Water Wisdom

Prompted by the thought that it's coming to the time of the month when the trustees take you water readings, I thought it would be a good idea to share a bit of water wisdom with our owners. As you may know wisdom is often gained through pain and experience, by sharing our experience on high water consumption, owners will be able to eliminate the easy to fix stuff, and hopefully be in a better position to make decisions on what other remedial actions need to be taken.

From time to time the trustees receive calls from Pam Golding on behalf of non-resident owners, enquiring about high water readings. The trustees will then provide information on how many people reside in the unit, obviously the more people there are, the more water will be used.  However, there are cases where this logic defies the amount of water consumed. Over the years we have discovered that there are three main causes for high readings they are as follows:

• Toilet cisterns not shutting off (running continuously).
• Undetected water leaks; either in cavity walls or outside water supply plumbing.
• Hose pipes left on for long periods i.e. over night and, or, weekends

By far the most common cause, is the cistern ball valve not shutting off.  This is easy enough to detect, one just needs to lift the toilet seat and look in the bowel. If the valve is not closing there will be a continuous stream of water running down the back of the toilet bowel.  Sometime ago I measured the amount of water running from a urinal where I work, the urinal was the old type that still used a ball valve and tip trough. I was amazed to find that it was leaking at a rate of one litre per minute.

Let's do the maths, that's 1440 litres per day (1.44 Kilo Litres) which comes to damn near 45 Klt's per month. Add to this figure the complex summer average of 20 Klt"s and your looking at a water bill of around: R620 for the month. That water bill would only have been R190 if the toilet wasn't running. Keep in mind, not all leaks will be at the illustrated leak rate. But you must agree,  even half a litre a minute is too much.

Undetected water leaks require a bit more effort to resolve, however, there have been a few historical events that we can draw from. The main culprit for pipe leaks can be attributed to inferior copper pipe. I have spoken to many plumbers over the years, which revealed a common thread of evidence. As far as I can ascertain, there was fierce competition in the building industry at the start of the table view building boom, which resulted in plumber's using lower and lower grades of copper pipe. This use of lower grade pipe has only recently ceased, with the advent of a new type of, easy to install, robust plastic pipe becoming available.

If the pipe springs a leak in the ceiling, it's easy enough to find. Besides the obvious wet ceiling. There is a tell tail green spot on pipes that have started to leak. The green spot may appear to be dry to touch, but it's only a matter of time before the leak becomes a problem.  Cavity wall leaks can be attributed to pipe leaks, but one should not rule out pipe fittings that secure the pipe to stop cocks.  Our unit developed a leak that caused water to run down our neighbours stares. There was no evidence of a leak in our unit. The leak turned out to be a fitting on the stop cock for the en-suit toilet. Another culprit for leaks is an O-ring on the plastic water supply pipe to, or from the water meter.  The good news is, that it's easy enough to replace the O-ring. the bad news is, the whole block has to be tuned off to stop the water flow, but only if its leaking on the supply side of the water meter.

The last point on the list is hose pipes. The only thing I can suggest here is to develop a sense of environmental awareness - despite the fact that it's raining while I'm writing this article, there are constant reminders from people in the know, that the Western Cape water supply will be adversely effected by; among other reasons,  global warming. So for my quick and dirty tip. Make checking your taps part of your daily pre-lock-up procedure before retiring for the day.