Now is the time to be water wise.
Look after the planet and your pocket by following these water wise tips.
Saving water in your home and surviving in a water-scarce environment:
To help you stem the tide on free-flowing water in your home, we’re sharing a bunch of handy tips that will help you save water around the house.
Personal Hygiene:
- Take 5 minute showers- a bath can take up to 100 litres at a time!
- Change to a water-efficient shower head and half your consumption.
- Switch off the water while shaving your legs/washing your hair in the shower.
- No shower? Take a sponge bath by using minimal water in a basin, bowl or washtub (‘waskom’).
- Switch off the water and use a cup while shaving/brushing teeth- you can save 9 litres of water per tooth brush!
- Place a container at every sink, basin, bath and shower to capture all water for re-use.
Toilet & Sanitation:
- Use your bath/shower water to flush your toilets (fill a bucket with your bath/shower water and pour it in the toilet tank/bowl).
- Place a brick or bottle of water in your toilet cistern. This method displaces water inside the tank so that with each use it refills and flushes with less water.
- Close toilet stopcock (angle valve) when not in use.
- Use less toilet paper to minimise the risk of sewer blockages and do not use your toilet as a dustbin.
- Use waterless hand sanitiser instead of washing your hands.
Laundry & Kitchen:
- Only wash full loads of clothes and dishes- Don’t start the cycle if the machine isn’t full. This goes for your washing machine and dishwasher.
- Using 2 sinks (one to wash and one to rinse) uses less water than a dishwasher.
- Use minimal water for food preparation, e.g. don’t run water to defrost or rinse food.
- Wash your clothes in cold water to save water and energy.
More water-wise tips:
- Fix leaking taps. Taps that drip constantly can waste up to 40 000 litres a year and a slow drip can waste 30 litres a day!
- Plant a water-wise garden with indigenous drought-resistant plants.
- Recycle- Recycling plastics and other household waste ultimately saves water. (Why? Because creating new products requires water and if you recycle then companies don’t have to create new materials from scratch).
- Minimise washing of vehicles.
- If you have a pool, don’t fill it to the top – splashing leads to serious waste.
- If you have a dog, make washing your dog and watering the garden the same event!
- Ditch the bottled water – it takes 3 litres of tap water to make one litre of bottled water!
- Fit flow restrictors to indoor taps to reduce the flow rate to less than 6 litres per minute.
- Reduce water pressure to your property by turning your stopcock lower and/or installing a flow restrictor on the main pipe fed from your water meter.
Garden & Outdoors:
- Use grey water (laundry, bath, shower and cooking water) for washing vehicles and watering gardens.
- Use a broom or harvested rainwater to clear outdoor surfaces of debris and leaves.
- Water your garden in the early morning or late evening to allow plants and grass to soak up water without it being evaporated by the sun. This can save up to 100 litres each time!
- Blanket your topsoil with a layer of mulch to reduce evaporation, e.g. grass clippings, shredded leaves, bark chips or straw.
- Modify your gutters and downpipes to collect rainwater in containers (like rainwater or Jojo tanks).
- Harvest rainwater and direct it to your pool for top-ups by attaching pipes or plastic sleeves to your gutters.
- Fit a cover to your pool to reduce evaporation.
- Recycle your swimming pool’s backwash water.
Pimp out your plumbing fixtures to save water & costs in the long run!
Bugs & Sparks has qualified plumbers who can assist with the following:
Newer-model taps and shower heads
Fix/replace leaking taps
Fit modern flushing mechanisms
Lowering your geyser’s peak temperature
Insulate your geyser