Je suis buggered!

[Brian Ellis]

Spent the day (with the help of a friend), putting in two constant hot water circuits, so that we don't waste water waiting for it to run hot. Not used to hard work!

[Fat Tone]

Interesting. So running a water pump constantly costs less than the water? Or just water is really scarce and its worth the extra cost? What heats your water?

[Fat Tone]

PS Je Suis also buggered in the right upper arm after so much diy lately. Decorating, carpet laying, flat-pack building and endless trips to the tip recycling centre.

[Mehen]

Je suis also buggered from taking a hockey stick in the mouth. Cut up the outside of my cheek, and the inside, and its swollen. Eating sucks. Had a headache from it yesterday. Got a nasty bruise on my forearm from football today, and the usual scrapes all up my back.

[Brian Ellis]

It's not a question of cost but saving water, but the running costs are very small. The pumps themselves are 8 W each, so can run for 125 hours on 1 kWh costing €0.07 or thereabouts. In the kitchen, it took 90 secs before the water ran hot. However, I have complex electronic time controllers. On the bathrooms circuit, which took ~50 secs to run hot, I have it on at 0656 for 4 minutes to really heat up the whole circuit and thereafter a pulse of 1 minute every 10 minutes just to keep it going until 0930, This will cover all showers, even when we have late-rising visitors. Similarly, in the evening. fo 2230 until 2330.

For the kitchen, the timing is even easier. Nothing required in the morning as cereal and toast plates are simply lightly rinsed in cold water and put in the dishwasher. On 1145 for 5 minutes and again 1230 to cover lunch preparation (rarely really needed as we eat lightly). Preparing and washing up after dinner needs more hot water, so on and 1800 for 5 minutes and 1 minute pulses every 10 minutes thereafter until 1900, then the same again from 2000 to 2030 for the washing up.

In addition, the pumps are fitted with a thermostat that cuts them if the water temp exceeds a preset value, adjustable from 20-80 deg C. I have them set at ~50 deg C.

The programmable timers consume 6 W in the on condition and 2 W in the off condition and that is 24/7, of course.

Water costs us €1.70/m3. As a guess, we wasted 20-30 l/day just waiting (e.g., I brushed my teeth in the morning while running water before my shower, but continously: now I brush with cold water, turning the tap on for just a second 3 or 4 times to rinse the brush). As a guess, again, financially we'll be slightly better off in running costs, provided that I don't cost the capital outlay (~€1500) or try to amortise it. That was not the reason behind it.

Our water heating is solar, of course, with a backup of an immersion heater for clouds over days on end (I think we switched it on perhaps half-a-dozen times for a couple of hours each this winter: this is sufficient for 2 days as the HW tank is well insulated).

The problem is that Cyprus is DESPERATELY short of water. Last winter was a poor one for rainfall and, this time last year, the dams were only ~30% full. This winter has been the driest on record and the dams are only ~ 10% full: I measured total precipitation since 1 October whent the "wet" season officially starts of 101.8 mm where an average year would be close to 400 mm. We have reserves for only a few months, even with all the desalination plants working flat out (and spewing out tons of CO2). There is even talk of importing water from Greece and Lebanon by tanker, with the difficulty of no offloading infrastructure for deep draft vessels.

[Brian Ellis]

In today's paper:

Water cuts loom to battle drought
By Alexia Saoulli

CONSUMERS could face water cuts after the government agreed to cut Water Boards’ and local authorities’ water supplies by 30 per cent.

The decision was made during a lengthy meeting chaired by President Demetris Christofias at the Presidential Palace yesterday. The Ministers of Agriculture, Finance and Interior, as well as Water Board representatives, attended the emergency meeting, which had been called to decide how best to address the island’s dire water situation.

The Nicosia water board said earlier in the day that if its water supply was reduced it would be forced to make cuts with a worse case scenario of eight hours of water every 48 hours. The cuts will apply across the board, including homes, hotels, embassies and industry. Only hospitals will be spared from the measure. A decision about how to proceed will be taken in the next few days.

Speaking to reporters following the Christofias meeting, government spokesman Stephanos Stephanou said it had also been decided to begin building the necessary infrastructure to import water from Greece.

“This is estimated to take about five months,” he said.

Eight million cubic metres of water would be imported to begin with, with a possibility of bringing more, he said. He denied the cost was prohibitive.

Stephanou said the mobile desalination unit in Limassol would also double its planned daily output from 20,000 cubic metres to 40,000 cubic metres.

“The first [water] production is estimated for October,” Stephanou said.

The Government Spokesman said a series of other measures to address the island’s growing water problem had also been decided. These include exploring the possibility of using some desalination units with a container-type set up to cover emergency needs, drilling for new boreholes to supplement irrigation water needs, continuing to offer incentives for water saving measures such as the installation of water recycling units, and to step up water saving awareness campaigns.

Stephanou said the Ministries of Agriculture, Interior and Finance would continually monitor the situation and take additional measures “if and where necessary”.

“The meeting addressed the dramatic water shortage situation Cyprus in light of the ongoing drought and therefore decided to draw up a strategy to deal with the problem both in the mid-term and long-term,” he said.

Stephanou said the island was currently short of 17 million cubic metres to satisfy its water needs.

“Our water needs are 66.7 million cubic metres of water and there are 50 million cubic metres in our reserves,” he said.

Answering questions regarding the way water cuts would be managed, Stephanou said water cuts were a “necessary measure to meet the public’s needs”.

“How the management of cuts will be done is up to the Water Boards and the local authorities,” he said.

Agriculture Minister Michalis Polynikis said the decision was effective immediately and that it was up to Water Boards’ discretion whether to implement it as soon as possible.

Asked whether anyone would be called to take responsibility for today’s water situation in relation to insufficient planning and the timely creation of more desalination plants, Stephanou said it was not the time to apportion blame.
“The problem could have been handled better so that we didn’t get to this dramatic situation, but now is a time of action and decision making so that we can deal with the situation at hand,” he said.

Referring to penalties for water wastage, Stephanou said it was in the local authorities’ hands to implement them.

ACCORDING to the Water Development Board, the hotel and tourism industry absorbs only seven per cent of the available water for its irrigation and water supply purposes, the Association of Cyprus Tourist Enterprises (STEK) said yesterday.
STEK said the largest portion of water was usually allocated for irrigation purposes (65 per cent), followed by home water supply consumption (22 per cent).
It said the majority of hotels were sensitive to the consequences of drought due to their extremely high water bills, therefore forcing them to adopt a series of water saving measures.

The Association hit back at calls to look to tourists to save water and said such accusations were “entirely unacceptable and misleading” and displayed a compete “ignorance of the issue”.

THE GREEN party said yesterday it was its “duty and obligation” to bring up the issue of a wider, long-term action plan to deal with the island’s water issue.
The environmentalists said the problem could not be reduced to simply looking for resources to satisfy the island’s water needs.

“Needs are continually swelling and times are hard. Climate changes restrict capabilities in every respect,” the party said.

The Greens calls one the government to face the truth.

“We cannot continue with this unrestrained rate of development and ask Nature to satisfy our needs. We consider it unacceptable to be discussing taxing and costly proposals such as transporting water with tankers and mobile desalination units, while simultaneously approving licences for large development projects, golf courses, and extending zones,” it said.