The hosepipe ban

Yes they do, eat them, but I know no other way of preventing mosquitoes from breeding - so I let him have fish. Maybe if newts then they would eat mosquito larvae but i think only when they were in residence and most of the time they are off patrolling the parish.

Newts eat mosquito larvae.

Oh, sorry, you said that already.

We used to have mosquito larvae in our water butt in Oxfordshire. I don't remember mosquitos being a problem though.

May depend on the species?

Ah.

Always keep a lid on a water butt- as larvae cannot develop in the dark. And of course to prevent birds drowning in it (very upset when I found 2 young sparrows almost dead- which is had to finish off )

Ours had a lid

Nuff light must have got in through the plastic, I suppose.

We don't need a water butt here. Takes all our effort to channel the excess water away.

I've set up my big butt (no, the water one) down the garden, and fill it with a long hose (allowed, and run permanently by the hedge roots.). Then I have water down there that I can put in a can or set to run the trickle watering - leaky pipe with mulch over it - from the butt right to the plants. I check and I can run it for two hours and it only uses about 4 cans. All into the exact right places.

I now have a trench, well half done, for the runner beans, and I will set them up with a water trickle too, in the trench if I can work it.
Garlic is doing fine without watering so far!

The pots near the house though I have to do by hand...and the greenhouse...but it's manageable.

why do they need light? Puzzling. Maybe a lack of food for them in the dark? What do mosquito larvae eat - must be a food chain that goes back to plants?

Even tap water contains algal spores. We store water in open reservoirs, after all. Try this experiment: fill a glass carafe or similar container with tap water. Put a lid on it. Put it on a windowsill and forget about it for a while. Eventually green algae will have grown in it.

Oops. Didn't finish. So I guess mosquito larvae eat whatever's in your butt water. Since ours was water off the garage roof, there was probably plenty of lovely edible stuff in it already that didn't need much light for it to be useful food for larvae.

Off the roof etc. My thought processes are going along the lines of - green algae will only grow in the light. So a closed water butt is going to get its edibles from the roof and gutter and not from photosynthesis in the butt. Don't think enough light could get through walls of butt to cause photosynthesis. Make sense?

Yep.

my little waterbutts are now nearly empty but have an outside tap at least-to fill watering cans.
I washed the car with a bucket filled up using the hose and I swear I used more water than if I'd just sprayed it quickly with the hose. How is it that a shower allegedly uses less water than a bath but filling buckets with water for washing the car is supposed to be less wasteful than a quick spray over with the hose!!

It's probably not - but they don't trust us to use common sense!

But surely washing a car is totally un-necessary in a time of drought, no? What is the point?? Very different to watering vegetables imho.

Saddened by the fact that our local crematorium are not keeping the 'vases' half full of water. So unless you take water with you ... the gift of flowers for a loved one, will not survive

We just had a downpour for 15mins so my water butt is half full again and the garden and pots are well watered..

And if you have a power shower that goes on for 15 minutes, guess what... But the water companies are not an evil empire - they just want to make sure there is enough water to keep the taps running all summer and are very worried.
Just saying "please use less" doesn't work. Hosepipe ban is a way of saying "we really mean it"

The water companies may not be an evil empire - but they'd rather put the onus on us to limit our use of the water we've already paid for rather than fix their leaky systems!

Anagram they fix leaks all the time. They are incomparably better at it here than they are in N Ireland where they never had privatisation. If you wanted a zero leak water system it would put the bills up significantly as it is labour intensive - most leaks are invisible and you can't track em down unless you run night time projects. People don't want their water turned off for hours just so you can try to check if there are any invisible leaks in the area.
And no amount of leak fixing can fix the fact that we have just had 2 incredibly dry winters in a row.

The fact remains that there would be no water shortage if water was delivered to where it was needed - the UK is awash with water in the north.