Flush the loo when you have to - not before!

[BIGLOUIS]

My grandma had an old saying - if its yellow let it mellow:) - if its brown flush it down.

 

If you are only a 1 or 2 person household and you have a water meter do you really have to waste gallons of water every time you go for a piddle? I only flush when I have "something brown" and my water use has gone down down down from about £500 pa (unmetered) to about £10 per month (metered).

 

Fair enough theres only me lives here - and if Im expecting visitors I do go and flush so they dont have any smelly surprises if they have to use the loo.:)

[DontPushMe]

Your grandma was right. I went from a water bill of several hundreds to less than a couple of hundred by going onto WXM and adopting the rhyme. I also have a couple of water butts, shower rather than bath, fill a cup with water when I brush my teeth (this saves hundreds of litres a month - check it out - 2 minutes of running the tap twice a day is nearly 30 minutes a week or 50 hours a year if there's two of you), only turn the tap on when I really need to rinse the soap off my hands (not when I put the soap on) and rarely wash the car unless it's in danger of being stopped for being a safety hazard. Normally the only things I wash on the old jalopy are the lights and the windows. If it's muddy then nobody wants to catch their shopping bags on it and nobody wants to key it. The water bill went down so much that the water company rang and asked if I lived on my own and was it holiday cottage!

 

As you pay for the water company delivering the water and removing it you should try and get as much use out of the water while you have it. Some people use their bath water on the garden. I experimented with using grey water (old bath water) for flushing the toilet but it would require a bit of work to make it practical. You can use rainwater (plenty of it around at the moment) for flushing the toilet. The gutters are at the top of the house so maybe you could pipe the water into a tank in the loft and add it to your feed to the toilets.

 

I also heat the water once a day (to 35 degrees - there's enough hot water for the evening as well) and limit the heating to the occupied parts of the house for 30 minutes in the morning and an hour in the evening. Gas, electric and water bills came to less than £220 for the last quarter. OK, so it was the summer quarter but I'm looking forward to the winter bill now that I have a microprocessor controlling the heat and water. Much more versatile (I can have as many on/off sessions a day as I need) and saves me 25 - 30% on energy bills as well. Apparently the government are looking to add £120 onto our heating bills as a levy to pay for these wind turbines they keep building. They will aslo be looking to add another £700 over the next 7 years to help replace the ageing power stations. Think I'll move further south!

[DontPushMe]

I forgot - all the bulbs are those hopeless energy saving ones (no wonder I'm going blind), there's extra loft insulation and the phone is now on voip. Last phone bill was a tenner.

 

Just been down the supermarket and there are lots of bargains - got a 5 pound weight duck for just over £6 - that's going in the freezer until Boxing Day and there's loads of other bargains. You have to know the right time to go.

[DontPushMe]

One other thing - the heating is supplemented by a wood burner. The old free newspapers are rolled up ever so tight (like me) to make firelighters. My neighbour works down the market so he gives me the lightweight wooden boxes that are used for the veg. Great kindling! A friend's old creosote soaked fence is just a bit thicker then on top there's the proper ash - the best wood for a fire. I supoose they call what's left in the grate "ash ash". Sorry. The lounge soon gets up to a reasonable temperature! In fact it gets so hot that some times I have to take one of my sweaters off...

 

Has anybody got any experience of those soggy newspaper squishing devices? Being too tight to buy one I made my own but it's not brilliant. Made two bricks which took 2 months to dry out but they lasted an impressive amount of time on the fire. Personally I don't know why we don't just get all the waste paper that's being stock piled and squish it all into logs for the fire. Save putting it into land fill or feeding the rats and it would keep people warm. No doubt somebody will tell me that there's a good reason for storing it...

[MDK]

One other thing - the heating is supplemented by a wood burner. The old free newspapers are rolled up ever so tight (like me) to make firelighters. My neighbour works down the market so he gives me the lightweight wooden boxes that are used for the veg. Great kindling! A friend's old creosote soaked fence is just a bit thicker then on top there's the proper ash - the best wood for a fire. I supoose they call what's left in the grate "ash ash". Sorry. The lounge soon gets up to a reasonable temperature! In fact it gets so hot that some times I have to take one of my sweaters off...

 

Has anybody got any experience of those soggy newspaper squishing devices? Being too tight to buy one I made my own but it's not brilliant. Made two bricks which took 2 months to dry out but they lasted an impressive amount of time on the fire. Personally I don't know why we don't just get all the waste paper that's being stock piled and squish it all into logs for the fire. Save putting it into land fill or feeding the rats and it would keep people warm. No doubt somebody will tell me that there's a good reason for storing it...

 

We are on a meter and only flush the loo when it really needs it. You can also put something in the cistern to cut the amount of water per flush too.

 

We don't use firelighters any longer. I now use bark as firelighters because we cut down some old conifers and the bark dried and fell off in strips which are brilliant at lighting the fire. Before that though I did use newspapers.. old loo rolls are very good if you put old oil on them. If you have a deep fat fryer, keep the oil when you change it and pour some on newspapers/the loo roll and it works wonders!

Edited February 3, 2010 by MDK

[MDK]

Oh and I make my own pump up soap as well! I can make lots of bottles for a fraction of the price of just one bought one! I grate some soap using an old processor blade from an old broken food processor:)

The soap has to be the right sort though, you can't use any type. The type of stuff that goes mushy when you leave it in the shower tray when you forget to take it out type soap

[Andy77799]

Has anybody got any experience of those soggy newspaper squishing devices?

 

I`ve got one! A whole black sack of shredded newspaper makes about 6 blocks and they burn real hot, but drying them on the radiator gets some dodgy looks!!!

[Partizannka]

if its yellow let it mellow:-) - if its brown flush it down.

 

OMG! It's brilliant!!! Haven't had such a great laugh for quite a while

Well, we've put a meter on water, but threre're four of us, and so far we have not started using if its brown flush it down rule yet so I cannot say we started saving much with meter... probably my and my mothers endless baths and showers affect it

 

Regards,

Ann

[Ingy]

Yeah I make the paper logs with the contraption too.

for best results get a local business to suply you with their shreded office paper.

Soak it in a large tub overnight or two nights, I use a household dustbin, then take handfulls out squeazing lots of water out before putting into the contraption, this makes um more thicker and slightly less harder to dry.

Best to make um in the summer to stock up for winter, you can then dry them in your garden out in the sun and leave um in a shed overnight to fend from any summer rain.

 

For ultra best result, mix slack with the shreaded paper and water -slack being coal dust, most coal merchants used to give it away for free but I got mine from a friend that I bought some coal from as they had converted their coal fire to as gas fire, in their coal house was plenty of slack.

These lasted much longer than the paper log on its own, twice if not 3 times longer lasting.

 

You need old clothes on and rubber gloves for this one though, but I found it fun making and drying them and burning them knowing how much cash I was saving.

[ghdfans2010]

if its yellow let it mellow - if its brown flush it down.

 

 

 

I think so!~

[Sea Gull]

I get the large bags of carrots and chop them all up - into the freezer you can also freeze pineapple at the moment 50p in supermarket and so much better than tinned stuff!

Grated cheese can be frozen, and pump up soap I use bath/shower gel that comes in Chrismas packets, no need to throw away and great for washing hands in

[Yesideez]

Myself and fiancee have adopted this after we had the water meter installed and it was her idea!

 

Our water bills have more than halved.

 

We're now using paper plates and disposable knives & forks.

 

As for energy saving bulbs. Forget them and go back to the regular bulbs. Theses energy saving oves give off very poor quality light and if you smash one you need to leave the room, open the windows and shut the doors as they contain heavy metals which are highly toxic.

[stuscfc1883]

As for energy saving bulbs. Forget them and go back to the regular bulbs. Theses energy saving oves give off very poor quality light and if you smash one you need to leave the room, open the windows and shut the doors as they contain heavy metals which are highly toxic.

 

yeah i asked at my local B&Q where have all the 'normal' bulbs gone . . . they said blame Brussels and the EU . . . it's their directive that has stopped them being stocked in the UK!!

[malcolmmirt]

Loving this thread - although disagree re energy saving bulbs, they last forever.

 

On the loos, if you are using too much water per flush you can adjust the ball down, you can get small bags that fill up the space in the cistern, or if it's secure enough and can take the weight, just a brick or two.

[DontPushMe]

Just watched tea time telly where they showed that the average person uses 140 - 150 litres of water a day. I'm down to less than 80 by using the rhyme (although I found that there can be a build up of calcium due to the hard water. This needs chipping off every few months). I also use rain water for flushing the loo and just about everything else where quality doesn't matter.

 

I also save about £500 a year by not having a regular contract on my mobile. I just use pay as you go. That costs me £20 a year rather than the £40 - 50 a month that I was paying. I just use the mobile for in coming and emergency calls. I use Skype for all outgoing calls. My total phone bill is now about £40 - 50 a year and that includes a lot of overseas calls.

[mcz]

Some of the ideas remind me of growing up!