Lina's Water Saving tips for the Summer Months Ahead

Welcome

I hope you are living a Hajja Kuntenta in every way. The aim of my blog is to share my experiences and hopefully inspire you in some way.




This weeks blog is about water saving tips and you have probably read lots about this very important topic. I will not try to reinvent the wheel, but as we live on tank water I think I have some interesting ways of saving water. I also feel great that when we do save a precious resource like water we are achieving a very worthwhile goal. We lived on a 5000 gallon tank for ten years and through some really bad summers of low rain fall. In all that time we only had to buy water about 4 times. So here are my tips, perhaps there may be one you did not know about and perhaps if you have a few minutes you could comment and and share your tips. That way we all learn from each other.

In Canberra we have a population of approx 350, 000 people ( check government website for a more accurate figure). Our daily water target for example on a given day is 105 mega litres i.e 105, 000, 000 litres. At the end of this article you will see how each person by making very minimal , but dedicated changes to how you live and approach reusing and saving water will save at least 10,000, 000 litres per day. Read on if this interests you.


You do not need to immediately spend any money at all to start or begin this very import way of living and thinking about a resource that is going to become more precious as our population increases and almost doubles at smaller intervals of time ( eg.bacteria in a petrie dish ).


At the end of this blog post there will a simple rule to remember that if followed religiously will save thousands of litres every year and keep river levels above critical levels.


Lina's Tips on how to save thousands ( of litres)


1. Toilets use up a huge amount of water and a Friend of mine advised me of a little rhyme.

If it's yellow, let it mellow , if it's brown , flush it down. Each flush uses anywhere from 3 litres( very efficient to 10 litres). Lets do a little calculation.

Say you have a family of 4 and each of you saves 2 flushes each assuming a efficient toilet,
that's
2X3X4= 24 litres of water per day for 365 days a year = 7760 litres per year.


2. Cut Shower times to less than 4 minutes - my advice it to get a timer - sand timer will suffice.I have one that takes 4 minutes for all sand to run out, with a suction on the shower door.
4 minutes in a shower is an eternity and I still have the occasional shower that last 4 minutes.
Efficient shower heads use 6 litres per minute to the non efficient of up to 15 liters per minute.

Lets do another calculation - cutting your shower from an average of 7 minutes to 4 minutes saves 18 litres if you have a efficient shower head - so for 4 people

4 peopleX3minX6litres = 72 litres every day for 365 days = 26, 280 liters per year.


3. Washing machine- you will probably not take this one up as no -one wants to spend hours doing the washing - but I just love it as I find doing these mundane tasks really are a time for me to think and plan and perhaps even just take time out from a busy schedule.




Here's what I do. I have a front loader ( I do a full load) and I wash the whites first- once they are washed first cycle I save the suds. Then allow clothes to rinse and have another large basin ready to save the rinse water. Next load simply reuse the suds and discard after second use. when rinsing second load , simply reuse the saved rinse water from previous load. just be careful when lifting water , use a smaller bucket . This way you have only used 2 loads of water instead of 4. Now if you don't particularly like this tip you could just save the rinse water after each wash ( does not save as much but better than nothing) - another calculation.


Each load most like uses 80 litres- so if you only save 2 loads per week of 160lites per week for 52 weeks -that's an amazing 8320 litres.

You do have to be close by near the machine for this tip , but why not schedule some ironing the same time.


4. You could use the washing machine water for some gardening plants - just remember to use vegetation safe products , there are plenty at the supermarket. Potential to save lots. You could also use some of the washing water to flush the toilet occasionally.- remember even if you only do this 3-4 times a week ( saves 12 litres ) every week these small savings add up. You could also use the suds to wash tile floors - depending how often you do your floors- potential to save up to 3o litres per week- 1500 litres per year.

5. While waiting for warm water to come out of the shower nozzles why not fill up bucket to use on the garden or to flush the toilet - saves 5 -10 litres per day. Also applies to sink taps - why not fill up a bottle or a kettle or jug- for drinking water or boiling water - saves up to 5 litres per day.

6. Reusing the water is off course better than saving it as it is used twice or 3 times and you are getting better use of the resource without using anymore if it. To do this permanently perhaps you could look into installing a grey water system.

7. Most important tip- make 2-3 of these tips on saving water a habit and that way they become part of your daily routines and then it becomes a way of life and then it becomes easy to do. Perhaps start out with a month long target to get the habit started, record the before changes water usage and then make a few changes that you are willing to adopt and then record the after changes water usage. The result will make you want to do more.

8. Simply put and easy to remember by using simple maths=

• Each person saving 2 flushes a day saves 6 litres per day
• Each person reducing shower time to 3-4 min - saves 6 litres per minute - say you only save 2 minutes off your shower time - remember use a timer - saves approx 12 litres per day.
• saving cold shower water (waiting for warm )in a bucket saves 6 litres per day
• saving tap water before it comes out hot in a bottle or jug ( handy to have a bottle or jug near tap) saves 1-2 litres per day.
• use a cup when washing teeth - save 1 litre per day
• add up all the large bold numbers - 6 + 12 + 6 +2 +1 = 27 litres per day per person with very simple and easy to implement changes.
• Multiply savings per person by the number of people- 27Lt X 350,000 people

= 9, 750, 000 litres per day saving

Remember more savings achieved if you do save some of your washing water ( perhaps you have a front loader which are the most efficient). I prefer the top loaders as the front loaders take forever to complete a cycle. I don't mind spending a little extra time saving the water, but this suits me and may not suit you.

My earliest memory of washing clothes wash helping my mum with when we had an old fashioned machine with exposed ringer like two rolling pins on top of each other. Once I got my hand caught and my arm proceeded to be fed into the ringer to get rung out- very scary for a 12 year old. If I could get my hands on one of these I would love it.

So what do you think - have you any tips that I could use as I am so passionate about reusing , recycling and generally minimising my impact on the environment.

Make time to do the important things and the rest will look after it self.cheers for now- check out my jewellery blog if you have time.

Lina