resource – GST distributions.

I think that’s pretty clever, actually (not the oil bit, obviously ;>). Why regulate and enforce when you can just chuck in some disincentives around the proxy indicators and let market forces take care of the rest? Or maybe not – transport and water seem to be surprisingly inelastic. If you’d asked people ten years ago what they’d do if petrol was $1.60+ and our dams were less than half full I reckon they’d say they’d walk to work and drink their own urine when they got there. I’m amazed at how we’ve more or less taken it in our stride, and wonder how long it can last.

It fits completely within the spectrum of this Governments action policies.

Too many cars on the road – sell off carparks
Too much water being used – raise its price

They are too busy wasting our money on tinpot ideas, speaking of which, I think Canberra needs an oil refinery here – the maths is all there, there’s no oil so they’d have to truck it in, there’s hardly any vehicle base, so they’d have to truck surplus finished product out.

Naturally, the price of fuel would remain the same anyway, if not higher than everywhere else because it would be fresher fuel. Do not underestimate the freshness quality characteristics of fuel.

captainwhorebags said :

peterh – Comrade Stanhope was asked about giving water tanks to every household. He stated that it was far more economical to expand dams as the same expenditure provided a lot more water. This is why the Cotter dam is getting an upgrade.

Of course, it’s also far easier to charge us for the water from the dam than water from a backyard tank. More money for ACTEW, more money for the government.

I had heard about a midnight raid by a couple of guys and a water tanker – down by LBG, which does not surprise me one bit. They were going to use the water for their gardens – easy to spot I suppose from the air, they are the ones with the green gardens – wait, it rained last night, no chance of catching them now….

If the chief minister wants to save water, perhaps he can give us a water tank after the dams don’t increase in volume. (needs to rain a lot to fill a dam) not so much to fill a tank.

hax,

Water is heavy. Pumping it about takes alot of energy and costs alot of money. Take a look at this post outlining the stupidity of a water pipeline from the Kimberlys to Perth (suggested by the Liberals in the last WA state election):

http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2005/02/10/colins-canal-again/

Using green power to do desal is silly because we need to displace CO2 intensive coal fire power stations with green power, not use it to make desal plants.

And why can’t I decide where and when to use my allocation. Brisbane set targets for its residents on water use per person per day – which gave everyone something to aim for.

We could do that here and the more frugal users (front loaders, low flow shwer heads, dual flush toilets) would be free to use their “spare” allocation on whatever they wanted.

QBN Council was even offering free toilets for those that had the old style.

There seems to be too much of the stick and not enough of the carrot in the water debate….

peterh – Comrade Stanhope was asked about giving water tanks to every household. He stated that it was far more economical to expand dams as the same expenditure provided a lot more water. This is why the Cotter dam is getting an upgrade.

Of course, it’s also far easier to charge us for the water from the dam than water from a backyard tank. More money for ACTEW, more money for the government.

That’s pretty rough, FC. I hpe they’re not still building complexes like that.

Thanks la mente.
I wonder if you can just get your own one individually metered. That would be good. but I doubt you can.
I’ll try and bring it up with the body corporate. I knew the few owners residing in the complex are keen for it.

@FC
At a cost of approx $800.00 each, it is possible to get individual meters installed and units then billed individually…only problem is getting it through the body corporate

What’s this “car washing” thing I keep hearing about? It rained last night, so my car got its wash. I’m on tank water here, and there ain’t no way I’m wasting it on a car. You just don’t know when it’s going to rain again.

Being on tank water sharpens your awareness of how precious drinking water is.

What really sucks is when you live in a townhouse, as I do.
There is one of me in my townhouse, and I am very careful with the water I use and anything I use on the garden or for plants in grey water. I also have very brief showers.
However,
The water bill is sent for the whole complex and is divided up between the dozen townhouses. Thing is, my water consumption is tiny compared to, say, the family of 5 adults that live next door (and also still think its okay to wash their car with the hose on cement…)

I not long ago worked at the pointy end of water charging. Heaviest water users were households with teanage girls or incontinent retards. Heavy charging penalises those with the incontinent retards that have washing machines going 24X7. Home owner “How come I use so much water?” My answer was “How many teenage girls in the household?” Used to get caught out sometimes by the odd retard situiation.

To save water use front load washing machines and good quality low flow shower heads.
Install a very large water tank for the garden.

I still think we should drain the lakes and use the water from them. This would allow the ACT Govt to clean them up, give the supermarkets back their trolleys and get rid of the numerous cars. Burley griffin fertiliser is still a good idea, you know…

if the ACT Government was serious about water saving, they would give every household a tank.

Being from Adelaide, I cannot remember being charged for the tank we used to have, maybe it was because we were drinking the rain water. Normal tap water varied in colour from brown to green, and was so cloudy you had to cut it with a spoon. really not nice. (insert mental picture here)

So – if we all had a tank, and water from the lakes pumped into it, we wouldn’t have such a problem. As I have stated before, if Jon can use the lake water for his arboretum, why can’t I have some free water too?

Salinity, yep we could drain some swamps.

wonderwoman80 said :

desalinization – you need sea water for that? and where do we get that from in Canberra?

Saline water isn’t the sole province of the sea. Try googling ‘salinity’.

Not exactly.

They are charging a Lot more if you use a bit more.

So if i went to the checkout with ten 1.00 drink cans I’d pay 10.00. but if I went there with 20 1.00 drink cans I’d have to pay 30.00.

I can see both points.

I dunno what the answer to water charging is though.

But ant, it’s just NOT FAIR :”-(.

Don’t forget – they’re w…… well, you know. The entitled ones.

I thought the supermarket analogy was quite good. They are charging for actual water used, full stop. High users pay for it. And as earlier pointed out, the smaller households still pay the same set base charges, no matter how little they use.

desalinization – you need sea water for that? and where do we get that from in Canberra?

Jervis bay?

Astrojax.. There is no logic to your supermarket analogy.

Scarce commodity expensive; news at 11.

sorry?

how is comparing a household with two people in it to one with four/six in it a logical way to argue the cost of water increases? do you suggest that you should be able to rock up to the woolies checkout and say, ‘aww but we’ve got three teenagers, but all live together, so can we just pay what that childless couple ahead of us did..?’

saving water saves you money – if you took the water you used from the bath from the tap, you’d have paid for it – but you didn’t. a saving. what’s the problem? water is a more and more scarce resource and unless we, as a community, value it as such we will squander it. deal with it, is my advice…

going green is not cheap; it’s imperative.

desalinization – you need sea water for that? and where do we get that from in Canberra?

It’s a good idea hax, the snag is solving that whole green energy thing without blowing out the water bill by an order of magnitude or two.

Abundant & reliable.
Cheap.
Green.

Pick any two.

Doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be investigating it and encouraging further green energy research. Shame that the solar rebate has been removed from those most likely to pursue the installation of solar cells.

Green powered desalinzation, leave the rivers alone completely, stop relying on it falling out of the sky.
In fact, washing your car would be adding to the rivers.
That would make using water = good for the environment – how about that.
And we wouldn’t have to worry about upriver towns/cities growing and using more in the future either.
Am I thinking too far ahead?
We have the technology to land on mars, but we can’t dig cheap holes (pipelines)?

Clueless… well,, yeah I see your point. But I’m not shitting on my car.

Spoonbill has a point. Going green is not cheap.

Minime you theory would work, as long as you didn’t mind if the water coming out of your taps looked like the gritty water you see running down the gutters.

Minime2, if I eat food grown on a farm, and I pass that food out of my body and allow it to return to the farm through the sewerage system, should I have to pay the farmer for the food? Am I not simply borrowing the food?

Water usage is allocated/measured per household. If you insist that people with more people in a household get a higher threshold for the lower rate, would it then be fair to also base this threshold on the amount of garden someone has? Should a half-acre block be allowed more access to cheap water than a 500sqm block?

What you’re losing in usage charges, you’re gaining in fixed charges. That same single person household has to wear the entire fixed supply charge, whereas you get to split it over five people (yes, I’m aware that perhaps 3 of those don’t pay the bills!)

ACTEW have already raised prices and flat out declared that it was to maintain a profit margin as less water is used. They’re a bunch of money gouging bandits, but lets not forget that the price is set and agreed to by the government.

Vote early, vote often.

Someoneincanb – my point exactly! With 5 in my family our individual usage is restricted to <20kl per annum whereas a single person in a house can use up to five times that amount of water to still qualify for the cheaper rate (ie <99.9kl ).

Good article spoonbill. I do not think they want you to save too much water; the high prices suggest to me ACTEW must love selling their water.
How has this come about that water falling free from the sky is now priced at similar rates to desalinated water.
Over the decades voters have left the job of planning for future water supplies to planners and politicians who unfortunately have failed them through being overly influenced by Green anti-dam media campaigns. Thus most big city major dams are now a few or several decades old, Warragamba, Thomson etc, Googong was completed in the late 1970’s. What was the population it was planned to service ? So through the 80’s and 90’s we have our Govt water utilities steadily creating a water shortage as population rises. Along comes the cyclic post 2000 dryer period and in 2002 the media is full of “worst drought ever” stories, mostly exaggerated. Usually when I examine long term rainfall histories the current post 2000 period is no dryer than the 1940’s or earlier dry events. See my long term rain history for Uriarra as an example.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=156

Rainwater tanks are usually a very expensive option. Unless you had a cheap construction method for a very large tank plus a large roof area, I would be very surprised if tanks turned out to be even near the ACTEW top rate. But if it gives you a warm inner glow… Here is a report into costs.
The cost-effectiveness of rainwater tanks in urban Australia (PDF 498KB)
http://www.nwc.gov.au/publications/factsheet_rain_water_tanks_storm_water.cfm
If you are blessed with surplus money to spend it is worth considering the advantages say, of putting the water tank money towards taking your family on a holiday to Europe.

If Canberra water consumers want water supplied at a cost closer to the cost of providing the service, they have to tell their Govt to stop taxing water, to stop wasting our taxes building the WPP and to get on with augmenting the Cotter dam. Ideally the Tennent dam should have been built.
ACTEW and Govt water policies are examined in a downloadable pdf report at.
http://canberrawaterusers.007sites.com/

Alan Moran has written, “Water Supply Options for Melbourne”. You can download the pdf free.
http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=787

I hope this is not too long for RIOTACT.
Warwick Hughes

Washing my car …..

If I park next to a stormwater drain hole in the street and wash my car, don’t I take the water from the river (dam) via my hose, and then it runs back into the river via stormwater system off of the car? Am I not then just borrowing the water? How is it wasting waterthen?

This not considering washing a $50k car … perceived value -v-perceived value system.

Ffs. Have you considered how much money you’ve saved compared to if you’d used the same amount of water as the previous period?

Ant – actually that’s not correct. Households that use more, pay more. This does not equate to the same thing.
If you have a household with 2 adults you can use 50kL each per year and get in at the cheap rate.
If you have a household with 2 adults + 4 teenagers you are restricted to 16kL each per year to get in at the cheap rate.
Therefore if you use more, you don’t necessarily pay more.

Did you know you have to pay the fixed charges even if you totally disconnect from the Actew mains! Yep, you get charged for the privilege of having the pipes run past you house.

So once you get past a certain point it doesn’t make any financial sense to reduce your usage any further.

All water charges except usage charges should be abolished. Adjust the kilolitre rate so a normal bill is about the same, but te incentives to use less water are real.

I guess it’s that “user pays” thing. Those who use more, pay more.

yep.

what about water tanks?