Recycling water

Well as you know were growing our own fruit and veg in the garden and recently it has been really hot and dry and the garden is parched and there is a danger of loosing all the hard work that has gone into the plants we have tended to so carefully in the previous months and seeing as this is the food that should help make a bit of a saving on the food budget this year we needed to come up with a plan.

Many houses are now on water meters so every time you turn on the tap it cost you money we have already chosen toilets the have a half flush, and we tend to use that phase if its yellow let it mellow if its brown flush it down just to help save more water.  We also have an A rated half size dish washer and will only turn that on if it is full.  We drain the water off our shed into a dustbin as these are cheaper than water butts. We also share bath water and that is where the thunder bolt of recycling water came from.  

After the bath i just felt awful pulling the plug and seeing the water drain away thinking i could really use a good large glug of that on my veg patch.   We looked into the cost of water butts and re route hosing but water butts are £35 plus and it will take up room on our patio look ugly and old bath water would be stagnating YUK and we would have to make about 20 to 30 watering can trips every day to empty it around the garden.  So it is to expensive ugly and inefficient.  

I had a mull over the problem for a day and wondered how i could do this for no money with the stuff we had at home, and came up with an effective but very Heath Robinson way around the issue. After a rumage in the shed i found our Hozelock water pump trotted upstairs where i had pre saved our bath water and dropped it into the bath, i got a long pole and tied the hose pipe onto the end and got my Ali to poke it up to the bath room window where i took delivery and popped it onto the pump and hey presto i now have a whole bath tub of water to pump to anywhere in the garden giving all our plants the vital drink they need to grow big and strong and provide us with lots of lovely food.  God knows what our neighbours are thinking were up to?