Creating a sustainable home Saving water

Have showers instead of baths

An eco-friendly sustainable home is to reduce the amount of water that you need – or even find your own source. There are lots of easy ways to save water.

• Fit a water butt in your garden to reduce the amount of mains water taken for the garden, car washing or paddling pools.
• Fix any leaky taps – they can waste more than 16 litres of water every day.
• Have showers rather than baths unless you have a power shower (they use the same amount of water as a bath).
• Consider having a water meter fitted to help monitor your water usage and potentially cut your bills.
• Choose appliances that use less water, such as dual-flush toilets – these use 30% less water than a normal flush.

Water recycling

One dramatic way of reducing your water needs is to provide your own from rainwater. These systems are called ‘rain harvesting systems’. 

They collect water when it rains, on a slightly grander scale than a water butt system.

The best place to collect water from is the roof. The water is then taken to a storage tank, usually placed underground and then goes through a filtering process so that it is clean of any debris. Though you can use it for many purposes, rainwater harvesting wouldn’t normally be at drinking water standards.

Costs of harvesting

On average, these systems cost from £2,500, including installation. The key benefits are sustainability – you are unlikely to save much money overall.

Larger projects, such as housing developments, industry and agriculture, will have a much shorter payback time and savings could run into many thousands of pounds.

Boreholes

A fairly new idea for domestic properties is to find your own source of water. Depending on ground conditions, a borehole could help provide extra water, for instance, when there is a hosepipe ban.

The only downside is that you have to use electricity to run the pump (although you could exploit solar panels and wind pumps here) and you may need to gain a licence from the Environment Agency to make it legal.

For more information on boreholes and to see if you need a licence or not, visit the Environment Agency website.