Are you pulling your "water saving" weight?
Congratulations Darwin! You have reduced your average residential water use by 20% over the last 5 years!
Gone are the days of watering down footpaths, washing cars on the concrete driveway and irrigating gardens all day, every day.
Or is this still you?! There are many people who have reduced their water use by much more than 20% - you can read about some of these wonderful people here. BUT there are also people out there who are not pulling their 'water saving' weight - do you think this could be you?
If so, why not try changing how you use water by following in the footsteps of your water smart neighbours? It's easy, and important as our rainfall is unpredictable - we never know how much we're going to get from year to year. Find out more about why we need to save water in Darwin.
Here's how residents have made their savings:
Gardens
About 60% of water use in Darwin goes to our gardens, so this is the best place to start reducing your water use. In fact, we know that saving water in the garden has really helped achieve the 20% reduction as the Darwin community have used 3400 of our Garden Tune Up services since 2017, which have an average saving of 140,000 litres per service per year. That's about 580 large wheelie bins of water saved per year for each property that's had a Garden Tune Up!
So, if you have an automatic irrigation system book your Garden Tune Up with one of our registered irrigators today. And during the dry season follow the 3, 2, 1, watering guide:
3: Water LAWN three times a week.
2: Water your GARDEN twice a week.
1: Water NATIVE PLANTS just once a week or less.
Leaks
Keeping on top of leaks is another really easy way to help save water - and help save you money! During Living Water Smart's Community Leak Program offered from 2017 to 2018, over 7800 leaks were fixed saving an average of 155,000 litres of water per year (enough to fill about 645 large wheelie bins) for every leak fixed!
Do you know how to check for leaks? It's really simple, just follow the 3-step leak check:
Step 1: Ask people in your home not to use water while you do the test, and make sure that there is no water being used in your home i.e. that the washing machine is not on.
Step 2: Go to your water meter and take a reading of the last two red digits on your water meter - write down or take a photo of the reading.
Step 3: Wait 5 minutes – remember not to use any water during this time. Take a reading of the last two digits in red. If there was any movement of the dial, you may have a leak - even the smallest movement can add up to a lot of wasted water over a year.
Did your meter move? This could indicate that you may have a hidden leak.
Reminder: It’s a good idea to try and do the 3-step leak check every few months. Perhaps set yourself a reminder, such as when your bill arrives.
