One Drop

Hi There Freshwater Friends
Again I have a number of things to share with you for this week.


1. I found a great link on Youtube to video about fresh water.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if5ww5xgEUQ&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1

I found OneDrop.org when we went to Circue du Soleil. Circue du Soleil are donating money from every ticket sold to OneDrop.org. I think this is really good of them

2. We are redoing the survey on our water usage at our house. We made a few changes to the way we run taps etc. The biggest changes we made were, reducing shower time, changing the shower head to a more efficient (less water) design and fixing a leaky tap.
I am looking forward to the positive changes that they will bring to our home water usage. I will let you know the results next week.

3. On the National Geographic Web Site there is lots of information about people and communities that lack water and lack clean water. They also have some quizzes to test how much we know about water. My dad and I did one..................

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/freshwater-quizzes/

I got 4/10.
Dad got 5/10.




Slow steady drip = 280 litres per week
Fast Drip = 750 litres per week
Steady Stream = 3800 litres per week.

OneDrop.org

Fresh Water Usage at Home

I have lots of great information to share this week, so lets begin with what has been happening at home.

1. The results are in for our home freshwater survey and over the week we averaged 767 litres per day or 192 litres per person per day. This is a fair bit more than the 143 litres per person that was used by the Central South East Queensland. We will need to do something about our usage.

You can keep up to date with how much water we use in the South East Queensland Area by visiting the website below.
http://www.qwc.qld.gov.au/releases/2012-08-03-daily-water-use.html

2. Now the worst users of water were my sister and I who used 58% of all the water used, during our daily 13 minute showers.

I will ask dad to replace the shower head and install a timer so that we can reduce our consumption when we redo the survey next week.
Otherwise we must be really dirty to have used so much water.

The next highest use of water was from Mum and Dad's shower where 16% of the water was used.

Late news: Dad has replaced the shower head and where before it was 2.8 lites per 10 seconds, it is now 1.4 litres per 10 seconds. So we have halved the water flow.



3. I have put togther a sheet on how to read the water meter at home. I couldn't read a meter at first but dad showed me how to read it and I thought everyone should know how to do this so I have attached it to this blob. It will eventually be part of my Householder Pack on Managing Freshwater Usage in the Home.

You can copy and download this document if you like.

4. I also found out about how they 'make' the water we use in our homes. It goes like this -
- The water begins in a lake or dam where it is stored.
- It is pumped to a water treatment plant.
- Chemicals are added to make all of the dirt stick together and then they are filtered out.
- The water is disinfected to remove bacteria and other microorganisms.
- It is then stored in big water tanks before being pumped into our homes.

So thanks for reading my blog and I will send out another one real soon.
Bye.