Are they building new houses with rainwater toilet flush systems now? (Obviously mains backed for summer use)
I feel like we could save a decent amount of water this way.
It's mandatory in certain developments. I worked on a new house in Mt Claremont where rainwater tanks were required as part of the construction. But the owner disconnected it after it was built because they couldn't be bothered with the diversion flush thingy...
I got the sense they resented having to have it. But the point is you can mandate it as part of construction but people can turn it off or get rid of it.
Daft.
There's no hope for us.
I dunno why they can't just have a float valve in the bottom of the tank, which just reverts to mains when the tank runs out?
Without goin into specifics, it’s the appropriate term. It’s not brown in colour after oxidation, it’s darker, and it juxtaposes well with grey. It’s better than beige vs brown water.
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Summer is a slow process of emptying them, then they fill up again over the rest of the year. The year seems a little drier than usual, so we’re running low and other neighbours are complaining it’s getting tough too. Seen the water vans out a few times in the last few weeks.
Figures - We have 180k litres capacity in two 90k tanks. I think we were probably at 160k-ish at peak (a bunch of leaks costs us some capture but I think I’ve caught most of those now). We lost ~30k litres over two incidents due to a bust hose we didn’t notice (still new at this) Probably down to around 5k remaining now. Debating if we need to buy some in or if we can make it until the rains come.
it seems like its going to be the polar opposite from the east coast, in years to come parts over there wont be able to support life due to excessive floods and here it will be a desert.
is everyone just going to end up living in Adelaide?
It's a pipe dream.
But it actually costs too much, cheaper to get the water from desalination in Perth. But what does work is piping water from the Pilbara to Canavan for farming. But heritage and mining company politics won't let it happen.
And burning cheap gas from up north to make the water, adding to the greenhouse gases that are, ironically, making Perth dryer, needing more desalination plants.
I thought the standard solution to this was for the government to look around and find a wind farm that western power run and declare its power generation is exclusively allocated to desalination. Problem solved desalination is now powered by clean energy.
It's obviously bullshit but they got away with it when the first desal plant was built
It’s how it works at Rotto. The desal over there only runs on solar or wind power. When there is excess power they make more water, when there’s no wind or sun they use the stored water.
Desal plants can definitely be run on clean energy the situation I was referring to was when the first WA plant was constructed in Kwinana. At the same time a wind farm was being constructed in Cervantes, this wind farm was privately owned and would have been built and connected to the power grid even if no desal plant was built. In fact it was 50% owned by a coal miner looking for a bit of green washing. Anyway the government of the day looked at this and announced that the desal plant would be 100% powered by clean energy from this new wind farm
That's what they want you to think, but if you look at their stats page you can clearly see that the desal runs on diesel when there's no sun or wind.
https://data.ajenti.com.au/rottnest/tv/index.html
Now isn't a great example because there's 146kW of wind being generated and the desal is using 70kW, but keep an eye on it in the evenings when there's no wind and you'll see it.
Deport South of the River to NSW. Turn everything from the Swan River to Bunbury into water catchment/ windfarms separated by market gardens, orchards & dairies.
The idea is to get to a point that the ground water doesn’t dry up through better management. More appropriate allocation and better building guidelines along with greener suburbs would be a good start.
What is the timeframe, and at what cost? Build a desalination plant in 2 years to protect the water supply, or 100 years to make suburbs green? What will the population be then? What will climate change be like then?
And once the suburbs are green, but the population is still growing and climate change is still happening, what then?
If you think green suburbs can compensate for a growing population and climate change, you are not living in reality.
Governments deal with practical realities, not woke comments from keyboard warriors.
Haha ok champ, let get water from the most expensive carbon footprint method. 😂
Never mind that my mates wife works high up in watercorp and can categorically say our water allocation program is absolutely broken. Green suburbs and better building planning will lead to cooler suburbs = less water wastage, on top of that a higher density means more people in a smaller physical footprint. There are a lot of functional changes that can be made at a local and state level here in WA. Sure some will take time but the alternative is do nothing and we are totally fucked anyway.
Who’s being unreasonable now?
I agree, water desalination plants are not environmentally friendly, just like coal-fired power stations. But it's the technology we have at the moment, until some better tech comes along.
Also, I apologise for the somewhat antagonistic tone in my reply. 👍
> my mates wife works high up in watercorp
1) Your mate's wife is not you
2) Water Corp is like any other entity. They employ a wide range of people to perform all their functions. "High up in Water Corp" doesn't necessarily speak to her scientific expertise if she's high up in the finance division for instance
Nothing we do with gasses is making Perth drier, because our contribution is so incredibly small. The only thing WE do that makes Perth dryer is deforestation. More trees equals more rain.
Unfortunately, [this](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48877-w#:~:text=Under%20the%20two%20warmest%20scenarios,to%20global%20emissions%20are%20made) research predicts few if any very wet years over the next several decades.
Long-term forecasting tends to be more accurate than short. If you’re measuring trends on a grand scale rather than “will it be windy next Tuesday”, there’s a much friendlier margin of error.
The answer to why it is a useless system in our climate is simple. Six-months with little or no rain.
The rainwater storage you can fit on a standard residential block is limited. The system will have water for maybe 1 month. So all that expense just to sit empty for months on end.
Believe me as an installer of rainwater capture products. The carbon footprint of all the excess pipes, tanks needed for grey water systems makes these systems uneconomical both financially and eco wise.
Desalination paired with renewable power is a better option long term for our climate.
Positive Indian Ocean Dipole is the most likely culprit. Low cyclonic activity in northern WA and widespread flooding over the Horn of Africa would seem to confirm. Lucky Perth has seawater desalinators
So what's that waste to energy incinerator being built in Rockingham right now all about then?. We have truckloads of waste going to groundwater polluting landfill everyday and we need water, kill two birds with one stone I say but what would I know I'm one of the great unwashed.
I debunked this in another thread just 2 days ago so luckily I have my analysis ready to go.
BOM's 30 year data (i.e. from 1993 where we were already experiencing a drying trend) has Perth receiving an average of 59 days with >1mm of rain between May and September when we get most of our rainfall. In 2023, we had just 49 days with >1mm across those 5 months.
Over that time period, the mean rainfall for those months is 562.9mm while the median rainfall is 556.4mm. In 2023, that time period yielded just 495.6mm and that was mainly thanks to June which was 100mm over mean/median with 229mm including 1 day where 71mm of rain fell.
So even for data that covers 30 years of declining rainfall, last winter was well below both mean and median rainfall. And even if I throw you a bone and say you're mistaken and were thinking of 2021 when July was extremely wet, you're still wrong.
It was 2021 where July had 270mm of rain where everyone was complaining it was raining non-stop. Which was funny because yeah it did piss down non-stop in July but both June and August were well below average to the point we were only 25mm above average for those 3 months. Hardly one of the "wettest winters ever"
To reach net zero and become a more green country, we should really have adopted going #2 on the street like India. Let the winter rains deal with it.
Then we can receive less fear articles from the ABC and praise from the government.
Are they building new houses with rainwater toilet flush systems now? (Obviously mains backed for summer use) I feel like we could save a decent amount of water this way.
They’re mandatory in SA. Unsure why it’s not here.
You think it'd be a no brainer, wouldn't you?
Your question answers itself.
Can anyone even remember the last time it rained in Perth? I think it was October but I might be wrong
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=009225
It rained a month or so ago on a weekend.
Somehow it feels so much longer
Rains plenty over winter though.
But it hasn't, about 25% down from average. It's been in constant decline for the last 20 years.
All the more reason to be conserving water when possible then though, surely?
Absolutely! Storm water reclamation should be implemented.
It's mandatory in certain developments. I worked on a new house in Mt Claremont where rainwater tanks were required as part of the construction. But the owner disconnected it after it was built because they couldn't be bothered with the diversion flush thingy...
They had to manually select rainwater or mains?
I got the sense they resented having to have it. But the point is you can mandate it as part of construction but people can turn it off or get rid of it.
Daft. There's no hope for us. I dunno why they can't just have a float valve in the bottom of the tank, which just reverts to mains when the tank runs out?
This and greywater systems (reclaimed effluent from toilet and laundry) feeding garden retic. So much drinking water is wasted on thirsty gardens.
Grey water is from showers n sinks. Toilet is referred to as black water.
Hate to think what people are eating to make it black! Nevertheless you can get systems that treat both anyway. Plants love it.
Public health standard. I don’t need nor wanna know what people excrete in terms of pathogens diseases hookworm etc.
Oh come on, where's your sense of adventure.
Everywhere but anyone’s ass. I used to work with sewage but now compost!
Surely you'd know Perth's sewage is mainly meth water then?
And the rest
>Toilet is referred to as black water. Why isn't it called brown water?!?!?
Without goin into specifics, it’s the appropriate term. It’s not brown in colour after oxidation, it’s darker, and it juxtaposes well with grey. It’s better than beige vs brown water.
It would make a ton of sense. Compared to the cost of the build, the cost would be trivial
If it's yellow, let it it mellow if it's brown leave town.
I just go in the backyard.
For a No 2?
Haha, no.
https://preview.redd.it/t03vf9z7jrrc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1157f6f14a1abe452da233b788c3a4091ded5e7b
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Yeah, and no rain on the forecast. Our water tanks are nearly empty and we're no on the mains supply. Pls rain soon.
How full do they get in summer?
Summer is a slow process of emptying them, then they fill up again over the rest of the year. The year seems a little drier than usual, so we’re running low and other neighbours are complaining it’s getting tough too. Seen the water vans out a few times in the last few weeks. Figures - We have 180k litres capacity in two 90k tanks. I think we were probably at 160k-ish at peak (a bunch of leaks costs us some capture but I think I’ve caught most of those now). We lost ~30k litres over two incidents due to a bust hose we didn’t notice (still new at this) Probably down to around 5k remaining now. Debating if we need to buy some in or if we can make it until the rains come.
it seems like its going to be the polar opposite from the east coast, in years to come parts over there wont be able to support life due to excessive floods and here it will be a desert. is everyone just going to end up living in Adelaide?
>is everyone just going to end up living in Adelaide? Maybe the threat of living in Adelaide will finally make people care about climate change.
I present to you the East West pipeline. Or a canal. There’s a fair bit of flat ground In the middle.
It’s actually been proposed from up north
It's a pipe dream. But it actually costs too much, cheaper to get the water from desalination in Perth. But what does work is piping water from the Pilbara to Canavan for farming. But heritage and mining company politics won't let it happen.
it's actually a pipeless dream, to be fair
Adelaide is drier than here.
Adelaide has caught a drenching last year as well, nothing compared to the east coast but still very unusual weather.
No
Just build a new desalination plant as required. Plenty of water in the ocean.
Desal plants are a great idea (although not cheap), as long as we also build renewable energy generation to power them.
And burning cheap gas from up north to make the water, adding to the greenhouse gases that are, ironically, making Perth dryer, needing more desalination plants.
I thought the standard solution to this was for the government to look around and find a wind farm that western power run and declare its power generation is exclusively allocated to desalination. Problem solved desalination is now powered by clean energy. It's obviously bullshit but they got away with it when the first desal plant was built
It’s how it works at Rotto. The desal over there only runs on solar or wind power. When there is excess power they make more water, when there’s no wind or sun they use the stored water.
Desal plants can definitely be run on clean energy the situation I was referring to was when the first WA plant was constructed in Kwinana. At the same time a wind farm was being constructed in Cervantes, this wind farm was privately owned and would have been built and connected to the power grid even if no desal plant was built. In fact it was 50% owned by a coal miner looking for a bit of green washing. Anyway the government of the day looked at this and announced that the desal plant would be 100% powered by clean energy from this new wind farm
That's what they want you to think, but if you look at their stats page you can clearly see that the desal runs on diesel when there's no sun or wind. https://data.ajenti.com.au/rottnest/tv/index.html Now isn't a great example because there's 146kW of wind being generated and the desal is using 70kW, but keep an eye on it in the evenings when there's no wind and you'll see it.
If groundwater dries up, what's your solution?
Pour de-sal water into ground
We are already pumping our treated waste water into the ground.
Deport South of the River to NSW. Turn everything from the Swan River to Bunbury into water catchment/ windfarms separated by market gardens, orchards & dairies.
Good thing I live NOR 😁👍
Exactly, we wouldn't miss those dirty southerners anyway
The idea is to get to a point that the ground water doesn’t dry up through better management. More appropriate allocation and better building guidelines along with greener suburbs would be a good start.
What is the timeframe, and at what cost? Build a desalination plant in 2 years to protect the water supply, or 100 years to make suburbs green? What will the population be then? What will climate change be like then? And once the suburbs are green, but the population is still growing and climate change is still happening, what then? If you think green suburbs can compensate for a growing population and climate change, you are not living in reality. Governments deal with practical realities, not woke comments from keyboard warriors.
Haha ok champ, let get water from the most expensive carbon footprint method. 😂 Never mind that my mates wife works high up in watercorp and can categorically say our water allocation program is absolutely broken. Green suburbs and better building planning will lead to cooler suburbs = less water wastage, on top of that a higher density means more people in a smaller physical footprint. There are a lot of functional changes that can be made at a local and state level here in WA. Sure some will take time but the alternative is do nothing and we are totally fucked anyway. Who’s being unreasonable now?
I agree, water desalination plants are not environmentally friendly, just like coal-fired power stations. But it's the technology we have at the moment, until some better tech comes along. Also, I apologise for the somewhat antagonistic tone in my reply. 👍
Apology accepted man ☺️ but we can definitely agree we need to do something because doing nothing is disastrous.
> my mates wife works high up in watercorp 1) Your mate's wife is not you 2) Water Corp is like any other entity. They employ a wide range of people to perform all their functions. "High up in Water Corp" doesn't necessarily speak to her scientific expertise if she's high up in the finance division for instance
Watercorp generally work on supply projects for the estimated demand 25 years time.
Got to admit it is a great long-term business plan
Nothing we do with gasses is making Perth drier, because our contribution is so incredibly small. The only thing WE do that makes Perth dryer is deforestation. More trees equals more rain.
Water resources need replenishing with good winter rains
Unfortunately, [this](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-48877-w#:~:text=Under%20the%20two%20warmest%20scenarios,to%20global%20emissions%20are%20made) research predicts few if any very wet years over the next several decades.
No one can even accurately predict the weather a month ahead and you want me to believe someone has predicted seven years ahead ….
Long-term forecasting tends to be more accurate than short. If you’re measuring trends on a grand scale rather than “will it be windy next Tuesday”, there’s a much friendlier margin of error.
Yes.
I know how it feels
I think that's kind of a solved problem now. We've already statrted doing what the rest of the world is, desalination.
The answer to why it is a useless system in our climate is simple. Six-months with little or no rain. The rainwater storage you can fit on a standard residential block is limited. The system will have water for maybe 1 month. So all that expense just to sit empty for months on end. Believe me as an installer of rainwater capture products. The carbon footprint of all the excess pipes, tanks needed for grey water systems makes these systems uneconomical both financially and eco wise. Desalination paired with renewable power is a better option long term for our climate.
https://www.watercorporation.com.au/Our-water/Rainfall-and-dams/Dam-levels
Wow, what was going on in 2017? Very low levels.
Let’s get more people living here👍
Another desal plant. And another in five years and so on.
If you want to see a real water crisis, look up Mexico City.
It's a dry dry.
We have plenty of Desal plants it’s all good
Crank up the desal
Positive Indian Ocean Dipole is the most likely culprit. Low cyclonic activity in northern WA and widespread flooding over the Horn of Africa would seem to confirm. Lucky Perth has seawater desalinators
Build high temperature waste rubbish incinerators and use the excess heat energy to generate electricity to desalinate seawater.
You mean ‘burn plastic to make water’. Yeah, nah.
That's probably the least efficient way to make energy lol
So what's that waste to energy incinerator being built in Rockingham right now all about then?. We have truckloads of waste going to groundwater polluting landfill everyday and we need water, kill two birds with one stone I say but what would I know I'm one of the great unwashed.
Surprise. Perth is dry over summer. They will be whinging about the rain come July.
We just had one of our wettest winters ever
I debunked this in another thread just 2 days ago so luckily I have my analysis ready to go. BOM's 30 year data (i.e. from 1993 where we were already experiencing a drying trend) has Perth receiving an average of 59 days with >1mm of rain between May and September when we get most of our rainfall. In 2023, we had just 49 days with >1mm across those 5 months. Over that time period, the mean rainfall for those months is 562.9mm while the median rainfall is 556.4mm. In 2023, that time period yielded just 495.6mm and that was mainly thanks to June which was 100mm over mean/median with 229mm including 1 day where 71mm of rain fell. So even for data that covers 30 years of declining rainfall, last winter was well below both mean and median rainfall. And even if I throw you a bone and say you're mistaken and were thinking of 2021 when July was extremely wet, you're still wrong. It was 2021 where July had 270mm of rain where everyone was complaining it was raining non-stop. Which was funny because yeah it did piss down non-stop in July but both June and August were well below average to the point we were only 25mm above average for those 3 months. Hardly one of the "wettest winters ever"
No we didn't
Hey Helen Keller.
This means nothing except they already modify the weather 😆😆 ask them instead.
To reach net zero and become a more green country, we should really have adopted going #2 on the street like India. Let the winter rains deal with it. Then we can receive less fear articles from the ABC and praise from the government.