OT - EcoBollox from the Observer via the Grauniad

[RJH]

No, that's a figure for litres lost each day through leaks.

I should imagine many leaks are underground and difficult for punters to detect

[Tim Streater]

My figure is for what we consume. I assumed 100 litres per person per day, which could be wrong. At 100, with a population of 65 million, that gives a consumption of 6.5 billion litres/day. So I don't know what your point is.

Any leak worth its salt will soon show up at the surface.

[Algernon Goss-Custard]

RJH [e-mail] posted

Must be a pretty loose paraphrase. That article doesn't mention dishwashers at all.

[RJH]

In the OP's linked article, it does. You don't have to read the whole thing - just word search and you'll see it there, just above the picture of the otter. The 70% figure and the causal link to things like dishwashers (and showers?!) is equally dodgy.

[RJH]

My point was that the water companies are losing a huge amount of water. Each day they lose more per household than I consume. At the very least they should explain why it's more difficult for them to fix the leaks than it is for me to take (even) fewer showers. Although apparently an explanation isn't necessary . . .

I defer. It is a mystery, then, how the leaks are being reported and fixed, yet the amount of water lost over the past 10 years has only gone down slightly.

[Algernon Goss-Custard]

RJH [e-mail] posted

They are found when the meter (if it exists) gets read. I don't know what Tim means by "worth its salt", but we recently had a leak at our village hall that did not show on the surface and went undetected until the next meter reading. It cost us £500 in lost water.

That's why they want us all on meters. I don't think it's got much to do with controlling usage.

[Tim Streater]

Well, I ws agreeing with you, basically.

During the last 3 weeks or so, I've seen a situation where on my journey home from Canterbury I pass 3 leak sites. On getting home I check and all are shown on the SouthEast Water leaks website. These are all now fixed, but I observe that they are not fixed in what I would call optimum order, i.e., an order which would reduce the amount of water lost. Two were showing some surface runoff, enough to confirm that a leak existed, the other had quite a stream of water running down the road. This last one was not fixed first, but ran for nearly a week before being worked on. All are now fixed. The website doesn't indicate the severity of any leak, although my recollection from reporting leaks is that when doing so, one was asked to rate the leak for water loss.

Visibility of their repair process would be interesting, along with info about what the process is they go through before being able to take a pickaxe to the road surface.

[Tim Streater]

The leaks we are discussing are for water that doesn't go through a consumer's meter because it's on the public highway. Your leak would not have been the water company's responsibility to fix, AFAIK.

[RJH]

I might look into it all if I get the time/inclination. There seem to be a lot of data out there, but mainly headline figures. Crude production/consumption/waste figures only say so much . . .

[Dave Plowman (News]

You've been conned by the ads. What many diesels produce as emission under lab conditions and what they do in practice are two very different things.

[bert]

In article <sji7o3$j79$ [e-mail], RJH [e-mail] writes

The monitoring of water network has improved massively over the past decades but it is difficult if not impossible to pre-empt leaks. They can pop up anywhere in what is an a largely victorian network esp in cities.