News

With the region basking in the hottest days of the year so far and with loads of people spending more time at home, we've released new figures showing demand for water is up.

We serve eight million people across the Midlands and found they’d used an extra 350 million litres of wonderful water yesterday as they basked in the sun and high temperatures.  That’s an increase of 30% extra water per household.

And, as demand is so high, we're offering customers some simple tips to help save water and protect the environment while also keeping safe during the coronavirus crisis.

Doug Clarke, water resources manager, said: “The water we provide to our customers is top quality drinking water, and at the moment we all need more water for handwashing and keeping clean. 

“But we also know that, with so many more people at home, loads of you are doing DIY, getting the paddling pools out and getting your gardens looking lovely, especially as it’s time to get your bedding plants and seedlings in. 

“We reckon watering gardens or cleaning cars with hosepipes or getting the paddling pool out is behind the increase in water we’ve seen and we want everyone to have fun and keep their homes and cars looking great, so we’ve also got some top tips we can offer everyone.”

Doug’s top tips are:

• When watering plants, use a watering can rather than a hose, and don’t worry about your lawn because it’ll bounce back once it starts raining again, so you can put the sprinkler away.  To put things into perspective, a sprinkler can use as much as 1,000 litres of drinking water in just one hour – which is more water than a family of four would normally use in a whole day!
• Get yourself a water butt – it’s a great way to save water when it does rain and you can use the water - for your garden when it’s dry – we’ve got discounted water butts available
  here
• Think about planting water efficient plants such as Blanket flower (Gaillardia), Sea holly (Eryngium amethystinum) or Euphorbia – we’ve also got free ‘swell gels available on our website Clean your car with a bucket rather than a hosepipe or pressure washer, it’ll save loads of water and help keep your bills down;
  and
• Check to see if you have a leaky loo – we’ve got free dye available here to help you see.

Doug continues: “Our reservoirs and other water sources are in a healthy position at the moment, but while we need to save the great quality drinking water for handwashing and of course drinking, we wanted to give some tips for gardeners.”

We're also giving away lots of freebies to help our customers to save water here.