The hosepipe ban

I always understood that, during a ban, it was permitted to fill a water butt with a hose. ( I am Thames Water area) Like you, tanith I am coming to the end of the rain water. Unfortunately my outside tap is at the front of the house, so carting cans to the rear, then uphill would be exhausting.
I have tried to check about temporary displays but can't find anything. As you say,it would make life much easier. Could you post the relevant link please?

Just looked at Thames Water website but it still says no hosepipes for garden watering. Does not mention waterbuts. Blue badge holders exempt at home and at allotments. So will still be lugging watering can round to veggies this evening. We filled paddling pool on Sat & Sun to first 'ring' using buckets and pans then kids watered pots b4 tea using the pool water..all good fun for them..harder work for me!

What they want to discourage is people putting on hoses that just run for a long time or that spray water over lawns etc. Use a lot of water that way!
When I was working for Welsh water we once had an "incident" - lots of people without water due purely to the number of people putting on hoses and sprinklers in the evening. We had plenty of water upstream, no bursts or anything - but local storage reservoirs were emptying faster than they could be filled.
I noticed this morning that one of our local ponds that was brimful 3 weeks ago has dropped best part of a foot. We need some rain now to water the gardens ... there are showers and thundery downpours forecast midweek.

I am 'mixing my threads' (see help thread) here but if there is a god why didn't she make it rain every night between 2:00 a.m. and 5:00.a.m then we could all be happy!

yes well I will resist the obvious answer

Well my garden pool had to be topped up 2" today due to evaporation.
I've had it two years now and I've never seen so many dragonflies and damsels in the whole of my life as I have in the last three days. They're lovely.

No hose pipe ban here in the Jura mountains, but water is expensive and we are all on meters. We have installed 3 x 1000 litre water containers, and already had a 500 litre one + bought a electrical pump so we can transfer water from one to t'other (the initial one being under the down pipe). As we have a big roof, it fills up in no time when we have a downpour.

Officially (irrespective of the ban) you shouldn't top up the pond with tap water as it contains chlorine and possible fluoride- so if I can I always top up with rain water (I know, easier said than done).

We had a drought for ages here in Queensland Australia and had complete hosepipe bans for a while, then later they gave us 4pm-5pm hosing allowance three days a week. No sprinklers though.

There were many solutions. You could get a government subsidised water tank - many folks did this, some had huge tanks plumbed into the laundry and toilet, as well as being there for garden watering. Of course, it had to rain to be any use!!

I just saved water. The dog's old water was thrown over plants near the door, I kept a bucket in the kitchen for vegetable water and clean waste water, I diverted the bath and shower exit pipes to the banana trees, attached a long hose to the washing machine outlet to water other trees, and used buckets or watering cans (permissable) for the rest.

Then we had floods. Another story.

I know but no other option!

I can just imagine you out in the garden in your nightie at midnight - quietly dragging the hose in the right direction and then wait with a G&T - shhhhhhh gran's the word.

Shysal I'm with Veolia Water here not Thames Water here is a link for them

https://southeast.veoliawater.co.uk/docs/drought-restrictions-explained-29-March.pdf

but as I said each company has different regs. No point in filling my water butt from the hose as I can just fill the watering can from the tap its at the side of the house.. I hope I'm reading the regs correctly it does say temporary displays and pots may be watered with a hose as long as they are on a meter or hand held at all times, I've actually just noticed it seems to include gardens as well.. now I am confused...

granjura sounds like you have yourselves very well organised.. night time rain would be perfect...

Since we moved into this house and now have a water meter, I have become a bit neurotic about using water. DH says it's supposed to make you conscious about not wasting water, not neurotic about using it! We have no hosepipe ban here, and my water butt is now empty, but I have taken to harvesting every scrap of waste water I feasibly can for watering plants. Of course, it's not enough; it takes ten gallons just to water my miserably small flower bed, and then there are all the pots, so I resort to the hose. I comfort myself by thinking of all the water that went down the drain when GS left the tap running in the downstairs cloakroom and no-one noticed for two hours!! I gritted my teeth, patted him on the head and asked him to make sure he didn't do it again!

No ban here! Anyway I'm on a meter and disabled. But I couldn't use a hose with two crutches

There is a school of thought that says you shouldn't top up ponds at all because in natural circumstances they do dry up and then refill. The wildlife has adapted to cope with this. I need to go and find where I read that now.

I suppose some garden ponds don't have much water draining into them naturally though

bumbles off to check stuff about ponds

It's strange really. We are told to grow our own - better for us etc etc - but now we can't water the produce without a lot of hassle and strength so...our produce dies and unless we use our gas guzzlers to get to the nearest shop we will starve to death or end up with bad backs in hospitals where we succomb to infection. Is this a Government plot do you think?

Here ya go: pondconservation.org has some info that is interesting.

New I'd seen it somewhere, though none of the three pond books on my own shelves were any use .

Knew

It's only a very small garden pond! In fact some of the local pot holes in the roads are bigger

depends whether you've got goldfish Bags

I've always wanted a wildlife pond and when we moved here OH and SIL dug one but what we ended up with wasn't at all what I wanted so at that point I gave all rights to the pond to OH and now we have a pond full of fish , the frogs find their way in and the damn fish eat all the spawn... I don't like it but OH has fun taking care of it.. I don't think he even noticed that I have nothing to do with it...lol

Rule number one for a wild pond - no goldfish, etc! We have plenty of newts in ours and dragonfly larvae, which do eat some of the tadpoles - but the balance is natural.

No fish in mine

No fish on ours either. Visiting herons would eat them anyway.