So when's the next water shortage due?

[Stuart Noble]

Don't get all technical. A million is such a nice comforting figure :-)

[No-one]

Hello David,

Unless it has changed in recent years, one of the major problems was lack of maintenance of the feeding channels into resevoirs. I can remember watching a local news item in Yorkshire where a retired or laid-off maintenance chap showed a feeding channel running off a hill to a resevoir. It was about a foot wide. He was asked what was wrong with that and replied that the concrete channel was actually six feet wide but had become filled with vegetation. It had been his job to keep it clear

[Stuart Noble]

What about, "for a considerable period of time"?

[Andy Hall]

The problem is inadequate planning and provisioning. This is not a demand issue.

That's OK as long as it's in parts of the country such as Scotland where there is plenty of space and it blends in anyway.

No it isn't. That's the same silly argument as energy saving. Completely unnecessary.

That should be done, and done by means of repair, not by reduction in pressure.

These are pointless. A good shower involves the delivery of a good supply of water, not a needle jet tiddly electric-like thing.

Not really. It's entirely reasonable to water vegetables and fruits at particular times.

These are largely nonsense. It may be just about acceptable to flush toilets with rain water provided that it could be suitably filtered and cleaned up. It certainly isn't for clothes unless it can be properly cleaned and purified. It is more sensible to do this on an industrial scale.

[Andy Hall]

Plus you've got God supplying plenty of it horizontally.

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:26:08 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall wrote this:-

Predict and provide. Very 1960s, but engineering has moved on a lot since then.

In this country, Scotland, the landscape lobby are very strong. Together with certain sections of the civil service they stopped hydro-electric schemes in favour of Longannet (I never have quite understood why the landscape lobby didn't object as strongly to Longannet). Perhaps that is because it is in a part of the country they are not so concerned about.

That is only one form of water saving shower head. There are others, such as shower heads that only output water when squeezed.

It is a little more complicated in that one must arrange storage, connect this to the downpipe and deal with the overflow.

Excellent.

All this can be done fairly easily.

The largest or second largest consumption of electricity in Scotland is by Scottish Water. Thus for several reasons it makes sense to do one's bit to reduce this.

[Andy Hall]

Which means that there is even less excuse.

That's good to hear, but where needs must...

One could understand it even more so had it been on the Clyde.

Even less point in those.

Much easier to use the draught version that the locally sourced.

So how would a treatment plant with full filtering and chemical treatment for bacterial removal be implemented at lower cost to the householder than the current buy price for piped water?

This is where it becomes even more nonsense. As soon as the phrase "doing one's bit" is mentioned, it almost always means that the thing itself is inconsequential as it is in this case.

There are three very obvious aspects to your example:

- The demand for water is increasing. Solution is to provide more infrastructure and supply, not to attempt to buck the behaviour of the market and to attempt to reduce consumption.

- If that entails the use of more electricity, then provide more electricity. Scotland is more fortunate than other parts of the country in having a certain amount of hydroelectric generation. It also has plenty of suitable sites for implementation of nuclear generation to make up the rest of the requirement and more.

Issue solved without depriving people of what they want to buy.

[Clive George]

Does water for flushing toilets require all that - "suitably filtered and cleaned up"? Is rainwater really that mucky? (and if so, why?)

clive

[Andy Hall]

I was actually referring mainly to clothes washing where clean water should be used. For toilets, if the water is not sufficiently purified, contains pollutants and stains the sanitaryware such that extra cleaning with chemicals is required, the purpose is somewhat defeated.

[<me9]

For 1 million people for how long? 1 hour? a day? 6 months? 10 years? Reservoirs are designed for different uses. Kielder, for example is intended for storage for several years, to even out the vagaries of the year to year rainfall. Our local service reservoir probably only holds a few hour's supply to cope with the peaks of daily demand.

[manatbandq]

It was planned and built to supply the industry and housing that never materialised due to a veriaty of reasons. It was never intended for long term storage. That's just a convenient outcome and spin to justify a huge white elephant.

MBQ

[Dave Baker]

Long enough for 1 million people to moisten a stamp on the letter to their water authority complaining about the hosepipe bans perhaps?

[zikkimalambo]

"They say that get more right wing as you get older, but I recon that's just a rumour spread by dirty jews!"

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Stuart Noble saying something like:

Jeez, think of the RCD on that.

[Stuart Noble]

Stick it in Essex somewhere

[The Natural Philosopher]

Resident chav dectector