Heating water costs all of us, but saving water is even more important if your home is on a water meter.
It may surprise you to know that in the UK, the average person uses 150 litres of water per day. We are using more water than ever before and before long we may find ourselves with a global shortage.
Here are our top tips for saving water:
Take showers instead of having baths, when possible.
- Obviously we all like to luxuriate sometimes, but this is the number one way to save water so it’s worth thinking about. Even if you don’t have a water meter, each extra litre of water heated will add to your energy bills.
Buy a water-saving shower head
- Try an aerated shower head, which keeps pressure up whilst reducing the amount of water coming out. It can save up to half the water and if you choose a good shower head, you probably won’t even notice the difference.
Check for leaks from pipework or taps
- A lot of water can be wasted this way over the course of a day – up to 15 litres!
- Also check you don’t have a slow leak from your cistern by putting a couple of drops of food colouring in there and checking half an hour later to see if it has flowed into the toilet bowl.
Check your use of appliances
- If you replace your washing machine, look for a water efficient model. Or use your existing one a little more carefully. Make sure it always has a full load in it when you turn it on. Some have ‘eco’ modes you can make use of; these either run a longer cycle at a lower temperature or heat the water to the same temperature, but more slowly.
- A full dishwasher is often more efficient than washing up by hand.
- Look for a low-flush or at least a double-flush toilet to ensure you’re not wasting water in such a pointless way. You could also retrofit an existing toilet by adding a cistern displacement device, which reduces the amount of water the tank fills up with and uses to flush. You can often get these for free from your water company – or simply place a brick or a weighted bottle in the tank.
Install a water butt in the garden
Although on average we use 93% of our water indoors, it is also worth making some little changes outdoors.
- Consider installing a water butt to catch water from your downpipe. They’re not expensive and in hot summers, you could cut your tap water usage a lot by just watering your plants with harvested rainwater. Plants prefer it too!
Think we missed something? Do you have a different opinion?
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I put plastic or metal containers in the garden (in the plastic ones, and some of the metal ones, I place a heavy stone in the bottom to stop them blowing away when it’s windy) and then when we get rain I get a free source of water for the garden. We’ve had some heavy rain recently and I’ve quite a fair amount of water – but no good just leaving it in the containers because as soon as the weather turns appreciably warm the water can “dry out”.