Water restrictions ......

At the beginning of this year our landlord phoned us to let us know that he had received his latest rates notice for our house and bring to our attention that, according to BCC, we use an average of 780 litres of water a day.

Aside from drawing the conclusion that 780 litres a day would be equivalent to 78 buckets full, I can't really even comprehend what that volume of water would look like on a daily basis. I'm a visual person so I need to be able to picture what something would look like to fully grasp what I am hearing - hence the '78 buckets' comparison.

What ? What are you looking at me like that for ????

Anyway .... this 'average daily usage' has remained constant throughout the year and to use this amount of water between the 2 of us is, in my opinion, an impossibility ! For starters there are very few hours through the course of a normal week where were are both home (and awake) at the same time - roughly about 20 hours a week in fact !

Fortunately the LL considers it ridiculous as well but a few times through the year we have kept a record of our water usage over a 2 week period and to be honest, there is no way we can reduce the amount we use any more without basically using bottled water for everything or being a completely dry house !

We had the people from Water Wise come out and inspect the property (this service is actually pretty good and at $20 isn't expensive at all) and got an all clear from them. They installed some pressure limiters and replaced a couple of washers - the washers were more a preventative measure though - and otherwise we got a clean bill of health.

We called BCC to ask about having someone come out to check the water metre in case it was faulty and after a period of stunned silence at the other end of the phone we got a curt reply that for $50 odd dollars they could send someone out to check and that IF in the "unlikely event" the metre was at fault then the fee would be refunded. No doubt refunded in due course !! It would make far more sense to me for this to be a FREE service and for a fee to be paid IF the metre was NOT found to be faulty.... but who am I to question BCC's logic ???

So, that'll be the next step I guess followed by someone to check if there are any leaks in the pipes running under the property - although there are none of the usual signs of this -no boggy patches or a lush green oasis in the middle of a yard full of dying grass.

While I'm on the subject of water restrictions and logic - under level 5 restrictions, householders can bucket water their gardens on 3 days of the week between 4 and 7 pm .... but cannot wash their cars except for mirrors and windows.

My problem with that ? BJ (as an example) lives in an apartment ... and therefore has no garden to water but is still unable to wash his car even though he may only want or need to do that once a month - or less.

Obviously commonsense and restraint needs to be used here but if you were to use the full 3 hours, 3 times a week to bucket water your garden would that not use significantly more water than using a few buckets of water to wash your car once or even twice a month ? I have to admit that I have not tried this but in a three hour period I am sure I could fill, and empty, a hell of a lot of buckets.

To my way of thinking, it would make more sense to offer people an amount of 'auxilliary' water usage per week - i.e. 10 buckets/week to use as required outside of the house. That could be open to abuse but surely so is the current system.

If I have it wrong about the bucket watering/garden Vs car thing let me know !

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth and as we know - 2 cents buys you nothing nowadays ! :-)