Saving Water at Home – One of the hot topics in Ireland these days is that of the upcoming metered water charges being introduced to our nation. A great many people are, somewhat understandably, annoyed at the introduction of what feels like an additional unfair and unnecessary bill on top of what is already a rapidly increasing cost of living, with people having less net income than before. The situation has led some people to staunchly oppose the installation of water meters in their area by means of public protest. Such demonstrations occurred nationwide including in counties Cork and Dublin.
Tips on Saving Water at Home
While, at the best of times, most people did make a conscious effort to Saving Water for environmental reasons, the prospect of losing out on much-needed money is making more homes and business more aware than ever in relation to how much water they are using. With that in mind, here are some top tips on how to limit the amount of water you use up in the day to day running of your home:
Toilets:
The toilet is the most water guzzling device found in any household. On average, people flush their toilets no less than five times every single day (simply not flushing your toilet in order to save water and money is not recommended for health and sanitation reasons). At first thought, it may seem impossible to reduce how much water is used up with every single flush, but there are in fact ways to do this.
Around the mid-1990s, toilet design and mechanics changed significantly for the better, with the new generation of toilets using significantly less water per flush than their predecessors while being capable of flushing away the same amount of unwanted waste. If you have a particularly old toilet, upgrading it to a more efficient model is one way of limiting how much water is literally flushed away. ‘Dual flush’ toilets are particularly useful in that they can limit how much water you use depending on the manner and amount of waste that needs flushing. This prevents you from having to use up more water than is necessary when flushing away small amounts of waste. Of course, buying a new toilet is a fairly expensive and lengthy undertaking which is not necessarily a viable option for everyone.
If this option is not available to you, there are ways of limiting how much water your older, less efficient toilet uses up when it flushes. Placing a solid object in an old toilet’s cistern will limit how much water is used in every flush. If you use the right sized object you will be able to save a large amount of water while not reducing your toilet’s ability to dispose of waste adequately. An old favorite used to be placing a brick in the toilet’s cistern. While your standard brick is pretty much the exact size and density required to get the aforementioned cistern water balance right, it is not a very good long term solution to your toilet’s water wastage problem. Most bricks are soluble in water. This means that they break down over time when exposed to water. This, in turn, can lead to bits of clay clogging up your drainage system’s piping which can lead to awkward plumbing works having to be carried out at a later date. An alternative and more durable object of similar size should be used instead.
One last water saving tip as far as toilets are concerned is to not use your toilet as a bin. People often use their toilet as a means of disposing of tissues and other light waste (or, in some cases, not so light waste). The bin was made for such things and doesn’t require lots of water to be used up in order for it to work, so use your bin as a bin instead!
Taps:
Another, less obvious, form of water wastage in a typical household is that of dripping and leaking taps. While one drop of water won’t make much difference to your water bills, if you have enough of them they can really add up! The average dripping tap is believed to waste in the region of 90 litres of water every week. When you add that up, it amounts to upward of 4,500 litres of water wasted every year due to something as simple and easily rectified as leaking taps.
To prevent this surprisingly excessive loss of water all you have to do is ensure that your taps are firmly closed after each use. It really is that simple. In some cases, taps may continue to drip after being fully closed. In such cases, it means there is a problem with the taps and a professional plumber should be called in to rectify the situation. Do not use excessive force to close the tap as this will only cause further damage, resulting in trickier (and more expensive) repairs being needed.
Another way to limit how much water your taps use up is to only leave them running only when the water is actually needed. Do you really need to leave a high-pressure stream of water running for the entire duration of your morning wash up routine (eg: brushing teeth, washing face etc.)? In many cases, a small dribble of water to get started and another one to finish up is generally all you need. While such water saving measures may, at first, seem petty and insignificant, they do add up over time. Once you get into the habit of not leaving the tap running in such situations you’ll soon wonder why you ever bothered doing it in the first place at all.
If your taps exert a very high pressure of water, you might want to consider having low-flow tap aerators installed. These handy devices reduce water pressure in your taps, meaning less water is used up by your taps per second. This will not inhibit your ability to wash yourself (most taps send out more water per second than people can use anyway), but will save both water and money.
Pipes:
Taps are not the only thing which waste lots of water over time via drips. Pipes are also susceptible to minor leaks and drips which waste a surprisingly high volume of water. Unfortunately, dripping pipes are not as easy to spot as dripping taps so you will need to be a bit more proactive in terms of leak detection as far as they are concerned. You should regularly check all radiator, bathroom and kitchen related piping for leaks, drips and punctures. This will allow you to identify any problematic pipes and have the issues nipped in the bud by a professional plumber before they become major problems and require more complex (and expensive) maintenance work.
You should run water through any piping which has gone for an extended period of time without use (such as radiator pipes which have gone unused during the warm summer months or pipes connected to a toilet in a spare guest room which does not get much use) in order to make sure that they aren’t leaking. This will stop them from springing a nasty surprise upon you when you decide to call them back into action all of a sudden.
Washing Machines
While washing machines are known for using up an excessive amount of electricity in order to operate, they also use up very high volumes of water. In order to save water, you should only use washing machines when you have a full load to do. Even then, you will probably not need to put the machine on at its highest settings or longest cycle. Not only will this approach to washing machines save you money on water and electricity charges, but it also decreases the chances of your clothes shrinking or having their colours run into each other during the washing cycle.
Kitchen
The day to day running of a functioning kitchen requires the use of quite a lot of water. This is an unavoidable fact, but does not mean that you should throw in the towel. There are still ways to limit how much water you use in the kitchen and make saving water.
For example, when you are cooking you will often find yourself with leftover water (often referred to as ‘gray water’). Rather than simply pouring this down the sink, you can get good use out of ‘recycling’ it as it contains nutrients which have been transferred into the water during the cooking process. One clever use of the gray water is for watering plants. The nutrients contained within gray water that was made when cooking vegetables (for vitamins) and boiling eggs (for calcium) is significantly better for your plants than the normal water provided by your taps.
Garden:
The aforementioned gray water helps you reduce the amount of water that you need to keep your garden’s plants fresh and healthy. If you don’t have any gray water to use you should always try to avoid watering your garden plants with a hose as this unnecessarily uses up far more water than is needed, much of with simply goes to waste by means of evaporation (if it is sprayed on too thickly) or just missing its target completely.
Perfectly god water falls from the sky in some volume nearly every day in Ireland. If you are savvy you can collect this water and use it as you see fit. Setting up containers such as barrels or storage drums will allow you to gather large quantities of rain water which you can hang on to for times when rain is scarce and your garden’s plants are running the risk of drying out. This simple means of irrigation can save you a great deal on your water bills over the course of the year.
Showers or Baths?
One of the most hotly debated aspects of saving water is which means of washing one’s self is less wasteful; baths or showers. Most people will tell you that having a shower uses up less water than taking a bath, but is this necessarily true in all cases? There are a number of factors which must be taken into consideration before declaring one as being better outright.
The main thing to consider about showers is that not all showers are the same. They vary wildly in terms of output. A state of the art power shower, for example, will expel water at a rate of 17 litres every minute. A bathtub, when full, generally hold around 200 litres of water. With this in mind, using a power shower for ten minutes or less will result in you using up considerably less water than if you were to take a bath. Considering the average person spends roughly eight minutes in the shower at a time, it appears that we have a clear winner – taking a shower will save you more water than if you were to take a bath instead.
Just because the average shower uses up less water than the average bath doesn’t mean that the case is closed. There are more things to take into consideration in relation to a shower. For example, showers use up electricity in addition to the water that they expel. This increases two household bills instead of just one. The combined price of running an electric shower for a full year in the average UK household has been worked out as costing in the region of €900 (around €1,100) per annum.
To reduce the amount of water that your power shower expels you should consider having what is called a ‘low-flow’ shower head installed onto it. This simple device will cut the volume of water sprayed out by an electric shower in half, offering a substantial saving in terms of water charges. Having a ‘low-flow’ shower head will not reduce your power shower’s ability to clean you as such showers have too much water pressure in any case.
In the case of nonpower showers, they can sometimes take a few minutes to heat up, meaning that you will have to leave them running for a while before you can hop in and wash yourself. Instead of simply letting said water run down the drain and go to waste, you should attempt to collect it and use it for other means (similar to the way we use ‘gray water’ as outlined in the ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Garden’ sections above). Collecting said water should be as easy as placing a bucket or basin in your shower area before you get started.
Radiator airlocks are a problematic anomaly commonly associated with radiators. While water is required to enter and move around a central heating system, an unavoidable side effect of this is that air will also enter the system. In small amounts, air poses no real problem to your radiator system, if too much of it builds up inside it prevents the water from moving about the radiator freely and stops heat from being distributed easily.
Radiator Airlocks – What Causes them in a Heating Systems?
Air usually enters a radiator when water is added to a central heating system. However, this is not the only way air can enter a heating system. If a radiator is leaking, air can enter via the gaps. Air can also enter a central heating system via a water supply tank which has run out of the water.
Radiator airlocks tend to occur at high points in a heating system (due to the fact that air is lighter than water causing it to rise to the highest possible point within a heating system). This is particularly easy to detect in radiators as the sections which are higher off the ground will be noticeably cooler than those closer to it. You should be able to simply figure out where the airlock is by means of touch.
If radiator airlocks have been left unattended for an extended period of time and air has accumulated throughout the radiator in its entirety you won’t be able to detect a difference in temperature between the top and the bottom of the radiator. However, it should be fairly obvious that there is an airlock as the radiator will be significantly cooler than one would expect of a fully functioning radiator. Compare it to other radiators in the building to make sure.
How Do You Get Rid of Airlocks in Radiators?
Firstly, ensure that the central heating system’s water tank has not emptied. If it has then the reason for its emptying must be found and rectified immediately. You will need to make sure that the water supply tank is refilled with water before proceeding to the next step of the process.
Turn on the central heating system and allow it to heat up fully (while this may seem wasteful at first thought, it actually prevents extra air from gaining entrance to the heating system in the later phases of the process).
Once the central heating system is fully heated up you should then switch it off completely.
Open the offending radiator’s ‘bleed valve’ (this is normally situated at one end of the radiator, usually near the top). In order to open the bleed valve, you will most likely need a ‘bleed key’. If you do not have one you should be able to purchase one at a hardware store.
Set up a basin or large pot underneath the bleed valve so that it will catch any water that might spill outward while you bleed the radiator. If you are careful, then you probably won’t spill any water at all, but it is always better to be safe rather than sorry in such situations.
Wrap on old cloth that you don’t mind getting dirty around the bleed key before using it. This should be enough to absorb what little water seeps out when you open the bleed valve.
Once you have taken the necessary precautions, you can then proceed to open the bleed valve. To do this you must insert the bleed key into the relevant opening of the bleed valve and, slowly, turn it anti-clockwise as far as ‘six hours’ (to maintain clock based analogies) from where you began.
If you have turned the bleed valve correctly, you should hear a hissing sound. Don’t worry. this is simply the air escaping from the radiator. It means you have done it right. Allow the hissing to run its course (it may take only a couple of seconds or the best part of a minute – it all depends on how much air is trapped in the radiator).
Once all of the air has escaped from the radiator the hissing will stop and water may begin to dribble out of the bleed valve. Once this happens you should reseal the valve as quickly as possible (by turning the bleed key clockwise) so that too much water doesn’t spill out. Be sure not to apply too much force when doing this as it could lead to you breaking the bleed key or, worse again the bleed valve itself.
If you are not entirely confident that you can successfully fix radiator airlocks problem by bleeding your radiators yourself or if, indeed, it actually is an airlock that is the problem then you should seek help from a professional plumber. If you would like to organise a call out be sure to call DeWAR Plumbers on our phone number 01 514 3300 or contact us via email.
How to Balance a Radiator System
To balance a radiator system is an essential method of ensuring that your radiators distribute heat evenly. Due to the method in which hot water is pumped around a heating system via piping, those radiators which are closer to the source (eg: a boiler) of the hot water tend to get more and heat up quicker as a result, with those which are further away taking longer.
Balance a Radiator
Balancing your radiator system rectifies this problem. To balance a radiator you need to use its lockshield valve. This valve is designed to regulate how much water flows into a radiator. Partially closing a radiator’s lockshield valve can reduce the speed of which water enters it. This is useful in relation to those radiators which are closer to the source of hot water as it means you can fine tune how quickly water enters these radiators so that they will fill up at the same time as those further away from it.
Figuring out exactly how open or closed each individual radiator’s is not the simplest of tasks. In order to do it accurately (and in anyway quickly) radiator thermometers should be used. These are clipped onto both the pipe where water flows into the radiator and the one where water exits the radiator. Having a radiator thermometer on each end of the radiator allows the difference of water temperature between the water entering and the water exiting the radiator. The use of radiator thermometers allows the temperature difference to be gauged quickly and efficiently, without the need for any ‘guestimating’.
When figuring out how much water is flowing into each individual radiator it is worth remembering that the same water is not flowing directly through a chain of radiators. Rather, the hot water comes from your central heating system’s main pipe (or ‘flow pipe’ as it is often called) and portions of it are then siphoned off into the individual radiators via smaller pipes which branch off from the flow pipe. Once the water passes through a radiator it then goes back into the flow pipe after exiting the radiator via an additional pipe (often called a ‘return pipe’). Knowing this will give you a better insight as to how the radiator system works and how lockshield valves affect the water flowing through it.
It is very important that you completely switch off your central heating system for a while before balancing your radiators.This gives the water in the system time to cool down, ensuring that you do not scald yourself while balancing the radiator system.
To balance a radiator system the following steps must be taken:
Radiators typically have two valves located on the pipes that allow hot water to enter them. The main one, which more people are familiar with (often called a ‘control valve’), is used for turning on and off your radiator in normal use. The second is your lockshield valve. This is generally smaller in size and cannot be turned easily by hand. The lockshield valve usually has a cover over it which must be removed before you can turn it.
You should open both of the valves on all of your system’s radiator when you are starting the radiator balancing process. You will most likely need to use pliers to open the lockshield valve.
Once all radiator valves are open, you should turn your heating system back on and proceed to the radiator closest to your source of hot water (you should tend to your radiators starting with the one closest to the source and so on until you finish at the one furthest from it).
Next, you should attach radiator thermometers to the pipes where water enters and exits the radiators. Then you should turn the lock shield valve slowly until the difference in temperature between the two thermometers is as close to 0ºC as possible.
Follow this method until you have properly balanced all of your radiators. The lockshield of each radiator will more than likely have to be open to different levels but don’t worry, that’s normal. Once this is done your radiator system should be fully balanced and your radiators should heat up evenly and efficiently.
If you are unsure about anything that you have read this article or you are unfamiliar with any of the tools that are needed to balance a radiator system then you should not attempt to do so yourself. In such cases, you should seek the help of a professional plumber who will have the tools and the know how to balance your radiator system effectively and correctly.
Call DeWAR Plumbers today on 01 514 3300. Our lines are open 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.
Alternatively, you can send us an email with any queries that you might have.
Condensate Drainage Pipe Maintenance
Condensate Drainage Pipe – One of the more serious problems associated with central heating systems is that of blockages accumulating in a gas boiler or oil boiler’s condensate drainage pipes. Such blockages reduce your boiler’s efficiency levels and, in extreme cases, have been known to lead to the boiler breaking down completely. While such problems are a lot more common during the cold winter months, problems can occur all year ’round so looking after your central heating system’s condensate drainage pipes should not be limited to winter time. Listed below is advice on how best to take care of your condensate drainage pipes in terms of fixing problems and preventing them from happening again in the future:
Condensate: A Definition
When we refer to condensate in the context of central heating systems and their boilers we are talking about the moisture which is emitted from the boiler’s flue and gathered in a specially devised collection area (usually a discharge pipe or, in some cases, a ‘condensate trap’) after it has passed through your boiler. These collection points are designed to limit the chances of your central heating system’s pipes from clogging up as well as becoming frozen pipe during winter
Condensate Drainage Pipe Maintenance Tips:
It is extremely important that you keep your gas/oil boiler’s condensate drainage pipe in proper working order for both fuel efficiency and health and safety reasons. Depending on the amount of time and/or resources you have available to you, there are both short term and long term ways of looking after your condensate drainage pipe.
Long Term Solutions:
The best and most permanent boiler condensate drainage pipe maintenance solution is relocating said boiler and its related piping to as warm an area as possible. Keeping your drainage pipes from areas that or prone to freezing or just cold in general (such as basements, attics etc.) is always a good idea. This will ensure that the condensate found within your drainage pipe does not become frozen when the temperature drops during cold winter months.
Such work should ideally take place long before the temperature lowers late in the year in order to avoid cold wintertime drafts and interference from bad weather while the relocating is being carried out.
If relocating your oil boiler or gas boiler and all of its associated piping is not feasible due to financial or logistical reasons you can also install layers of high quality insulating materials around your boiler’s condensate drainage piping. This should prevent freezing in all but the most lengthy and extreme of cold weather conditions.
Short Term Solutions:
If you are unable to carry out long term fixes for your boiler’s condensate drainage pipe problems there are still some options available to you. While they will not be quite as effective or, indeed, as long term as those solutions mentioned above, they can provide a helpful fix for a while at least. Here are two of the better short term ideas:
Increasing the temperature of your gas/oil boiler’s thermostat to coincide with cold periods will improve the overall temperature found in the condensate drainage piping, reducing the chances of ice from setting in. It is worth monitoring air temperature as this is being done because once the temperature begins to increase again you should turn the thermostat back down to its regular levels so that you aren’t using up any additional fuel (and thereby wasting money) unnecessarily.
Switching your heating controls to a setting that leaves your central heating system on continuously for 24 hours is another means of keeping your oil / gas boiler’s condensate drainage pipe’s average temperature that little bit warmer, reducing the chances of the pipe freezing over. This method has an advantage over periodically increasing the temperature on your thermostat as it requires a less ‘hands on’ approach which does not need you to keep an eye on it and modify it in tune with the changing temperature. However, just like the previously mentioned solution, it does result in extra fuel being used up.
If your condensate drainage pipe is causing you problems and you don’t know what to do then you should contact DeWAR Plumbers. Our 24 hour phone line 01 514 3300 is free to call. We can also be contacted via email.
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