[Simon & Emily]

Can anyone answer a general question about the quantity of water available there? I've just had a lovely day out in the garden with the children playing with water in the sun, and wondered if it's as freely available in New Zealand. I know that most summers we get short here, despite the winter rain, and it just set me thinking.

Thanks,

Emily

[Timbo]

I think it depends on where you live Emily. If you look at the realestate sites, you will see that some propertys are on town water and some rely on storing up (treated) rainwater. This probably applies mainly to rural homes I would guess. I do recall some comments on another forum about a localised drought earlier this year, in the Waikato.
Nz is green for a good reason though.

[Simon & Emily]

Sorry, it was a vague question. If you are on mains water, say in the Christchurch area, can you always expect to have plenty / reasonable water? I would have thought so, given the amount of rain they get, but it was something I was just wondering on as my children were playing with the hose in the garden.

Does anyone out there have their own water supply? If so, how do you find it. Is it expensive to 'run', and do you have to be carefull with your usage?

Thanks,

Emily

[ruthyroo]

It very much depends where you are. Friends in Bay of Islands are just coming to the end (hopefully) of a loooooong drought. Most is not all of the houses up there are rain fed (collect rain off the roof and store) so when that runs out and isn't refilled... We were introduced to a charming little reminder last time we stayed with them...
"If it's yellow, let it mellow,
If it's brown, flush it down!"
Sorry to be gross but that's the reality of conserving water.

We are out in the sticks in central NI, and are also on rain fed - no mains water. The pressure did drop over a long dry spell but we never ran out (there are only two of us, and we are careful with water). Even if we did, we can get the fire brigade to come out from town and fill up the tank - but it costs rather a lot...

I think that in Auckland people a lot of the water is metered - so people are paying for every drop.

Hope that helps! Hopefully you will be living close enough to a lake or river that the kids won't have to bother with tap water!

[Simon & Emily]

Thanks for the info - I know a lot of houses don't have mains water, but the details of how it actually works/ what happens were unknown.

I love the little poem - my children must be naturalized already. Flushing just isn't on their agenda. I guess I should just be gratefull that they don't try to play with it. :laugh :laugh :laugh :laugh :laugh

Emily

[veronica]

We've been in Chch over this summer and there was no problem but it wasn't the best summer to judge as it was neither hot nor particularly dry. There were some posters about urging people to not waste water so perhaps it can be a bit of an issue other times. My own feeling is that its like Essex in that it is on the dry side of the country (theres certainly no shortage of water on the west coast) and given an extremely dry winter it could be a bit of an issue the following summer. I don't know about water meters, I don't think we are on one but could be wrong. Hope that helps a bit.

[Tanya]

In Christchurch, water is part of the rates. There are water meters to all(most) houses and they are read every three years. Unless they find that you are using excessively, they don't charge more, if you are they check more frequently (to make sure it's not a leak) and can charge you if it is high usage.

I would imagine that as it is becoming an expensive commodity and as the water meters are already there, it will be easy for them to introduce charges!

If you rent, rates are the owners responsibililty and therefore so is the water you use.

Tanya

[eric_amanda]

We gernate our own water here, although we are quite lucky in that we have rainwater for general household use ie showering, drinking etc, but we also have an extra tank which is fed from our own spring. This supplies the livestock troughs, irrigation and is plumbed into the house to flush toilets!

We had quite a drought over the summer months which has finally ended, but have had no need to skimp on our water useage, although we are not wasters of water. I know some neighbours had to refill their tanks which costs over $200 a time for a 5000 litre tank. I think our back up spring water helped in our case.

We do find that our rainwater tank fills very quickly and we waste quite a lot when heavy rain falls as it has for the last couple of days. We are therefore considering putting in an extra tank to store to feed our vege garden which is under development!

[annaerb]

If you are on town supply your water is plentiful. Parents water rates are approx $110 per year in Auck.
I am 30 mins from them (Semi Rural)and on Tank Water. Because we have had no rain (No Great Downpours) we have had to fill up 3 times since Jan. This has cost us $675.00 :wah , that is double loads (4000 gal) of water too. This has never happened in the 8 years we've been on tank water it's just because of the dry spell otherwise we may fill up once maybe twice a year.

Not sure about Treated water. I've just been getting heaps of info on tank water etc and thought about getting someone to do a water testing , just for curiousity :? , we do have water filters though.
Anyway it will be interesting to see what they come up with.

[GeorgeM]

During my time here there has been no water rationing in Chch during the hot dry spells, but the lowering of lake levels on the hydro schemes has meant that during my first two winters ('02/'03) people were encouraged to economise in their use of electricity. Many businesses turned off their signs (at least after business hours) and the government tried to get people to cut down their power use by (I think) 10%. I believe that the crises passed with no-one actually having enforced power cut-offs. These winters were comparatively mild ones, which helped.

I don't think that there is a problem with lake levels this year.

[jonSE]

Moving from mains water to rain water fed tank water has made both us very conscious of how liberally (read wastefully) we use water in the uk.

Waiheke has had the lowest rainfall in march and april for about 100 years. Hence the ferry full of commuters in the morning has been nothing but converstaions about how little water people have left.

Yeah mellow yellow - brown go to town (work)

We went up Waiwera at the w/e to the thermal springs primarily to lounge around in hot water - something we haven't been able to do since we left the UK 3 months ago.

But wey hey today it has rained most of the day.

Even the water out of the dehum goes back in the tank.

Jon
Waiheke

The world will actually run short of drinking water before it runs out of oil.

[Simon & Emily]

Can anyone give any more details of how the rainwater is stored? I've done some searches, but cannot find anything. I know if we go down that route it will all become obvious, but I'm just curious. How do you store it and treat it?

thanks,

Emily

[Timbo]

This may help (a little)

http://www.tankwatersupply.com/

[Simon & Emily]

Thanks Tim. Can anyone enlighten me on how this is treated to become drinking water ? (if at all?) If it's not suitable, what do those folks without mains water do for drinking water?

Thanks,

Emily

[Timbo]

Emily. The design shown on that website is for a filtration system to convert rain into drinking water.
The rain is collected and then stored (or possibly filtered first) in very large tanks, usually close to the property. Then it is a simple case of pumping it, or maybe gravity feeding, to the taps.
You can often see the tanks in realestate pictures.

[Simon & Emily]

So the rainwater is drunk neat, without any treatment at all? Do you know how long it is usually kept in these tanks?

[ruthyroo]

Our rainwater is basically collected off the roof via the drainpipes into a big tank. It is then pumped back into the house via a filtration system - simple as that. There is also a holding tank that excess goes into. The tanks are pretty massive (and ugly), they hold a lot of water. As far as I know all rain water is fine for drinking - it mostly needs filtration to get the leaves and insects out. We also have a spring fed system for the outdoor taps but the water from the isn't pure enough for drinking - lots of farming in the upper catchment = tummy bugs. So we just use that for gardening, washing the car etc. I guess we could purify it if we ran out of the rainwater.

It does take a bit of getting used to after the mains supplies of the UK, especially as where we live there are a lot of very big flash houses - to find out that there is no mains water or sewerage for any of them was something of a surprise - but it seems pretty normal to me now.

The link given by Timbo gives a fair idea of what our system looks like - big black plastic tanks near the house, and another one up in the woods.

HTH

[annaerb]

We have a water purifier on our kitchen tap for drinking that's if we remember to use it. Apart from that we just drink straight from the tap.
The water isn't treated and can last for months in the tank.
I'm actually going through the process of finding out info as my daughter has a Science fair coming up and thought that this would be a great topic
"What is in your Tank Water".
You can get diseases from Tank water but I have not heard of anyone getting sick. I have been on tank water for 8 yrs now.

[ruthyroo]

This is all a bit ironoc as it has now been raining in Rotorua for two days solidly!!I could hold a glass out the window for two minutes and it would be filled with fresh clean rainwater!

[Simon & Emily]

The water isn't treated and can last for months in the tank.
I'm actually going through the process of finding out info as my daughter has a Science fair coming up and thought that this would be a great topic
"What is in your Tank Water".
You can get diseases from Tank water but I have not heard of anyone getting sick. I have been on tank water for 8 yrs now.

Do you really want to know what's in your water? :uhoh :uhoh

I'm not overly worried about drinking rain water neat, if that's the norm - when in Rome etc etc - it just took me by surprise, that's all.

The first of many, many things that will shock, I'm sure.

Thanks everyone,

Emily

[jonSE]

Here on Waiheke I don't think anybody drinks tanked water - yeah it gets used sparingly for everything else but not drinking cold. Nearest it gets to our stomachs is cleaning teeth. We buy spring water in 5L containers to drink cold. Somehow we always run out of beer wine and gin before the spring water runs out. This doesn't seem to be an uncommon occurence here.

It's raining again. woohoo

Jon

[Simon & Emily]

OK then folks - for everyone out there in the land of the long white cloud without mains drinking water.

Do you drink the stored rainwater without any further treatments (ie boiling?) or do you buy bottled water in. Have any migrants in who drink / drank the tanked water been ill at the start, before you build up immunity against any local bugs?

Thanks,

Emily

[annaerb]

Emily,

We drink it straight from the tank. Infact most people do in the area where I live. None of us have been sick. People do get their tanks cleaned out but how often I don't know. Have never bought bottled water.

[Simon & Emily]

Thanks - I would have though most people (especially New Zealanders themselves) drink it direct, but I was just wondering.

Emily

[Stu]

At the moment, there is NO shortage of water at all,.... indeed, it looks as if half of Tauranga is in the process of being washed out to sea! Bad flooding over there right now, one of those 100 year events that seems ot happen every year these days.

Rainwater into tanks has pretty much always been an option on most farms. So farms have rainwater and farm supply water pumped from private bores, and no-one ever got crook from drinking that to my knowledge.
The distressing part was when every 5 years or so, someone would go up and empty out the rainwater/drinking water tanks.... and empty out the pile of bird and rat bones in the bottom!
Mmmm-mmmm! Just TASTE that freshness! :-)

It is just a every day well known event, one of lifes little "eeeuuw!"s, that we all laugh about.

Some small towns do occassionally have water shortages, especially summer holiday towns like in the coromandel etc, where the normal populations go up by about 1,000%.

Akld had huge probs a few years back, but now they have got on top of that by piping in water from the lower waikato river..... now THAT would frighten me pal! YUCK!
cheers, Stu.

[Paul and Linda]

There are things that you can sanitize your water with. A section of my company

http://archnet/

(Arch Chemicals, may be more familiar to Kiwis as Koppers Arch (Auckland) for wood treatment products)

boasts incessantly on how much its water treatment chemicals have stabilised the health of many a nation. I never thought that I would however have to use their products!

PS anyone ever thought of the bird poo that washes off your roof! :uhoh I know that i should not comment until i am there, so apologies for that. :oops:

[Simon & Emily]

Hi Paul - that link's not working for me, I'm afraid. The main website on a search is also huge. Do you have a product name / info that would help track it down?

I have to say also, no offence to any new zealander, but the thought of drinking water out of tanks like that does not appeal. I know when in Rome etc, but this is one thing that I may draw the line at, having two todders.

emily

[Paul and Linda]

This is not a sales pitch and I don't know if these products are available in NZ, it has only been put in as a guide to the sort of chemicals that can be used to treat water. if a moderator decides that it is erring on the side of advertisement then quite rightly it should be removed

http://www.archchemicals.com/Fed/ICM

a guide to the uses of chlorine

http://www.chlorinetree.org/

[Simon & Emily]

Thanks - just interesting info to know what options there may be.

Emily

[Radders]

No water shortage here - 310mm in the last 24 hours :uhoh