O.K. dig this for ridicious. (I'm sorry if my spelling is not top form, my post writing page seems to have covered up the spell checker with the 'post settings' label and I can't make it go back).
I say again, dig this for ridicious. It is legal for you to, if you have a bath, to empty said bath with a bucket and use it for things such as flushing your toilet or taking it outside to water your garden. However, it is illegal, if you have a shower, to tap into the down spout that carries the waste water away and have that water run into a water butt. Reason for this? The water supplier would not be able to accurately charge you for waste water processing.
So if you have a shower it is illegal to save dirty water to water your garden, or perhaps your lawn when there's a hose pipe ban or maybe even those vegetables you've been growing so you don't have to buy stuff that has been smoothered in cancer causing pesticides.
Excuse me but is this the same government that promised to be the greenest government ever? Is this the same government that has been encouraging all the water companies to send out leaflets about 'love every drop' to get us ready for the water shortages that they are predicting?
I have to admit that there isn't much the little guy can do about the whole stupidity of the down spout law, which is made even more stupid when you discovery that they are using the down spouts off peoples roofs to provide clean, easily reachable drinking water in some parts of Africa. However, there are other ways of saving water around the house.
For example, if you do not have a dish washer and therefore still wash your dishes by hand then, instead of letting the cold water in the pipe run down the drain before the hot water comes through, gather it in a bowl and use that to fill your water butt. Or, if you don't have a water butt, simply set it to one side and use it later to water the garden. The same could be used when letting the water run hot in the shower.
One that takes a little money is a tumble drier with a condenser unit instead of a hose. Not only do you not have a hose dragging across the floor being mauled by the pets but the water in the catchment tank can be left to go cold and then poured on the garden. I have also found in gardens that have heavily clay soil pouring the contents of the catchment tank down a partly done post hole aids in the digging as it softens the soil right up.
Another, which is a way around the whole stupidity of the down spout law, is that it is perfectly legal to attach guttering to an out building or shed and run that into a water butt or a buried garden hose, as long as the out building is not attached to the residental building. I know it sounds silly, you can have it on an out building but not on a house. The reason for that? Most people just left the roofs of their out buildings drip on to the soil so the water companies cannot claim to be loosing out on profit if you start adding guttering to them because they never had the water that is now flowing into your water butt flowing through their pipes.
And then they wonder why the little guys are trying to take back the ability to put things right without the help (or is that hinderance) of the big companies?
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