Charles and Judy Ainger wash their clothes in rainwater. Living in the dry central belt of England, just to the west of London in Chalfont Saint Giles, they have being trying to save water for years, collecting rain in butts for garden use and showering instead of bathing.

Recently, however, they decided to go further, and now have a rainwater harvesting system which feeds one of their loos and the washing machine.

With bills rising, and water restrictions increasing, there has never been a better time to see how you can save and harvest every precious drop.

“Apart from saving money, our clothes come out of the washing machine much cleaner, we use less detergent and our washing machine suffers less from limescale build up,” says Charles Ainger, who three years ago oversaw the installation of a subterranean 3,500 litre tank. The Aingers live in a region where water comes from chalk aquifers and limescale build-up in machines and pipes is a major problem. “We don’t have this problem any more,” says Charles, a retired water engineer.

“The only drawbacks to the system, which has dried out once in the past 12 months, are that we initially got the wrong kind of pump, which was very expensive to run, and if leaves get stuck in the filter at the top of the guttering, they quickly impede water flowing into the tank.”
Living in a bungalow, Charles finds it easy to clear leaves from the downpipe filters. “If you have a two-storey house, you will need to think seriously about how you are going to keep those filters clear,” he says.

Another family who have reduced their water consumption enormously are Kit and Ellie Knowles, and baby Evie. Despite the extra demand on water having a baby makes, Kit and Ellie have reduced their water use from the average of 155 litres per person per day, to under 100. Kit, a sustainability expert, has experimented with a variety of eco kit in his 1909 south Manchester Arts and Crafts home, to see what works best. “Some things haven’t worked at all,” he admits. “New ideas often take a few years to perfect, like toilet bowl design for low-flush loos, things that you don’t really think about, but are really important.”

Green designer Oliver Heath, who lives in Hove, Sussex, has also managed to reduce his usage to below 100 litres per person per day, all through retrofitting water-saving devices as he felt he could not justify the £8,000-£10,000 expense of fitting a rainwater harvesting system. “There is a lot we can do to save water, just with simple alterations,” says Oliver, who along with the Aingers and the Knowles family will be opening his home next weekend, as part of the Superhomes project.

Throughout the country, “ordinary” families with standard homes will be throwing open their doors to demonstrate how they have saved energy and money through simple eco home improvements.

Top “retrofit” water-saving measures. 1) Change your shower head to an aerated one. “This is a no-brainer saver,” says Kit Knowles. Shower head aeration technology has vastly improved recently,

so you get the same water pressure, but using half the water of a conventional shower head. “And it’s as easy as changing a light bulb.”

2) Flushing the toilet with potable water from the mains is, says Kit, “the biggest joke of all”. When you next do some DIY in your loo or bathroom, switch to a low-flush loo. Latest dual flush models reduce the amount of water in every flush from 12 litres to two or three. “If you think how many times you flush your loos in a year, that’s a lot of water you save,” says Kit. Some models are more efficient than others. “A good rule of thumb is a tall, thin bowl and well-spread jets. Make sure you see it working before you buy it.”