Getting Green About Water

In our previous two homes here in England our water consumption has been estimated. The reason for this is that both properties were well over 150 years old and there apparently is no legislation that makes it law to have a water meter fitted. Our current home however was built in the 1980’s and these younger homes are required to have water meters.

Imagine my surprise when our first water bill arrived and it was double our ‘normal’ tariff. I was convinced that there was something wrong and had the water board engineers and then a plumber come and check for leaks. After my third phone call to our water supplier, the helpful call center lady explained how ‘water’ works in England. She was also kind enough to let me know that Severn Trent Water supplies FREE water saving devices and that you can order these on their website.

I thought that this was a fantastic idea as I am trying to ‘green’ up our home at the moment anyway and I’m sure we use more water than we need to so being aware is a good thing. Not only that but hopefully it will end up saving us a bit of money.

 After quite a bit of searching on their site I managed to find the order page. This page is not easy to find and nor is the information that you can get these devises free readily available as far as I’m concerned. Why it took a third rather irate call from me to get this information I have no idea. But for those of you who live in England I thought I would share the link. Please do pass on the link to fellow Brits who are unaware of these products.

Our water saving devices arrived on Saturday and I commissioned my DH to install the lot. The most interesting and eye opening little gadget is the shower timer. We spend much longer in the shower than I originally thought! Now we flip the timer and see if we can get the necessary done before all the grains have fallen into the bottom hour-glass.

Now all we have to do is wait and see if being aware of what water we use affects the water bill!