Seven firms including Southern Water, South East Water, Thames Water and Veolia South East have to today announced that they are to enforce a hosepipe ban from April 5th.

Local reservoir Bewl Water is currently standing with just 42% of its normal water reserves.

Source: Shot by photographer – Chloe, 19th February

This means you will not be able to water your garden or lawns with a mains water fed hosepipe until the ban has been lifted.

So we’ve got  3 weeks to prepare ourselves for this.

Not withstanding it might rain either before or after this period it maybe sensible to consider ways in which you could build up water reserves.

If you already have a rainwater recycling system then you may like to consider ways in which this might be connected to a pump which feeds either a leaky pipe or fine spray system.

Hozelock amongst others make such systems, and Karcher make submersible pumps.

You could use the time you have and fill a water butt or tanks and link this to a similar system that can feed off rain water as well.

Here is a system we recently created for a vegetable garden, linked to a rainwater fed water butt near Tunbridge Wells…

For further information on conserving water in the garden contact Tim Sykes on 07725 173820.