As far as I know the only things that are banned are washing the car with a hosepipe, and watering the garden. If you've a pointer to a legal resource that says different, I'd like to read it, for interest.
Plastic grass does quite have the same feel as the real stuff. Yo would also miss those hours lost mowing the bugger, not to mention th great smell of fresh cut grass
-- Cordless Crazy
Right now under the 1999 legistlation Water Companies can apply to introduce compulsory water metering to restrict demand. And at least one - Dover if not more, has already done so. If things got really bad Water Companies are empowered to cut off domestic supplies altogether and install stand pipes. If there was any evidence that the use of hosepipes for supposedly innocent use was being abused, there's no doubt whatsover that the use of all hosepipes would be banned forthwith. And that such an eventuality was anticipated in the legislation, by a catch-all clause if nowhere else.
michael adams
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Following from
Q. Why are you banning washing of cars and watering of gardens when people can still fill up pools and wash driveways?
A. When the water resources of a water company are at threat due to long term drought they can take a number of actions to encourage customers to reduce their water consumption. The first stage is a hosepipe ban under the Water Industry Act 1991 (Section 76), which prohibits the use of a hosepipe for watering of a private garden and washing of a private car. This legislation was originally drafted in
1945 and does not cover many activities which are now part of modern lifestyles eg. Jetwashes to wash patios/driveways, filling of swimming pools, leisure pools and contribute to the fact that our customers now use twice as much water as their grandparents did.We agree about the anomaly and have already raised this issue with government and our regulators with a view to encourage revision of the existing legislation.
What is banned depends on where you are and who provides your water. The legislation covering drought orders provides for a range of measures to be introduced, and depending on local circumstances individual water companies may pick and choose the measures they impose, balancing the need to save water with the need to minimise socio-economic disruption. The definitive story on what you are, or aren't, allowed to do should be available on your local water company website or look at
Andy
The relevant Act only gives the Water Suppliers the power to prohibit the use of hose pipes for watering of domestic gardens and for the washing of private cars. They do not have the powers to impose greater restrictions, until they get to the point where they have to limit supplies to standpipes and/or tankers.
Colin Bignell
I was watching that "green" programme last night about that bloke who can't afford a pair of scissors setting up a turbine to pump well water to his roof from an open well.
It struck me as odd they never built up the adit to keep out surface water and didn't seem to have a cover to stop windblown litter dropping in.
No mention of a filter either. The occasional blip that might put a little grit in the works is capable of playing havoc in the plumbing. They'd onlly need a felt pad or somesuch in a collander.
I have a Karcher 411A and it sucks water up without any head of pressure. It takes some seconds to get the water out of the lance though, due to the slow rate of water use, but otherwise was fine.
Dave
I'm getting more dissilusioned with that program by the week - they're doing some very strange things....
...like running 3 woodburning stoves and then fiddling about with an air-to-air heat exchanger - rather than running one decent woodburning stove with boiler & radiators to 'spread' the heat around
We use a well for all of our domestic water. Before use it's passed through a cartridge-type grit filter, and then a UV filter to kill off any bacteria. Not sure I'd want to do without either of those (UV for the bugs and grit to keep the crud out of the ball-valves, tap seats etc).
Having a little wind-genny to drive the pump is also all very well - but the amount of power consumed by the pump must be pretty small - as the genny wouldn't have been much more than 200 - 300watts. OK - so it was all very good on camera - but whether it was cost-effective.... dunno.....
We also heat our house by means of a woodburner / multifuel stove. All very well having a nice big blazing bonfire for Guy Fawkes night - but in this house that timber would have ended up in our woodburner - either as kindling or as substitute logs.... - and you don't dry logs by wrapping them up in a tarpaulin....
Ah well - I suppose it makes good telly.....
Regards Adrian Suffolk UK
======return email munged================= take out the papers and the trash to reply
I bought a power washer for that very purpose last year. Could still do it with the ban in place, but won't. Back to a bucket, scrubbing brush, and Jif. Oh, and some knee pads :)
I wrote to the local water authority and asked if i could rig up a hos from a storage tank which took bath water and / or rain water and use hose from this to wash the car.
No problem they said.
Of course the bath water should not have any nasty soap in it!!
The whole thing is being compromised by the water companies who hav taken huge profits and now expect us the bill payers to ignore thei incompetence. If they were not wasting water we would all be happy t sign up to the ban by quite frankly they are taking the michael
-- freddyuk
Yup. At the moment in various places (Dover excepted?) we've only got a "hosepipe ban". As far as I know, this means you can still clean your "patio" with a pressure washed. Y/n?
My water company is saying otherwise, at least by omission. And they call it a 'Total Hosepipe Ban'!
That's useful to know. I checked on their web pages a while ago, and the headline pages say 'you can't use a hosepipe'. The FAQ mentions nothing about other usage. I dug deeper and found a copy of the actual restriction order, and it's as you say.
Thanks.
Be careful -- I believe you may have been wrongly advised. Using rainwater collected by you should be no problem, but water supplied via your water main, regardless of what you've done with it in the mean time (e.g. a bath, dishwasher, etc), still can't be used with a hose for garden watering or car washing. Certainly, this was the case prior to the most recent legislation, which I haven't read in detail.
Most power washers will suck water from the same level easily. You would need an in line filter if there is any muck in the butt.
Pumping would work, but you need to keep the pump pressure low. Anything over 10 bar will goose the inlet valves.
Yes -- I connect a pressure washer up to my water butt with a long hose. The only feed pressure is the height of water in the butt. Actually, my cheap pressure washer has only ever been used from the water butt. I did wonder if sand might get into it and wreck the pump, but it's lasted about 5 years now with no problems. In practice, the sand tends to have sunk to the dead area in the bottom of the butt, and doesn't come out of the tap which is a few inches above that.
I was washing my car this way the first weekend of the hose pipe ban, and got lots of dirty looks from passers by, who could only see the hose and pressure washer. I kind of felt guilty, even though I was doing nothing wrong.
Move North. We have water to spare :.(
No they don't. All water compnaies have to abide by the law which is the Temporary Hosepipe Ban provision in Section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991. Using a hosepipe from the mains to drive a pressure washer for any non-vehicle cleaning purpose is legitimate under a "hosepipe ban" and none of the water companies say otherwise, nor can they.
The water companies have no power at all to ban all uses of domestic hosepipes. They do have the power to make exemptions from the proscribed prohibitions but they don't have the power to add new prohibitions even in an emergency.
If they need to save more water they _must_ apply for a drought order to ban so-called non-essential uses which include window washing, irrigation of parks and sportsgrounds, filling ornamental ponds, etc. This process takes some weeks - the Secretary of State has to agree and there has to be a public enquiry. Three water companies applied for such a drought order a month or so ago but none has yet been granted or implemented. The next and final step thereafter would be to apply for an Emergency Drought Order which does give the water compnaies blanket powers to prohibit any use of water they want - and to make people queue up at standpipes to collect their water by the bucketfull.
To put things in perspective, the outside tap uses 4% annually of all water supplied to households. Loo flushing uses 35%. Dishwashers, washing machines and power showers waste far more water than is ever put on the garden via a hosepipe.
But the water companies don't have the power - except under an Emergency Drought Order - to ban uses of water inside the home. That's because it is classified as essential domestic use and it is their statutory obligation to supply it, even if most householders waste gallons of the stuff every day.
Because the outside tap is not classified as 'domestic use' it is a soft target - indeed the only target for the water companies. But it isn't an effective one. Hosepipe bans don't save much water. Research by some of the water companies during the last drought showed that many households' water consumption _increased_ after a hosepipe ban.
The message from bigegg contains these words:
I was digging around in a concrete post-hole today, trying to get the remains of a rotten gatepost out. It was sopping wet despite being open at the bottom to drain. Ah, Slopshire - not for nothing is where we live called the Wet Mudlands.
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