Just been looking up what's restricted due to the hosepipe ban, can't ride because the rain's lashing against the window 🙄 . Anyway info on the United Utilites site is a little sparse but the hoselock site is a bit better.

Due to the legislation being passed 50 years ago it's pretty full of holes and actually only bans you from using a hosepipe to wash cars and water plants. It doesn't cover filling swimming pools or ponds, using a pressure washer to clean things (patios, paths, just not cars), kids play (so the kids can leave the hose on for hours but gardeners can't water their veg) and DIY jobs such as mixing cement. So as a bike is clearly not a motor vehicle it should be fine.

Apparently new legislation is on the way (only taken 4 years so far) which will close a lot of these loop holes 😥

On a slightly different note I'm a bit p*ssed that despite being on a water meter (so I pay for every drop I use), live in one of the westest parts of Europe and certainly up here haven't had the hotest (although admittedly it has been fairly dry) summer we've got a ban because our water provider can't be bothered to invest in a proper infrastructure like other providers (Anglian water aren't banning hosepipes and that's a pretty dry region, haven't seen the south west banning hosepipes and they seem to be able cope with massive fluctuating demand. Mind you it took a massive PR disater before Yorkshire water got it's act together and set up their infrastructure so they could pump water back up into the Pennines as well as down to plains.

I'm on a water meter so I'm too tight to use it anyway…

Its Haweswater and Thirlmere that are the main problems now, they take a long time to refill. UU are pumping like crazy from Ullswater and Windermere (which this rain physically enables them to do) at a cost of 10s of thousands per day so hopefully this and the wet weather will mean the ban can be removed.

Think you're right though, more should be done to fix leaks! Having said that, UU have met their leakage targets for the last few years Apparently. Also, with the extremes of weather we're getting now (big floods then prolonged droughts), I think everyone should be obliged to have meters fitted. Guessing it would also give the water companies / regulators an idea of exactly how much is being used vs leaking away.

More importantly though, if I go out on my bike and going to get pi$$ wet through and covered in mud. Bloody rain..

hosepipe bans only save a small amount of water, what they do is enable drought orders which enable additional abstractions to be made

investment plans are approved by the regulator, they review them very 5 years, take out what they regard as too expensive and set the pogramme. I suggest you contact Ofwat with your views on UU's investments to date.

Compulsory water metering is on it's way, the issue is cost. For further reading google the Walker review. About 25% in the NW on meters.

I'd be getting more upset abot the average £12 p.a. bill payers subsidise the "won't pays", there are plenty of schemes for the "can't pay"

Compulsory water metering is on it's way

Hasnt it been "on its way" for years? even decades from what I can recall.

if you live in Dover or Folkestone it's being implemented IIRC

my god, you're worried you'll have to wash your bike with a bucket and sponge? tough life…

mrK mkII

Not really, that was a bit tongue in cheek. What annoys me is previous governments changed water supply from something done by the state on behalf of everyone for no profit and gave it to profit making companies. UU seem to have decommissioned lots of small high level resevoirs (there are a number around me) and basically relied on high rainfall for easy water abstraction (this has obviously been the case for many years and before UUs time as well). Yorkshire water got caught with their pants down a few years ago, they relied on rain in the Pennines to feed the plains. When there was water on the plains but not in the Pennines their infrastructure wouldn't allow them to pump the water in the opposite direction. Took the threat of standpipes and water tankers thundering up the M62 to make them and Ofwat to sort the investment out. Are we going to have to wait for the standpipes to be broken out before UU allowed by Ofwat invest suitably in my region.

On a related note I 've just come back from Rhodes, no rain at all for most of the year, relatively small island but they didn't have a hosepipe ban. They have got their infrastructure sorted and that includes coping with a massive influx of tourists each year.

As for the bike washing, I reckon I'd use more water sloshing buckets of water over to rinse off those chemicals. Buckets aren't very controllable.

I'd say someone who is socially responsible would adhere to the spirit of the ban rather than the letter of the law.

As the law is an ass and all that………..

big_n_daft: yeah, you're right, Veolia South East (the company formerly known as Folkestone and Dover to us oldies) is the trial company for universal metering having been granted Water Scarcity Status. The Walker Review will no doubt be picked up once the dust has settled post-election. Metering would also be a pre-requisite for, rightly or wrongly, the wider competition advocated by the Cave Review.

Re Ofwat taking out stuff that they regard as too expensive – not really, it's more about the stuff that they don't see as good value or having a decent justification made by the company to make the investments. Cue debate over what a good investment case looks like…

Re the good ol' Yorkshire Water drought sorry water resources situation 😉 in the mid-90s and comparing it to Anglian, UU and Rhodes: YW and UU both have similar reservoir strategies in that they have numerous single season drawdown, fairly small reservoirs, intended to deplete over the course of a summer and fill back up over winter. Anglian has some very large reservoirs.

YW in the 1995 crisis had, as you say, nowt in its reservoirs (in the west) but good aquifer stocks in the flatlands of the east – these are groundwater, much like Rhodes will have. However, sucking the aquifers dry is not a sustainable option, doing long-term damage, and the Environment Agency wouldn't let us (to quote Max Boyce, "I was there") willy-nilly damage these for expedient short-term management reasons. I wonder whether such controls exist in Rhodes and whether in the long run they'll pay for this as their water gets increasingly loaded up with minerals.

Not wanting to sound like an apologist for poor management decisions by water companies but the levels of service provided today, including frequency of hosepipe bans, are way better than pre-privatisation. Whether that can be maintained in the face of climate change is a moot point and something which IMHO the industry collectively really could do with getting its finger out in terms of how it plans investment for uncertain futures.

you can use your hosepipe for watering the plants/garden/cleaning your car so long as the hose isn't attached to the mains water supply.

You can however use a bucket to fill a water butt up and use the hose attached to that to do the above quite legally. A 50 gallon butt wouldn't take too long to fill with a sizeable bucket! (10 trips with a 5 gallon bucket!).

It doesn't cover filling swimming pools or ponds,

You cannot use your hosepipe for ponds or swimming pools unless its for livestock. I know this because when we had a pond full of Koi and the pond liner leaked we had to refil using the hose and our lovely neighbour snitched on us and the waterboard man came round and took one look and said no worries if its for fish!

Re Ofwat taking out stuff that they regard as too expensive – not really, it's more about the stuff that they don't see as good value or having a decent justification made by the company to make the investments. Cue debate over what a good investment case looks like…

the UU model is one hosepipe ban every 20 years on average

no investment to directly mitigate climate change allowed (other reasons have to be claimed)

most recent investment is to meet water quality parameters

all those small res that have been abandonned probably aren't sustainable (catchment issues) and/or it would cost too much to stick a treatment plant on that can meet today's requirements

at least it's drinkable, and remember only half your bill is for water the other half is for what you flush (or don't if using a hosepipe :wink:), you also pay for highway drainage in that subsidising all those on septic tanks

Call me cynical, but I believe that UU are counting on the "lovely neighbours" as Highclimber puts it. They'll be so busy spying on each other that the real problem of UUs lack of forsight failure of infrastructure maintainance will all be forgotten.

I think there are a few people posting here who work in the industry 😉

Its ok cause a white paper is coming next year to change the regime and introduce more competition.

Look forward to electricity stylee bills!

Oh, and privatise the rivers to help close the ukraine deficit, Shhhh

uk deficit even. T9 eh??!

I have a bit of background in the water industry, used to work for Severn Trent indirectly and my wife was with Yorkshire Water when it all went tits up. Still not entirely convinced about UU, I really do think they've had it easy because it's a wet area. Anglian Water has big resevoirs because it needs them, admittedly they were probably built before privatisation.

dont slag uu too much jon or they might ban you from there forest 😆

I hope we don't get short of water here,as I use about 3 to 4 thousand litres a week for work via a hose pipe

Couple of years ago, went to a customers house a huge detached house, he and his wife had just come back from a cruise, neighbour looking after the house,and she had manged to loose a key, so a change of locks.

Looking out the kitchen window i noticed their rear garden was under a few inches of water(on the hottest days of that year) so went to tell them, he thought i was joking, so we went outside, a hosepipe was on full throttle.

He went balstic, saying they where on a water meter.

It appears the neighbour had decided to turn the sprinklers on and left them on,for almost 2 weeks.

Beware of water meters and hosepipes.oh and heplful neighbours/not.

Irrelevent as to why, as far as I am concerned when a 'hosepipe' ban is put in place I want compensation.

I have a meter, no choice, and that means two things:

1 The water company has a contract to supply
2 I have a contract to pay

And you've only got to ride over in the Elan Valley to see what can be achieved – and that was in the 19th century.

Call me cynical, but I believe that UU are counting on the "lovely neighbours" as Highclimber puts it.

UU have supplied employees with a mailbox address to grass their neighbours up. 😉

I don't think they've had it too easy though, UU were pretty much the worst water company in Britain by Ofwat's standards last year and they've now done a huge amount to turn this around and from my perspective it looks like they will get where they want to be. They have seriously cut spendage and are fine tuning their infrastructure rapidly.

And as I've said before, UU have the longest pipe network in the country and they're the biggest water company by area so it's expected they'll have the greatest number of leaks.

Two things

1. The water companies have had 20yrs? and made millions of pounds with which to fix the infrastrucure so OFWATS targets are obviously too soft.

2. We were given the impression in Yorkshire that a system would be put in place to use Kielder in a drought. I have it on good authority that the water will now get as far as Darlington…

On a positive note, last year my bill for my little Barbershop went over £500. I'm now on a meter and pay £10 a month, result!

"biggest company by area so expected to have the greatest number of leaks"

but if most of that area is unpopulated then there are no pipes so there should be no leaks? Amount of leaks is a function (amongst other things) of length of pipe, number of connections (i.e. the more population the more leaks) and 'condition'. Perhaps UU are just rubbish 😀

"targets too soft"? quite a few companies missed their targets this year and as for soft Thames was fined £150m of shareholder money for missing is leakage target a few years back – I'd hardly call that soft.

Whilst the companies have made profits they have to in order to survive. What you have to remember is the reason for privitisation was in part to attract investment in to the industry that the government couldn't afford – and its done that. But you need to make large (ish) profits to service the debt that incurs. Just like if you have a large mortgage you need a large income to pay for it.

Funnily enough the sheer amount of money the companies have had to borrow to fund the investment means they are massively in debt and I think you'll see in the next few years a very different industry as some companies won't or indeed can't survive.

Come on drain 😉

The basic necessities of life should never be controlled by private companies
Regardless of ofwat, ofgen or of…. whatever they're called this week etc. – their first responsibility is to their shareholders & that can't be right

Perhaps UU are just rubbish

That's what OFWAT thought too. 😉 They do seem to be turning things around now though. They've leaned up massively and have a fairly aggressive program in place to sort themselves out. I hope they do it, I quite like working for them.

if the government can't afford to supply investment you have to have shareholders and a job of the regulator is to ensure their profits are reasonable.

some investors are having to pump money in soon and take no dividend to allow some companies to actually operate so I don't think they have it easy.

note most companies are owned by pension funds so there is a social take on why they need profits.

I blame thatcher 😉

Funnily enough the sheer amount of money the companies have had to borrow to fund the investment means they are massively in debt and I think you'll see in the next few years a very different industry as some companies won't or indeed can't survive.

Borrowing money and investing are two different things…

(10 trips with a 5 gallon bucket!

that's one hell of a bucket, normal ones are TWO gallons 🙂

some investors are having to pump money in soon and take no dividend to allow some companies to actually operate so I don't think they have it easy.

Lets hope they don't go into liquidation. As long as they have some fluid capital I think they'll be alright.

<waves at Rob – Hi!>

This is great – I reckon we should have a little STW water industry ride, raise some money for WaterAid and then have a session down the pub where we can discuss this like it should be done! 😀

Then again I might have a slightly weird take on all of this being one of the few who has worked all 3 sides of the fence 😉 for water companies, Ofwat and consultancies. Industry tart, eh?

uplink makes an interesting point – although when funding of water/sewerage services was in the hands of government the standards of service were at the mercy of political pressures, with all the expediencies that go with that, and (as commented before) much less good than today. Now that the squeeze on the public purse is on, it will be interesting to see how all the intentions of Northern Ireland (currently still sort of public sector) to improve its levels of service to parity with those delivered by water companies in England and Wales (passing Scotland on the way) get modified – because their spending is still controlled directly by government.

Could be that there's a halfway house, Welsh Water runs under a different model from the rest of the privatised water companies, based on 'not for profit'. Leaving aside their actual service performance, and the recent shenanigans with how they've re-insourced (is that a word?!) their contracts, it has the potential to deliver for customers without all the emotional baggage that the word 'private' seems to bring with it.

But yeah, all the pointers are, as rob2 notes, towards more competition being driven by the government. Wup, wup 😐 Someone should point out to the economists that water is a bit heavier than electrons…

does the hose pipe ban cover colonic irrigation clinics ?

does the hose pipe ban cover colonic irrigation

This is what I use to keep my colon pucker clean during extended periods of drought :

I pour water from a jug which has been collected from my rainwater butt.
Which takes care of the environment, as well as my arsehole.

My rainwater butt btw, looks like THIS

if im paying for it im washing me bike! … till they cut my bill im gonna squirt!
remind me again, how much is lost to unfixed leaks every year???