Years ago it was the practice of our local City Council to send plumbers out free if anyone rang up to say their tap was leaking. Eventually some bean-counter decided this wasn’t profitable enough, even though it probably saved the Council hundreds of dollars in terms of water that wasn’t lost.But in fact I’ve just been thinking today about an area in the water department, as it were, where water is wasted hugely, and not through anything dripping either.
Whenever we turn on a tap to get it to run hot, we waste several litres of water. I don’t know about other houses, but the water to our bathroom downstairs takes at last 30 seconds to come hot, and running the water upstairs takes even longer because it has to go a good deal farther. Of course some people have these instant heaters nowadays, but I would think plenty of other people don’t.
Wouldn’t it be good if somehow that water that we waste while we’re waiting for it to run hot could be set aside somehow? If we could somehow siphon it off and use it later to cool down the bath, or to brush our teeth in, or some other more environmentally profitable approach.
I’ll have to put my inventing cap on (such as it is) and see if I can come up with something.
Photo courtesy of Dan4th on Flickr.com
