30+ in the shade. Certainly a strange spring/summer. I can never in 20 years here in Raumati (Kapiti) remember anything this hot and this early. Up till last week I'd had 8 minutes of rain in 9 weeks, and then last week we got about 2 hours of rain. Wohoo.
Makes me wish I had planted Kumara and melons a month ago, as normally the hot season here is not long enough to grow them.
Water tank (about 20,000L) is long empty. Watering the fruit trees and vege patches on the metered council supply - my water bill will pay for our esteemed councillor's next pay rise.
At this rate though, even with the water meters, we'll be on water restrictions soon like the rest of greater Wellington area. I hope this weather is an anomaly and not the way of the future. Might be a good time to be in the water supply (bores/tanks/rain collection) business.
amasser,
Dec 18, 5:36am
Do you have a down-pipe diverter, for when/if it rains? Can you collect your washing machine water?
mark_g,
Dec 18, 7:06am
Yip, I collect water off the house roof, this is roughly filtered and goes into the underground concrete tank. Water off the garage roof and the garden shed roof goes to IBC totes and rain barrels. And yep, now thinking about grey water collection.
bill1451,
Dec 19, 12:51am
you better get used to it if the climate change experts are to be believed.
bill1451,
Dec 19, 12:59am
how do you propose collecting the grey water showers, kitchen, laundry etc, I had an idea of putting a dishwasher pump suitably weather proofed beside the gully trap with a sensor that would start the pump on water detection, with maybe some sort of diverter to direct the flow to the pump(or maybe flap and if the pump didnt work for some reason then the diverter would just overflow and the water would carry on to septic tank.or a flap that partially blocked the flow to septic tank, I would be VERY interested to hear any ideas you have as we are on a bore, and everything is dry as a chip.
starseeker,
Dec 19, 6:12am
I wonder about the wisdom of using washing machine or dishwasher water on a garden as some of the chemicals in detergent could affect plants badly.
Showers probably OK
mark_g,
Dec 19, 9:04am
To a degree. soapy water is good for some things - like for getting rid of aphids on plant leaves. In general, I don't think I'd use grey water on vege patches, but would use it on rose gardens. I'd certainly try it, because, here anyway, our thinking (or lack of) on water use needs to change.
colin433,
Jan 25, 6:40pm
we ran our washing water through a hose to a drum that then syphoned out onto the garden (flowers only) and I used only that water when we were reliant on tanks. Never had any problems.
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