The Heat is On as Glenn Frey sang for the sound track of 1984’s Beverley Hills Cop.
With the temperature way up, water use is soaring and putting huge demands on water companies up and down the country.
The problem is not empty reservoirs but the network being emptied as fast as we can treat water and pump it across our 13,400 kilometres of pipe line.
So right now, using water wisely is more important than ever – and you can do your part to help protect stocks of the precious resource of clean, fresh water – making sure there is enough to go around is the neighbourly thing to do.
In hot weather it is really important to stay hydrated, and we’re proud to sponsor the amazing Refill campaign in the South East of England. Refill is an app which helps you find shops and cafes which will top up your re-usable water bottle – saving money and preventing plastic waste.
But there are other uses of water which are less helpful in a heatwave.
Brown lawns bounce back quickly when the weather breaks and golf course green keepers say that grass can be made more resilient by a bit of water-stress – the needier grass might die back but tougher strains will survive and the long terms result will be a hardier lawn.
Like many companies, we’re not washing our vans until the weather breaks and we hope householders will do the same – in a heat wave a dirty car is cool.
Indoors, there’s plenty to do too.
The average UK shower last eight minutes, according to research by Unilever. Taking into account the energy costs that is equivalent to £416 a year for the average UK family or a whopping £918 for power showers which use double the energy and water.
Southern Water reckons that just four minutes is all you need for a proper shower – although we’ll make allowances for Cousin It from The Adams Family or those with especially long hair.
Translated into water volumes, a power shower uses about 15 litres a minute while a shower with a water saving head uses about 9 litres. With power shower users using 43,800 litres of water a year with just one eight minute shower a day, they could save enough water to fill one of the largest bulk tankers on British roads.
Cutting your shower time is one of the easiest tricks to save water but how to time it? We give away free hour glass-style shower timers which do the job. But it can be a challenge to watch the sand running through when you’ve got soap and shampoo in your eyes.
We have a neat alternative – time your morning spruce up with a four minute long shower anthem. Southern Water has got hold a box of awesome Bluetooth speakers specially designed to stick on your bathroom tiles, connect to your smart phone or computer and waft – or blast – sweet sounds to your ears while you shampoo some sweet smells into your hair.
Maybe you’ve already got your anthem lined up -The Heat is On is perfect at 3 minutes 45 seconds, It’s Raining Men made famous by The Weather Girls is a challenging three minutes thirty one seconds. TLC’s Waterfalls is out of bounds though – an inefficient 4 minutes 40, sorry.
Giveaway
And yes, we’re giving the speakers away. Not so fast though – not just anyone can have one – it’s part of the Southern Water #AquaHacks competition.
Southern Water customers can win one of our official #AquaHacks speakers by sending us your best water saving tip – and they do not have to be shower related so however you’ve cut down on water use in the home could be a way to win.
To enter tweet @SouthernWater with #AquaHacks or email [email protected]