I use as much as I need , no more no less. As I’m paying for it that’s fair. It’s certainly fairer than all the water leaks in the roads round here that the HS2 traffic causes to our little country lanes that the water company let’s run for weeks on end without fixing .Sorry it just really grinds my gears !!!!
I'll sound like an ass for saying this, but I suppose in my defence I can say "at least I'm being honest". We're in an old council tax band too high, so we pay too much for water. We could probably pay more if we switched to a meter (even though it's advertised that you'll pay less). So as we pay a fixed sum and it's over the odds, we use as much as we care to - eg. I rinsed a lot of gravel and earth in the garden with the tap running for a long old while.
That all said, hot water even with an efficient new combi boiler still costs gas. So baths and washing up water are somewhat conservative. Also we don't like pouring grease down the sink, so instead of rinsing oodles of meat fat and whatnot down the drain, we'll pour that out first and use a little hot water and washing up liquid for it to soak. Baths are shared by a couple of family members (eew), but are never filled high anyway - I'd rather a shower but our electric needs updating to even considering installing a shower.
No water butt as yet, but my intention is to fit one at some point. Rain water is better for acid loving plants (rhodo, camellia, acer) and won't hurt being used on other plants too. This would save some water in the dryer hotter periods of the year. This is Britain after all, so it's pretty wet most of the year anyway.
If there was a healthier pressure rate here that doesn't drop as soon as someone in the street flushes a toilet (yes, it's bloody naff), I'd be inclined to run a water wheel of some form and generate a small amount of electricity for some outdoor lights or something trivial - it wouldn't be enough to open a fast charge point for electric cars any time soon
Our rateable value is very high, and we were paying a lot for water / sewerage after we moved in. With just two of us at home, our water bills plummeted after we had a meter installed. We don’t take baths, just showers, and replaced the old toilets with water saving dual flush cisterns - and we do flush as often as used! We were without a dishwasher for six months while the kitchen was revamped. We installed the new extra efficient dishwasher, and as a temporary measure, had it emptying into buckets outside until a new drainpipe could be connected. I was amazed at how little water it used! Certainly cured me of any guilt about using a dishwasher. I must have been using five or six times as much doing the washing up by hand.
I've very rarely used mains water for the garden, luckily got space for 9 water butts and tanks, and looking to put a few more in...
In terms of toilets, the whole: making water clean enough to drink, piping it to people's houses then dropping a s**t in it approach is a bit bonkers! I'm frustrated not to have yet got round to installing a simple composting toilet in the garden, and I do use a watering can with a lid in the house, which is then added to the compost as household liquid activator...
In terms of electricity, it seems likely that the cost of vehicle to grid (V2G) chargers will drop massively in the near future, and electric vehicles will then do a lot of the work of storing solar electricity on site.
The trial we're on is, in the next few weeks, planning to automatically charge the car from our excess solar, and discharge to the house/grid in the early evening (when demand is high and energy is expensive). Fingers crossed it works well!
In the meantime it is satisfying to not have the boiler on in the summer, as the Eddi sends excess solar electricity to the immersion heater.
and for those not fortunate enough to be able to afford an electric car or the infrastructure? ie the overwhelming majority of the planet?????
I've very rarely used mains water for the garden, luckily got space for 9 water butts and tanks, and looking to put a few more in...
In terms of toilets, the whole: making water clean enough to drink, piping it to people's houses then dropping a s**t in it approach is a bit bonkers! I'm frustrated not to have yet got round to installing a simple composting toilet in the garden, and I do use a watering can with a lid in the house, which is then added to the compost as household liquid activator...
In terms of electricity, it seems likely that the cost of vehicle to grid (V2G) chargers will drop massively in the near future, and electric vehicles will then do a lot of the work of storing solar electricity on site.
The trial we're on is, in the next few weeks, planning to automatically charge the car from our excess solar, and discharge to the house/grid in the early evening (when demand is high and energy is expensive). Fingers crossed it works well!
In the meantime it is satisfying to not have the boiler on in the summer, as the Eddi sends excess solar electricity to the immersion heater.
and for those not fortunate enough to be able to afford an electric car or the infrastructure? ie the overwhelming majority of the planet?????
Well. In this country second-hand electric cars are bargains, and their new prices will be in line with ordinary cars in very short order.
More widely, it is about enabling development with low carbon intensity - and this is best demonstrated in certain European countries, including particularly the UK (for 'Green' politicians seems the idea that we are doing well on some things seems to be the elephant in the room that cannot be named). The developing world needs to do be enabled to do that whilst missing out the fossil fuel stage.
It's about both renewables, and reduced energy consumption. On the latter, a number of large European Economies (UK, Spain, Italy) are on the way towards world average energy consumption - so it can be done. Issues remain of course, but progress is continuing.
A couple of graphs, which have a quite a lot of information.
(I was surprised that an average Swede uses twice as much energy as an average Italian, for example.)
“Rivers know this ... we will get there in the end.”
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We're in an old council tax band too high, so we pay too much for water. We could probably pay more if we switched to a meter (even though it's advertised that you'll pay less). So as we pay a fixed sum and it's over the odds, we use as much as we care to - eg. I rinsed a lot of gravel and earth in the garden with the tap running for a long old while.
That all said, hot water even with an efficient new combi boiler still costs gas. So baths and washing up water are somewhat conservative. Also we don't like pouring grease down the sink, so instead of rinsing oodles of meat fat and whatnot down the drain, we'll pour that out first and use a little hot water and washing up liquid for it to soak.
Baths are shared by a couple of family members (eew), but are never filled high anyway - I'd rather a shower but our electric needs updating to even considering installing a shower.
No water butt as yet, but my intention is to fit one at some point. Rain water is better for acid loving plants (rhodo, camellia, acer) and won't hurt being used on other plants too. This would save some water in the dryer hotter periods of the year. This is Britain after all, so it's pretty wet most of the year anyway.
If there was a healthier pressure rate here that doesn't drop as soon as someone in the street flushes a toilet (yes, it's bloody naff), I'd be inclined to run a water wheel of some form and generate a small amount of electricity for some outdoor lights or something trivial - it wouldn't be enough to open a fast charge point for electric cars any time soon
Thanks.
If your Council Tax is a band too in your view, why don't you appeal it?
https://www.gov.uk/challenge-council-tax-band
We were without a dishwasher for six months while the kitchen was revamped. We installed the new extra efficient dishwasher, and as a temporary measure, had it emptying into buckets outside until a new drainpipe could be connected. I was amazed at how little water it used! Certainly cured me of any guilt about using a dishwasher. I must have been using five or six times as much doing the washing up by hand.
More widely, it is about enabling development with low carbon intensity - and this is best demonstrated in certain European countries, including particularly the UK (for 'Green' politicians seems the idea that we are doing well on some things seems to be the elephant in the room that cannot be named). The developing world needs to do be enabled to do that whilst missing out the fossil fuel stage.
It's about both renewables, and reduced energy consumption. On the latter, a number of large European Economies (UK, Spain, Italy) are on the way towards world average energy consumption - so it can be done. Issues remain of course, but progress is continuing.
A couple of graphs, which have a quite a lot of information.
(I was surprised that an average Swede uses twice as much energy as an average Italian, for example.)
https://www.spoticar.co.uk/second-hand-cars?page=2&filters[0][energy]=electric&filters[1][energy]=hybrid&filters[2][energy]=plug-in hybrid
Nothing under £20K which is more than every car I've bought in the last 40 years added together.
I guess we have a very different idea of a " bargain"