Water used in your home is classed into two broad categories – grey and black water. Black water must be sent into the sewerage system, but grey water can potentially be reused in your home.

Black water includes:

•   Everything flushed through a toilet
•  Water from your dishwasher (it contains a lot of grease, harsh detergents and other solids) 

Grey water includes:

• Water from the laundry, especially the rinse cycles 
• Bath and shower water 

 If anyone in your house has gastro or another tummy bug, the flu or measles, it is best to not use even grey water to ensure the disease is not spread.

Posted: January 28th, 2008 under general, saving water.
Comments: 1

Stage 3a water restrictions obviously affect pool and spa owners, too. 

If you have a new pool or spa, you can’t use tap water to fill it. Of course, you can use tank water or even ground water if available.

If your existing pool or spa takes 2,000 litres or less of water, you can use a bucket or watering can to fill it, but never with a hose connected to tap water.A larger existing pool or spa can only be filled with tap water if you have a water conversation plan from your local water company.You can top up your existing pool or spa with a bucket or watering can, but never with a hose connected to tap water.Under stage 4, topping up existing pools/spas by bucket will be allowed but no filling of pools/spas will be allowed without specific permission from your local water authority.

Posted: January 19th, 2008 under general, saving water.
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As long as it is grey (and not black) water, you can reuse some of your water for non-consumption purposes – that means, you can’t use it for drinking, cooking, showering or watering edible plants (fruit tress are ok).

When using grey water, use it over the largest area possible to reduce the impact and build up of any contaminants in your soil. The use of slotted pipes is effective for spreading the water across a larger area, too.If piping grey water onto your garden, it is best to have the pipes underground. This has a number of benefits:

• No pipes for anyone to trip over or move away from where you want themKids and pets can’t access the pipe and drink the waterWater reaches the roots of your plants instead of possibly running off the soil
• Any spray won’t land on the leaves of edible plants 
• There is less spread of any chemicals and bacteria in the water

Remember that grey water can’t be stored for more than 24 hours unless it is being treated before use.Note that you can only use grey water on your property – do not allow if to run off into the street on your neighbour’s property.

Posted: January 16th, 2008 under gardening, general, saving water.
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If you have tank water, you can wash your car at home whenever you like. Of course, to save water you may prefer to use a commercial car wash or ensure you only use buckets of water and wash your car on the lawn.

Without your own tank water, you can use a bucket of water to clean windows, lights and mirrors, or spot clean any corrosive substances. Under stage 3a restrictions, for a full car wash, you must use a commercial car wash facility that uses less than 70 litres per car and recycles water.Note that if we move to stage 4 restrictions, even commercial car washes will have to use buckets for washing.

Posted: January 15th, 2008 under general, saving water.
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Have you ever thought about the creation of water (oceans, rivers, etc) on Earth?

Most of us have heard about the Big Bang theory and evolution, but the story behind water is less known - certainly less talked about.

An interesting blog entry called Water: the lifeblood of our planet outlines the most common theories of water arriving on Earth in large bodies and is worth a read. Or just look at their magnificent pictures of masses of water.

Posted: January 8th, 2008 under general, nature's gift.
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In 2000, we ranked 3rd of daily urban water use in the OECD - not something we want to rank highly in really. Denmark manages an average os only 120L per person.

According to estimaes from teh Australian Bureau of STatistics (ABS), AUstralian domestic water usage is n average of 272 litres per day (about 103,000 litres per year) in 2004/05. That’s a LOT of water.

Per state use varies a bit:

Victoria - 222L
WA - 493L
NT - 419L
Tasmania - 392L
Qld - 340L
ACT - 260L
SA - 258L
NSW - 230L

Picture the 10 litre bucket in your laundry - now imagine 22 of them full of water. Does it shock you that you may use more water than that every day?

Posted: January 5th, 2008 under general, nature's gift.
Comments: 1

Overall, the water coming out of your laundry is perfectly usable on most of your garden or even for flushing toilets.

You can use this water by collecting it in buckets you then carry out to your garden, connecting a length of flexible pipe to the outlet and hand-watering your garden or by connecting pipes from the laundry to the garden permanently.

If you have the water piped form your laundry, remember to have a diverter added in as well. A diverter means you can control when the water goes onto your garden and when it goes into the sewer system.It is best to not use laundry water on your garden when:

•  It is raining heavily (there is no point overloading the soil and causing more runoff)
• The washing includes dirty nappies or other particularly dirty items
•  You have used bleach
• You are cleaning something greasy or toxic in the laundry trough

Posted: January 2nd, 2008 under general, saving water.
Comments: none

“Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle enough to follow the natural paths of the earth, and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world.” – Brenda Peterson

A nice quote, to me it says - be gentle to our planet like water can be, be gentle to water itself. But be strong enough to change your habits to protect water and Earth, and strong enough to encourage others to do the same.

What do you think?

Posted: December 31st, 2007 under general, nature's gift.
Comments: none

With stage 3a water restrictions in place across Melbourne, you need to know when you can water your garden - unless you only use tank and grey water of course!

You can’t water your garden on Monday, Thursday or Friday.

If your house number is odd, you can water on Sunday or Wednesday.

If your house number is even or you don’t have a house number, you can water on Saturday or Tuesday.

Whatever day you can water on, you can only water by hose/bucket/watering can/manual watering system* between 6 am and 8 am, or by an automatic watering system between midnight and 2 am.

Note that if anyone over 70 years lives in your house, you may manually water between 6am and 8 am OR 8 am and 10 am on the specified days.

You can not water your lawn with tap water AT ALL. Recycled or tank water is allowed, of course.

For a full set of the water restrictions, please visit www.ourwater.vic.gov.au

* A drip watering system can be used only if it uses less than 9 litres per hours for each lineal metre of hose

Posted: December 30th, 2007 under gardening, general, saving water.
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Younger children may be interested in our colouring in pages - just download them from our site, print and let the kids have fun with Mr & Mrs Droplet.

They may also enjoy a water based memory game called TipTank (can they keep the tank filled by selecting the right pairs?)

Yarra Valley water also provides some activities for juniors & seniors on their website.

See if the older kids can meet the challenge of 100 ways to save water in 30 days activities.

Posted: December 29th, 2007 under general.
Comments: none