Hose ban, April 5th

Me too ...still say had enough time to sort something out as Six years ago ...

WKS ~ "On this day in 2006 ~ "A meagre 0.3mm rain falls on Canterbury, and that's it for next 11 days. By the end of the month Kent has received less than its expected rainfall for the seventeenth month of 19.
Six Water Companies will shortly impose hosepipe bans affecting 13 million. Environment Agency claim that SE England has less water per head than parts of Sudan and Syria. Remarkable, but true"

I lived in the Far East as a child in the 1950's, for 4 months in the summer our water was rationed . We had water for 2 hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. So the baths were filled with water for use in the toilets and we had large kettles and urns to fill up for drinking and cooking. Once the monsoons came the reservoirs were filled and we had a normal supply. This has always made me respect my use of water. My neighbour puts her sprinkler on for hours sometimes as she forgets - I have actually turned her sprinkler off at midnight as they'd all gone to bed and left it. What a terrible waste and a crime - which it will be if we get a ban down here in the West Country.

From what I could gather during previous hose bans it is OK to use a hose to top up a butt from which to fill cans etc., but not to water the garden directly. Same quantity of water used whichever way you do it, seems nonsensical!

Jacey the two big things they could do to "sort it out" are compulsory metering and more money spent on controlling leaks.
The leakage problem is a Forth Bridge job due to the fact there are still a lot of old iron pipes in the ground and it takes an age to replace them. And puts a whack of money on the bills. And as you replace them more start to leak.
There are no other realistic things that would help.
One of the big problems is that farms and other business have been granted "abstraction licences" in the past. Which means they can suck up water without paying for it and spray it on lettuces to their hearts content. Apparently this is legally a nightmare/impossible to unpick. This is not mains water, but water from underground resources and rivers, before it gets to the water works. Businesses only pay for treated water that comes in via meters. There is no way that water companies can do anything about this. It is not their water until they treat it.
The Environment Agency is the quango in charge but I don't think they have a mechanism for ungranting abstraction licences. (I am passing on a quick bit of pillow talk with Dh this morning - the things us scientific types talk about... water abstraction...)

That may explain why I see farmers using automatic sprays at the hottest time of the day ...when the water spray evaporates before it gets anywhere near the soil!!

Tell you another way water gets away...at my last house, the outside loo wasn't on the meter, that supply turned off quite separately, in the pavement.
So the hose tap water, from that pipe, wasn't metered, or the loo. I think all the houses in the road were like that, and this water of course would be counted in the amount apparently leaked from the system, as it wasn't measured at all.

yup it is no skin off their noses at all!
oxon I saw some strange arrangements in my days with welsh water. But is your meter not in the pavement? Where is it if not?
Measuring leakage is a nightmare.
But it is not calculated on the basis of household meters. This was one of the ways:
In the dead of night when you reckon nobody on the housing estate is running their taps much you fiddle with valves and isolate the area (you being chaps paid on overtime) and measure how much water is going into it (imagine a small housing estate with a tree like mains system going in) through a big monitoring meter. If it is more than the small amount you expect you start trying to track down where the leak is. There are no easy ways. Closing some more valves to see if you can narrow the area down. Putting a stick against external stop taps and listening to them, that kind of thing. It is all very labour intensive. The easy ones are the ones where someone can see water running down the road and calls it in. But even then the gushing water can be a way away from the leak. Specially on hills.

Don't worry, if they impose a hosepipe ban from April 5th we will have floods, storms and tempests starting on the 6th. Remember the Minister for Drought?

I remember a bumper sticker from 1976 'save water bath with a friend' .

Hooray for Trent Water no ban and £20 less a month than I was paying Yorkshire Water and thats with a meter.

Oh dorsetpennt I remember that! And didn't they recommend to use the washing-up water to flush the loo!

And didn't someone suggest brushing one's teeth with champagne?

JessM sorry I didn't answer your question earlier - too busy with this Oldies thing...and gardening while it's been warmer today.

This was my last house (1930s): One pipe from the mains in the road to the outside loo, with stop tap in the pavement.
Does not stop the flow in the other pipe, which goes from the mains to the meter under the stairs and then to the water system in the house.
So..water to the outside loo and hose tap not metered.

Dunno about this house (1950s), but some of the pipes - and drains - are shared with next door! I don't know how the water gets to the outside loo here.

I just paid my water bill, £62, could be worse I suppose.

Susieb - Trent benefits from having water from Wales. Luck not judgement.

oxon - water meter under stairs... there you are then. Must have been an early example.
These days they are installed 'at the boundary' - ie in the pavement.
Drains often shared We are in a 7 yr old estate and have a drain with everyone's bathroom waste going across under our back garden.
Planners let developers get away with this! Cheaper for the developers to do it that way. If there is a problem with it, it is joint responsibility.
Are you on metered water now? It is much cheaper if there is just one of you in residence.

"...cheaper if there is just one of you in residence." ?

Jess I can't find out anything about this yet online, where can I look?

I mean if people that live alone are not on a meter it would save them a fair bit of money if they get one. Sorry expressed myself badly there. It is not like council tax. But if you are a sole householder and you don't hose the garden you are quids in.

Not necessarily so, JessM. I filled in a questionnaire for my local water company and they said that a meter wouldn't make it any cheaper for me. I have a two up, two down end-terrace house and water rates are still based on rateable values - though rates are long gone. In my old house - 4.5 beds and living on my own except when family came home from their travels - I was very definitely quids in with a meter.

I have asked United Utilities for a water meter several times and they have ignored my query. A few days ago, I had a different query about the amount my bill had gone up, so I added my water meter query yet again. They phoned me and asked me a few questions, then announced - your rateable value is so low, despite the value of your house, that you would not benefit from having a water meter - that's why we have never responded to your query!

It seems I am an anomoly, with a very low water bill. That makes a change! I don't waste water anyway, but if a large family was to squeeze into my little house, they would be quids in.

Same water company, Carol. Same reason. I think I did their on-line questionnaire rather than try to get sense out of a human being!

I wonder whether they just can't be bothered Annobel

fascinating. Depends how they work out their comparables I guess. Sorry if i have been confusing again. it is an anomaly isnt it, seeing as ratable values ceased to exist decades ago. except in the databases of water companies. depends on the patch yr in I guess. In wales there were an awful lot of low RVs!

Well, here's the ban.
I'm glad it has just rained!

All the water companies need is for it to rain continuously in the east of England, day and night. until I return to the Uk in a months time, and they can start to worry a bit less.

I think hosepipe bans work better than rainmaking dances! Has anyone done any comparative studies on this subject?