Busting the myths about our water #3

It’s time to dispel the myth that it is only keen gardeners who need to cut back on their water use this summer.

Myth: I’m not a gardener, so I don’t need to worry about saving water.

Keeping your showers short will save you thousands of litres of water a month.

REALITY: We all need to think about our water use and how we can cut back. It is true that garden sprinklers and irrigators generally use the most water and cause a spike in demand over summer. However, cutting your shower time to five minutes can save up to 3700 litres of water per month. When everyone does their bit, it adds up to a tremendous amount of water saved. Check out our interactive water saving tips

Myth: It is okay to use garden sprinklers and irrigators because they don’t use that much water.

REALITY: Running a garden sprinkler or irrigator for an hour can use up to 1500 litres (or 150 buckets) of water. That is a huge amount of water when you consider that we are targeting an average daily use of 212 litres per person this summer.  We are advocating you use hand-held hoses to water because you can direct exactly where the water goes and avoid wastage.

Myth: You should’ve upgraded all the well heads before summer.

REALITY: We’re working hard to upgrade our well heads as fast as possible and have completed work on 38 of 140 wells between May and November this year. We simply couldn’t have completed all of the work before this summer. Even if it had been possible, we would still be asking the public to conserve water, because over the summer when demand for water is highest, we can only supply so much through the pipes at any given time, and we need to ensure we have the ability to fight fires, if needed.

Myth: Upgrading a well head is easy – you just need to bolt on a new pipe above the ground.

REALITY: Bolting on a new pipe is certainly one part of the process, but there’s a lot more work needed to ensure our well heads meet best-practice standards and can be signed off as properly secure. Watch our video about it.