I installed a 30 000 L undergound tank a year and a half ago which I then turfed over. Not only do I have plenty of garden water, but I am helping the community by not putting my stormwater onto the street to cause erosion and cost tax dollars to deal with. Best feature is that no-one knows that there is a tank on the block.

MY PREDICTION: In decades to come this will be the norm. The tank will be under the house and new houses will be constructed on top of the tank. A win-win. My tank cost about $12 000. It was an after-thought. Designing as an integral part of the house would have brought down the cost and provided solid foundations.

I’d like to think there could be a subsidy equivalent to the cost of supplying bulk water from the dam. It should apply whether you are connecting to the house plumbing or not because having a garden is park of the amenity of living.

There is an argument abroad that says you shouldn’t privatise your water. Today on Bush Telegraph Maude Barlowe put the point very strongly. She cited an urban slum in South Africa where a million people couldn’t afford town water so they were drawing it from a local river ignoring the cholera signs.

She then cited Chicago where 42,000 residents, mostly black and poor, were cut off.

http://www.bosch.com.au/content/language1/html/4188.htm

Actually can I ask for some advice? Is a solar hot water system a good idea?

Simple question. Complex answer, in part because of the regulatory complexities both now and in the future.

If you’ve got piped gas, that’s lower-emission than solar-electric. Solar-gas is the lowest of all, but a modern gas system isn’t too bad.

The second complication is what the response of the rest of the Australian energy sector to your solar hot water system. As Barry Brook was discussing here, most people sell the “renewable energy credits” they receive when they put in a solar hot water system. If you do so, that’s fewer REC’s that the power companies have to buy from other sources, such as wind farms. Yep, putting in solar hot water means less wind farms get built.

So, if you can afford it, if you’re going to install a solar hot water system and you don’t want to displace other renewables, don’t sell your RECs. However, this adds substantially to the cost.

When the ETS kicks in, something similar is going to occur. If you voluntarily take actions that reduce your carbon emissions, this means that there will be more permits on the market for somebody else to use.

What this means is that the only way for you to reduce Australia’s net carbon emissions and ensure that you’re not just displacing emissions (at least domestically) is to buy ETS permits and stick them under the bed.

I water a lot of my food plants with grey water when it’s what’s available (from the front loader mainly, with Euca washing powder in it.) All the fruit trees (lemon, mandarine, guava, three pears, two apples, an apricot and an avocado) the raspberries and blueberries, and any other plants that you eat the fruit or seeds of rather than leaves or roots (tomatoes, beans, peas, passionfruit, cucmber, zucchini, pumpkin, capsicum, corn.)

There might be consequences for the soil down the track and this worries me. But the most concerning health risk is the possibility of injuring myself lugging buckets of water around, as Brian noted. I’ve fallen over twice, holding heavy buckets, on the concrete laundry floor when it was slippery with drips of water.

I don’t have a rainwater tank yet because the roof needs replacing (this summer I hope.)

Actually can I ask for some advice? Is a solar hot water system a good idea?

The tank solution is actually competing with other massive engineering solutions which cost lots of money and cause lots of CO2 pollution and/or environmental damage.

If we stick to what’s actually on the table tanks are a better bet. Better than CO2 polluting desal and ecology destroying pipelines.

agreed, and I wasn’t buying into mandated solutions precisely, unless it was part of a whole set of standards, properly thought through.

The current set of big solutions are not well though through, and neither are the small neccessarily. Voluntary solutions may be good for individuals but will not be enough.

Personally, if I am hit by a cost I want it to be a “good” cost. We are not having this debate in the current environment because the policy makers do not want one.

Integrated catchment management is a foreign concept to governments at present - they are limited to what they can imagine, which isn’t much.

this can change quite quickly - “corporate culture” - in the early 80s the old SECV was looking at growth scenarios of electricity consumption in Vic. New power station at Driffield, up against constraints of local crerekas being inadequate to supply water for cooling…
Within a few years after that, SECV was advocating power savings in the home, advising households on reducing power consumption.

The rebate we got on installing our water tank 2 years ago was paid by the local water company (though sourced from Vic Govt and local shire?).

Funnily, some of this is actually happening , already.

Water companies wanting to know why you have not used enough of the water that they have plans to increase in price by well over 100% in the next 5 years.

A lot of people are doing the only one that lets them water their garden (tank, often not plumbed in) when the other options would have been far better for them and the environment under a sane water availability and pricing regime.”

Yes, and water restrictions will move more to install water tanks (thereby lowering their use of centrally-provided water in all likelihood), and mooted higher prices for piped water will get more foklk moving to lower useage and new equipment [toilets, washing machines] probably; and the subsidy rules on water tanks may yet see more tanks plumbed to houses; and grey water…. and water recycling….

Golly, there’s just NO progress being made, eh?
People are just so STEW-PID !!!

Robert, the problem as I see it with your views, is that you seek the ABSOLUTE optimum, where in day-to-day life we sometimes have insufficient information to choose that (and a few weeks later relative prices have changed and the optimum may shift in any case).

Robert, “the good is not the enemy of the best”.

But point taken about compulsory steps, Monsieur Derider

We’re talking about involuntarily imposing costs on people in order to save piped water. The point is that if you need to save piped water you can do it while imposing much lower and much less arbitrary costs by pricing the piped water properly rather than by making people fit tanks. The pricing lets people reduce demand in the way that best suits their own circumstances, and you can use the extra money you raise to increase supply a bit. Just as with energy, if the price is right people will soon discover the virtues of conservation for themselves.

Not only is this cheaper, Roger, it gives far more “power and control” to individuals than a mandated solution. Surely mandating a particular solution in the form of water tanks is, like mandatory water restrictions, an example of “governments that think they should wrest control from their citizens in all sorts of ways”.

A lot of people are doing the only one that lets them water their garden (tank, often not plumbed in) when the other options would have been far better for them and the environment under a sane water availability and pricing regime.

Chris (a different one): yes, you’re right. What I meant was partly this: just because folk are restricted to watering on two days in seven, doesn’t necessarily mean their weekly water use will be lower.

Robert Merkel wrote: “If the money that has been invested in water tanks in Melbourne had instead been invested in front-loading washers and retrofitting high-efficiency toilets, we’d have saved a hell of a lot more water.” Well, Robert, for many home owners and renters, it’s not ‘EITHER/OR’ : people are doing all three - new front loading washing machines, better toilets, tanks plumbed to laundry; many are watering gradens less, planting drought hardy species, using less water in the shower, putting mulch on garden beds, etc etc

Those are the kind of small actions by individuals that I was referring to in post [1] above. Increments, increments, increments. There’s no single, magic solution, Robert. I’m confident you know that.

cheerio