The virtues of saving water

RECYCLING: Jenny Virtue waters her garden with water from the shower. Picture by Paul Rickard

It's dry out there and there's not much rain on the horizon in the long-range forecast either. The prospect of a prolonged drought has prompted Wainui resident Jenny Virtue, whose household depend on rain water tanks, to come up with some creative ideas to keep her garden alive. She talks to Justine Tyerman about her water recycling techniques.

AS long as you don’t ‘kick the bucket’, you can collect about 12 litres of shower water while you are standing there singing, soaping and shampooing. With the prospect of a long period of dry weather ahead, Wainui resident Jenny Virtue has persuaded her family of four to shower with a bucket on the floor of the cubicle to collect precious rain water rather than allowing it to disappear down the drain.

Jenny then tips the water into a big plastic holding drum outside the laundry door from which she fills up her watering can to keep her flowers and vegetables alive during the dry spell we are experiencing.

“We could collect more than 12 litres per shower if we put two or three buckets on the floor but then they would get in the way and you might kick them over, or worse still, fall over, so we have to be sensible about it,” says Jenny, a keen gardener.

“My plants get a lovely refreshing drink in the cool of the evening and as an added bonus, the soap and shampoo in the water kills lots of bugs.”

Teeth-brushing wastes a lot of water too, so instead of running the tap while brushing as most people do, Jenny’s family uses just a quarter of a glass of water.

“It’s a technique we learned in Indonesia where you have to use bottled water for everything, even teeth-brushing. A small amount in a glass is all you need.”

When Jenny had a top-loading washing machine, she used to divert the rinse water into buckets to fill her holding drum.

“I was shocked to see how much water a top-loading washing machine gobbles up — they use at least eight buckets a wash so saving that amount to water my plants was another great way of recycling our rain water. And again, the plants like the detergent in the water because it kills pests.”

When Jenny’s top-loader gave up the ghost, she bought a front-loader which she finds far more water-efficient.

“It barely even uses a bucket-full of rinsing water so while I get less water for the plants, it’s good because the front-loader does not deplete our tanks as fast as the top-loader,” she says.

A word of caution though, if you are diverting washing machine water into buckets in your tub, ensure you don’t have the bucket over the plug-hole or you will run the risk of flooding your laundry. Jenny took the sensible precaution of hiring a plumber to install a hose and tap to direct the water to the holding tank outside.

Jenny uses water-saving techniques in the kitchen too.

“We have a big sink in our upstairs kitchen and when you turn on the hot tap to wash pots and pans, it takes a while for the water to run hot. So instead of letting five litres or more of cold water go down the drain, I fill up the electric jug twice with the cold water and boil that by which stage, the tap has run hot. I always have a bowl in the sink to wash the dishes so that water goes on the garden too.”

In the glasshouse, Jenny stands her seedlings in a rectangular tank of water to give them a good soaking.

“There’s a tap with a hose at the end of the tank so I reuse the water on my tomatoes and other glasshouse plants.”

People on rain water tanks are always mindful of ways to conserve water but they are a great advantage during a power outage when electric pumps are not working.

“During the recent extended power outage, I took the lid off our inground tank and used it like a well, lowering a bucket on a rope into the tank to access water for drinking and washing,” she says.

And to add one of my own water conservation methods, when watering pot plants outside, I put one on top of the other and do three or four-tier watering which means the water is well-utilised by the time it gets to the bottom plant where it is caught in a saucer.

If you have any other water-saving and water-recycling tips, feel free to share them in the comments at the bottom of the story online.

For example, some people put a brick in their toilet cistern to reduce the amount of flushing water.