{"id":650,"date":"2009-02-04T18:31:12","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T16:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=650"},"modified":"2009-02-04T16:35:02","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T14:35:02","slug":"doing-our-bit-to-save-the-environment-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/?p=650","title":{"rendered":"Doing our bit to save the environment, part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our water bill has been high every month since we got the house. I attributed it to the building and other work going on, but now that we’re settled in, it became clear that Something Is Not Right.<\/p>\n

Specifically, we’re using about 40 thousand litres a month. That’s about 10 thousand US gallons.<\/p>\n

So I thought I should make a daily note of the water meter reading, to see what’s happening (Many councils have a habit of estimating usage based on one month’s consumption, for months on end). Immediately noticed that the wheel is turning, even though I knew there was no water running anywhere in the house.<\/p>\n

Closing the stop cocks available to me, I figure it must be a leak in the plumbing I didn’t replace. The water mains enters the property through a stop cock, from there (I think) it goes to two outside taps, and then to the junction which feeds the geyser (via a stopcock), the prep bowl and the toilets.<\/p>\n

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This is the junction, below all the other stuff I ripped out (picture from April 2008, when I just started). It feeds the geyser (thick pipe going left and bending up) and the toilets and prep bowl (the other side of the T junction). All the other cold water taps are fed from the geyser side of the pressure regulator, so that the hot & cold water pressures are the same, so that mixer taps work right. And taking the geyser offline doesn’t stop the meter.<\/p>\n

So, the leak is either under the front lawn, at the junction, or under the house. I’m guessing the latter. Tomorrow it’s Frank and a spade, that’s the only way to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our water bill has been high every month since we got the house. I attributed it to the building and other work going on, but now that we’re settled in, it became clear that Something Is Not Right. Specifically, we’re using about 40 thousand litres a month. That’s about 10 thousand US gallons. So I thought I should make a daily note of the water meter reading, to see what’s happening (Many councils have a habit of estimating usage based on one month’s consumption, for months on end). Immediately noticed that the wheel is turning, even though I knew there...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[89,12,24,10],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-house","tag-diy","tag-horrors","tag-oh-shit","tag-plumbing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.retro.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}