Hot, hot, hot...

[C8RKH]

Not really @LotusLeftLotusRight as bills are paid by households, and they could have 1, or many people. So no, sorry.

However, as the population grows then those young shit machines produce an awful lot of bio waste to be dealt with, before we even think about the wet wipes lol... without paying anything for it.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Have you not noticed the hundreds of thousands of new homes sprouting up on green field land around every town? They all get bought and lived in, so that means more money for water companies and councils. No effort required.

[C8RKH]

I have, and you have changed your point to suit. you were talking about people (population) not households hence my response.

@andydclements there is no point trying to use reason/rationale and you just need to accept it is always the fault of companies, it's never anything to do with consumers behaviours etc....

The issues are complex - political both local and national. Consumers behaviour. Rules and regulations. Planning. Etc....

But hey let's keep it simple and blame a corporation as that is just so easy (and lazy).

[Bibs]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders

^ Just sayin'!!

We've had a leak in our road for 4 months. 3rd one in as many years but always a metre away from the last. Southern Water said that it's too expensive to repair as they'll need to replace the whole road (all 11 houses long!) so in the meantime several thousand litres of water end up in my drive every day.

[MPx]

1 hour ago, C8RKH said:

I..... it's never anything to do with consumers behaviours etc....

I'm fully prepared to to "blame" the consumers behaviour.  I just fail to understand why we in the UK can't be as profligate as we want given the amount of water resources we have.  It just needs to be better managed.  I've played on golf courses in deserts so it can obviously be done where there's a will.  I pay for the water I use (metered) and am happy with that arrangement.  But cant see why I should cut down if I'm prepared to pay.  Any more than I need to sell my car and get one with better MPG.  Selfish yes, but not impossible to supply.

[andydclements]

9 hours ago, Bibs said:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders

^ Just sayin'!!

We've had a leak in our road for 4 months. 3rd one in as many years but always a metre away from the last. Southern Water said that it's too expensive to repair as they'll need to replace the whole road (all 11 houses long!) so in the meantime several thousand litres of water end up in my drive every day.

Apparently there is a problem at the moment. The old pipes corrode as they were metal, OK, we get that, and hence they have been replaced by poly ones in many places. Poly degrades in light (photodegradable) but under ground there's no light so should last a very long time , but it isn't and that's the problem. So this is an industry problem and replacing one bit of poly pipe with a slightly newer bit of poly pipe doesn't mean it fixes the problem, it just kicks it down the road (figuratively) a few years and is very expensive given we now know it's got just a few years (OK decades but not several decades) before it's failing again.

[C8RKH]

Modern PVC water pipes have a useful operational lifetime (planned) of 90-100 years.

There are 450,000 miles of water and sewage pipes in the UK - enough to go to the moon and back.

So assuming some of the early PVC pipes are coming to end of life (humour me) that would mean we would need to start a national replacement programme - it would need to run on a 100 year cycle (the p0lanned life expectancy) so that would mean we would be continually replacing 4,500 miles of pipes every year, assuming no growth in population, water catchment, water treatment etc.  That's some programme to carry out just to "avoid" the pipes aging out.  In parallel, we would still be dealing with old metal pipes and infrastructure, so that would add another 2,000 miles of pipes for the first 50 years. So from now, for the next 50 years, we would be digging up and replacing 6,500 miles of "old" pipe JUST to stand still at current volumes.

Wow!

Then let's take the argument re new houses being built meaning the water companies are rolling in it.  Average new house developments are what, 100 - 250 houses a time? Does that seem reasonable?  Take the averasge UK household water bill (water and waste) which is c. £420 per year (OFWAT) in England and Wales. That equates to additional revenues (not profits) of £42,000 per year per hundred houses. 

UU recently completed a full refresh of its waste water treatment plant for Blackburn, where it will serve 400,000 people, at a cost of £164m.  Assuming UK average of 2.2 per household, that is around 190,000 bill payers (households). So the asset replacement cost was £865 per household. It would take around 4 years of billing, with full cash collected (i.e. no debt or failures to pay) for the invested cash in that works to be recovered. That does not include the cost of running the works (water treatment uses a lot of energy too), or, the cost of servicing, or the customer services costs, the cost of debt, etc.

Water companies "profits" are DICTATED by the Regulator. I am not sure how many people actually realise that. And in the UK, our water charges are some of the lowest in the western world.

But being British we do like a good old moan at "corporates". By the way, the situation in Ireland is much worse, as the Irish will gladly argue that as God blesses Ireland with megalitres of water, in the form of rain, for free, every year, the waste companies have no right to charge them for something they get, from God, for free!

[TdM]

To be fair, in my experience not all of those pipes will be paid for by the water companies.

I replaced the water pipe at my house, paid to cut off and remove the old metal one, paid for a new pipe to be laid and connected and paid for the road closure to do it. Therefore, I suspect unless it's a mains pipe that needs replacing, the home owners are likely to be footing the bill for a lot of it.

[C8RKH]

The miles of pipe quoted was "owned" by the water companies who have only ever, iirc, been responsible for the pipes to your boundary.

Those on your land are yours to maintain usually.

[Rambo]

Correct.

I was told by Scottish Water that they had traced a leak to my driveway and I was responsible for any repairs as it was within my boundaries. When SW partially dug up my drive and hadn't found the leak, they backtracked to the supply pipe and found out the leak was actually at their T connection on the boundary as it came into my property.

It then became their problem so they had to reinstate my drive to it's original condition without any charge to me.

[exeterjeep]

On 17/11/2022 at 17:56, Mark Blanchard said:

We have floods around here and Thames Water still have the hose pipe bans in place too.  It's probably because they don't maintain their water pipes and they're all leaking.

TW have ended their hose pipe ban today.....it seems to have been so wet for weeks down here.

[exeterjeep]

Well its not got     hot hot again yet this year - but already South West water, have extended the ban on hose pipe usage from later this week...Our fields are water logged....

South West Water hosepipe ban to be extended to parts of Devon

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-65300702

Roll on the summer tourists arriving.

[march]

Just been speaking to some guys drilling a bore hole for our neighbours and they said South West Water are trying to get as many people as possible to install bore holes as SWW are worried about running out if water .

If anyone is interested drilling the bore hole is £4500.00 and not payable should they not find water, you then need the pump and stuff which I guess is another £2000.00 fitted - then it's free water from then on.

[C8RKH]

Do you not need an abstraction license as if every did this the undergroud acquifers would be drained very quickly impacting the whole area.

[march]

I believe you only need one if you are taking more than 20,000 litres a day. That's quite a lot of water!

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-need-a-licence-to-abstract-water

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Not sure if this is still correct today, but a few years ago my brother had a bore hole dug at his previous house in Pembrokeshire. It required the installation and upkeep of a pump and addition of lots of chemicals to make it drinkable. It still tasted like metal and left brown residue in the sinks, bath and kettle. To be fair, he has since moved to another non mains water supplied property and the water is fine, so I guess it’s the luck of the draw.

[march]

Our bore hole has a few filters:

5 micron rope filter - £10.00 (annually changed)

UV light filter - £35.00 (annually changed)

and we have a gravel filter which contains a pH balancer (limestone chunks added) (about £60.00 every 5 years or so)

We pay someone annually to service the system (approx £200.00) which I could do myself if I wanted as most most of the kit is fit and forget until it fails (which it has done once in 18 years) - repair was about £400.00 and is still going strong. Pumping water is of minimal cost (even free most of the time due to solar panels)

And the water tastes lovely! Pure Devonian spring water.

I do not know what the costs for water are nowadays but I suspect it is considerably more than this. The big bonuses are - 1. we are not beholding to South West Water as from what I can tell - from previous experience - they seem to be a total bunch of crooks 2. I can spray my hose wherever and whenever I like 😁.

Edited April 19, 2023 by march

[MPx]

22 hours ago, march said:

If anyone is interested drilling the bore hole is £4500.00 and not payable should they not find water, you then need the pump and stuff which I guess is another £2000.00 fitted - then it's free water from then on.

This is very interesting Marc - and nothing like we found when we investigated back in about 2010.  Tried three companies and even went as far as having one of those (nutter?) water deviners out who located the best spot on our land and by pure divination gave the exact depth required and what subsoils/rocks would have to be drilled through.  Stunning if it was true, but we never found out.  We were quoted something around £10k and we had to pay up front whether water was found or not.  To be fair the prediction was a depth of over 100m and included going through the seam of green sand which is apparently hard to deal with - nevertheless given inflation since then it would be nothing like your experience.  Instead we continue to be one of about 50 properties serviced by the local "manor" from their spring.  The water tastes awful and they charge SWW rates for it but at least it works just like a normal supply.

[Bibs]

One week of sunshine and we've got another hosepipe ban even though it's forecast to rain all next week 

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/news/water-firm-announces-hosepipe-ban-for-kent-customers-288489/

On 31/07/2022 at 19:04, Bibs said:

Our local reservoir in Kent has capacity for 31 billion litres of water and is currently 64% full. That said, 70% of the water we use is groundwater but it's nice to know there's plenty in reserve. 

https://www.southernwater.co.uk/water-for-life/reservoir-levels

Currently 98% full. 

[Dan E]

so i just reseeded the lawn so perfect timing. I am going with the fat cow next door who is the only one who can see a bit of our garden will be to busy eating to notice the sprinkler 

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

Been weird here today in East Northants. BBC forecast basically 90 - 99% chance of rain since 1pm.  So far we’ve had about 6 spots. In fact no proper rain for the past month. We just seem to miss out on what is going on everywhere else in the UK it seems.

[Bibs]

Peed down all day yesterday here, a week before the hosepipe ban!  

[exeterjeep]

14 hours ago, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

BBC forecast basically 90 - 99% chance of rain since 1pm.  So far we’ve had about 6 spots

Suppose that counts as rain, just a lot less than expecting. We had a few spots as well, but could see some darker clouds a few miles away. Must be similar to a white Christmas being declared after 1 flake gets to the roof.

[Kimbers]

Pissed down for a good 3 hours last night here.

Woke up and you can't tell apart from the fact my car isn't dusty anymore!

Now back up to 26 degrees again and sunny! Lovely old job!

 

[Rambo]

I'm still waiting for all these e-vehicles changing the climate and giving us a half decent summer for a change 🤔