Hosepipe ban.

[Cheshire Cat]

If the water companies fixed all their leaks there would be no need for a hosepipe ban.

 

[Clint]

If the water companies fixed all their leaks there would be no need for a hosepipe ban.

It's easier to impose a ban. After all it is OUR fault.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

About 30 litres to get down to 20 in the winter, down to about 30 in the summer using a plate chiller. I use this for cleaning.

Blimey, that’s good going. I used 120l water yesterday to chill my wort to 30 degrees with an immersion chiller. That 120l was collected in plasterers buckets. 30l was used for cleaning, the rest will fill watering cans for the hanging baskets and garden.

 

[SMP Brewery]

Yesterday after the whirlpool the temperature was around 78, after chilling ended up at 28.. and my 30ltr bucket did overflow whilst I wasn’t watching, but not by a great deal.

 

[gyurmaember]

Yesterday after the whirlpool the temperature was around 78, after chilling ended up at 28.. and my 30ltr bucket did overflow whilst I wasn’t watching, but not by a great deal.

That's why I gave up making lagers in this weather. If I chill then overnight, they're become hazy.
Also everyone should practice to put together the wet&dry vacuum no matter how drunk they are.

 

[The Baron]

Not being negative but doesn't matter how quick your chiller works it can not be used when a ban is on.
You could use a beer chiller if you have one though or camouflage the chiller to blend in with the hydrangeas so nobody can see it or go to 10 downing street

 

[gyurmaember]

Not being negative but doesn't matter how quick your chiller works it can not be used when a ban is on.
You could use a beer chiller if you have one though or camouflage the chiller to blend in with the hydrangeas so nobody can see it or go to 10 downing street

And what about apartment brewers, without an outdoor tap?
We can get into a very long legal battle, but I'll brew this weekend, that's for sure.

 

[Turbine-Tel]

One minute we have transit vans floating down high streets the next minute we have hosepipe bans. It's a sad case that we can't manage water better in this country. I guess the infrastructure investment is driven by shareholders. Say no more.

 

[Sadfield]

One minute we have transit vans floating down high streets the next minute we have hosepipe bans. It's a sad case that we can't manage water better in this country. I guess the infrastructure investment is driven by shareholders. Say no more.

Global warming is making it difficult to manage or predict. Drier ground doesn't absorb water very well, so when it rains heavily in a localised spot after hot weather, like we are having this year, it runs off very quickly. There's research that the problem is compounded by people converting gardens in driveways. I'm not sure what they can do about less rain.

 

[Andyroo Brew]

Luckily Welsh water haven’t imposed a ban. If the water goes to sewer surely, it’s being recycled?l and not wasted?

 

[Agentgonzo]

I'm curious now as to how much water I normally "waste" when chilling

I inadvertently measured this last summer when I was brewing outside and wasn't close enough to a drain, so had to collect the water in a 10L watering can.
To chill 23l of boiling wort down to 20°C took about 10 cans, so 100L of tap water. This was in summer, so it'll take less in winter when the tap water is colder.

 

[Nottsbeer]

When deciding on a coil chiller earlier this year (or late last year), I decided to use captured rain water as I didn't want to use tap water. Apart from a couple of stupid mistakes at the start, this works really well. I haven't brewed for the last 6 weeks or so due to being busy/holiday, but I am planning to do my next one in 2 week's time. I have no idea how full by butts are at the moment, or how cool the water will be, but I hope I can chill the brew to a lowish temp then leave it overnight to get to pitching temp. What the current temps and lack of rain tells me is to invest in a few more water butts. Others have kegs that breed overnight, think my problem will be breeding butts!!

 

[Agentgonzo]

I decided to use captured rain water as I didn't want to use tap water. Apart from a couple of stupid mistakes at the start, this works really well.

I did this in one of my previous houses where the water butt was close to my brewing space. I used a submersible pond pump in the water butt, pumped the water through the immersion chiller, then just back into the water butt. The pump was at the bottom, and I tried to get the return hose to be at the top and squirting horizontal so that the hot water coming out of the chiller didn't mix with the colder water in the water butt. I think it was a 200L water butt.

It worked well - not as quickly as tap water (lower flow rate, but not too bad) but saved on ~100L of tap water. It worked better in winter because the water butt water was a couple of degrees above freezing and much colder than the tap water.

I can't do it anymore as the waterbutt is a long way from the utility room and I don't want to run a hose through the house. Plus, it gets used a lot for watering the plants, so is generally not full.

 

[Nottsbeer]

I did this in one of my previous houses where the water butt was close to my brewing space. I used a submersible pond pump in the water butt, pumped the water through the immersion chiller, then just back into the water butt. The pump was at the bottom, and I tried to get the return hose to be at the top and squirting horizontal so that the hot water coming out of the chiller didn't mix with the colder water in the water butt. I think it was a 200L water butt.

It worked well - not as quickly as tap water (lower flow rate, but not too bad) but saved on ~100L of tap water. It worked better in winter because the water butt water was a couple of degrees above freezing and much colder than the tap water.

I can't do it anymore as the waterbutt is a long way from the utility room and I don't want to run a hose through the house. Plus, it gets used a lot for watering the plants, so is generally not full.

I only do c.13l brews and it usually takes about 20-30 mins to cool the wort. As you say, winter is best, but had no issues with spring/pre heatwave brews. I use a gravity method and fill the header tank using a watering can. Ive looked into using a pump and may revisit that once I've moved a few things around near my shed. I quite like the sustainability of this method, tho I have lost 2 brews but to contamination when I messed up my connectors!!

 

[Northern_Brewer]

One minute we have transit vans floating down high streets the next minute we have hosepipe bans. It's a sad case that we can't manage water better in this country. I guess the infrastructure investment is driven by shareholders. Say no more.

Tommyrot. This kind of uninformed nonsense makes me so cross. It's because infrastructure investment is expensive and difficult, particularly when you're dealing with a network that is mostly 150 years old. And these things have diminishing returns, the fewer the leaks, the more expensive it gets to fix them so it's about finding a tradeoff between leakage and cost. What if the water company said we can halve the leaks and reduce hosepipe bans by 75% - but your water bill goes up to £10k/year?

And given that you seem to think "we can't manage water better in this country" - how does UK leakage compare with other similar countries? If our management is so bad, who should we look to as a model? Should we use a sustainable economic level of leakage (SELL) model or something else?

I'll tell you - despite one of the oldest municipal water systems in the world, we had a leakage rate of 21% in 2019, compared to a European average of 26% and "20-50%" in North America.

SELL is complicated, but you can broadly think of it as the crossover point at which it's cheaper to increase supply through fixing leaks versus other methods such as building new reservoirs. From that link above, we see :

So this whole debate about fixing leaks to increase water supply is really only about two water companies - Thames (TMS) and Southern (SRN; HDD is Hafren around Wrexham) - for whom fixing leaks would be a cheaper way to increase supply that building new sources of supply. That kinda makes sense, as the biggest problems with supply are in the driest corner of the country, and they have a harder time with leaks in some of the oldest infrastructure in the country, in clay, around the biggest, most complicated city in the country. Thames regularly comes in for a hard time on leaks from Ofwat, I get the impression that Southern have done a reasonable job - certainly it feels like an achievement that this is their first hosepipe ban for a decade when it used to be a near-annual event. But the snowflakes will never give credit for that sort of thing.

And to be fair, Thames' minds are more on sewage at the moment, spending £4.3bn on the super-sewer that will keep sewage out of the Thames. So much for not being prepared to invest in infrastructure....

But you should really shouldn't believe the headlines from media who would rather make you angry than give you the facts, they only want to manipulate you in ways that drive more clicks. It's a pretty reliable rule that if there appears to be a simple answer to infrastructure questions, it's been tried a thousand times already and found to be more complicated than know-nowts in the media would have you believe.

 

[Agentgonzo]

Don't forget that water that leaks out of the water supply network doesn't magically vanish. It goes into the ground, which goes into the water-table, which flows back into the reservoirs (or acts to raise the water table so that more rainfall makes it into the rivers and reservoirs).

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Thames Water plans to introduce hosepipe ban in weeks - BBC News.

Thames Water has announced it is planning to introduce a hosepipe ban.
The firm serves 15 million people across parts of southern England, including London.
The company said it was planning to announce the temporary ban "in the coming weeks" but the timing is yet to be confirmed.
It comes as a new heatwave nears and the Met Office has issued an amber extreme heat warning for much of England.
In a statement Thames Water said: "Given the long term forecast of dry weather and another forecast of very hot temperatures coming this week we are planning to announce a temporary use ban in the coming weeks."
The ban would be the third implemented in England this year, following Southern Water's ban which began last Friday in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
South East Water will introduce similar restrictions across Kent and Sussex from 12 August. The Isle of Man has also had a ban in place since July.

Thames Water added: "Our aim is always to ensure that we will have enough water to supply our customers, regardless of the weather."

• Will there be a hosepipe ban in my area?
• Is the UK heading for a drought?
• Driest first half of year in England since 1976
• England's driest July since 1935 - Met Office

The statement explained the firm is not able to give an exact date for the start of the ban, due to "a number of operational and legal procedural requirements" and added that in the meantime customers were being urged to "only use what they need for their essential use."
Thames Water provides water to 15 million people in an area that covers parts of London, Surrey, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Kent.

 

[Braumeister]

Tommyrot. This kind of uninformed nonsense makes me so cross. It's because infrastructure investment is expensive and difficult, particularly when you're dealing with a network that is mostly 150 years old. And these things have diminishing returns, the fewer the leaks, the more expensive it gets to fix them so it's about finding a tradeoff between leakage and cost. What if the water company said we can halve the leaks and reduce hosepipe bans by 75% - but your water bill goes up to £10k/year?

And given that you seem to think "we can't manage water better in this country" - how does UK leakage compare with other similar countries? If our management is so bad, who should we look to as a model? Should we use a sustainable economic level of leakage (SELL) model or something else?

I'll tell you - despite one of the oldest municipal water systems in the world, we had a leakage rate of 21% in 2019, compared to a European average of 26% and "20-50%" in North America.

SELL is complicated, but you can broadly think of it as the crossover point at which it's cheaper to increase supply through fixing leaks versus other methods such as building new reservoirs. From that link above, we see :
View attachment 73060
So this whole debate about fixing leaks to increase water supply is really only about two water companies - Thames (TMS) and Southern (SRN; HDD is Hafren around Wrexham) - for whom fixing leaks would be a cheaper way to increase supply that building new sources of supply. That kinda makes sense, as the biggest problems with supply are in the driest corner of the country, and they have a harder time with leaks in some of the oldest infrastructure in the country, in clay, around the biggest, most complicated city in the country. Thames regularly comes in for a hard time on leaks from Ofwat, I get the impression that Southern have done a reasonable job - certainly it feels like an achievement that this is their first hosepipe ban for a decade when it used to be a near-annual event. But the snowflakes will never give credit for that sort of thing.

And to be fair, Thames' minds are more on sewage at the moment, spending £4.3bn on the super-sewer that will keep sewage out of the Thames. So much for not being prepared to invest in infrastructure....

But you should really shouldn't believe the headlines from media who would rather make you angry than give you the facts, they only want to manipulate you in ways that drive more clicks. It's a pretty reliable rule that if there appears to be a simple answer to infrastructure questions, it's been tried a thousand times already and found to be more complicated than know-nowts in the media would have you believe.

How dare you come here with your sensible well reasoned comments

 

[SMP Brewery]

I used to go up to Hartlepool to work, and one of the older guys in the factory said they used to go swimming by the effluent outlet in ”the old days”, the water was warm and you had a bath at the same time.
Win, win a bit of exercise and a bath

 

[Rodcx500z]

Dishwashers should be banned full stop, and tumble dryers in summer, dishwashers are for lazy people