Hosepipe Ban already?

Less than 10 days ago we had a week of torrential rain. Is it not possible to store this water somewhere?

Not quite sure what you are getting at here but yes, it is possible.
E.g. this company provides rainwater harvesting systems. Can highly recommended

I reuse water used to wash dishes, for cooking etc. and , if necessary, bath water, to water plants and it's normally more than enough for my needs and the plants love it. I try to avoid using fresh potable water even when it's plentiful. Many people also install water butts for extra local supply. I have one but never got around to installing it yet.

Rain water captured in water butts or storage tanks is best for plants, but if you mean storing lots of rain so that it can feed a municipal water supply then yes, capturing is possible, just massively disruptive and expensive.

It's a meaningless publicity thing. I doubt many people water their gardens. Especially in Donegal. Much more water likely used in car washes.

A bit more detail here

ClubMan said:

I reuse water used to wash dishes, for cooking etc. and , if necessary, bath water, to water plants and it's normally more than enough for my needs and the plants love it. I try to avoid using fresh potable water even when it's plentiful. Many people also install water butts for extra local supply. I have one but never got around to installing it yet.

Click to expand...

Same here. I have about 7 or so of those 5 litre water bottles that you can buy in the supermarkets that I store water in for all sorts of uses in the garden and home.

I was more interested in wondering why the various local authorities/reservoirs cannot store more water. I live close to the Leopardstown/ Stillorgan water reservoir where works seem to have come to a standstill.

WaterWater said:

I live close to the Leopardstown/ Stillorgan water reservoir where works seem to have come to a standstill.

Click to expand...

I thought that the upgrade works had been completed?

WaterWater said:

I was more interested in wondering why the various local authorities/reservoirs cannot store more water

Click to expand...

The scale involved is massive. Typically the reservoirs may only hold 24 hours of water demand due to the economics involved (similar to the storage tank in your attic). The raw water sources are usually where the water is 'stored' i.e. lakes, aquifers, rivers. The areas with the hosepipe bans have limited raw water storage / catchment areas so are very sensitive to dry spells.

The recent ban id say will go in one ear and straight out the other, and cant see it being taken seriously.
In this Country, you cant leave the house without, your Tee Shirt, Jacket and Brolly in summer.
When we had the heatwave a few year ago, I remember when that ban came in, there was only one house on the road with a lush green Lawn, he had to have been mortified, he was a midnight sprinkler.

WaterWater said:

I was more interested in wondering why the various local authorities/reservoirs cannot store more water.

Click to expand...

They can store more, but it's not like they can turn on a tap to fill them, they rely on rainfall. The current ban, just affecting three small areas is due to significantly lower rainfall over an extended period.

Look back over recent years and all the outrage over the prospect that Dublin could tap the Shannon to increase supply there. For some light entertainment. listen to the same people moan about flooding in the winter!

Ireland has one of the highest renewable water resources per capita of any EU member state. This is a combination of (a) our relatively low population density, and (b) the fact that water falls out of the sky in inconveniently large quantities pretty much all year round. (Every cloud has a silver lining.) Because of this we don't have the same need for large-scale water storage (reservoirs, basically) or other water production like desalination plants that other countries do. Which is good, 'cause that stuff is expensive. Plus, it takes a long time to organise; you can't bring a new reservoir on stream very quickly. I don't have figures for public water storage per capita for Ireland or any other country, but I think ours would be relatively low.

But every silver lining comes with a cloud of its own. Because we don't have that much water storage capacity, if it ever does stop raining — if we have spell of drought or lower-than-expected rainfall — our reserves of stored water are exhausted fairly rapidly. We can address this by building more capacity, but that takes years to do on any scale. (It took three years to plan and construct the dam at Poulaphuca and a further 7 years to fill the reservoir.) And in the meantime measures to reduce consumption are unavoidable.

TomEdison said:

(It took three years to plan and construct the dam at Poulaphuca and a further 7 years to fill the reservoir.)

Click to expand...

Can you imagine how long that would take now even if you weren't kicking people out of their homes and flooding a graveyard.

Well, in fact the three-year planning and construction period was just for the dam. The damming of the river at Poulaphuca was first proposed in the early 1920s and was being actively progressed from 1932. Construction of the dam began in 1937 and was completed in 1940. The reservoir was full in 1947, about 25 years after the project was first conceived.

A lot of rain gets "stored" as ground water. Which, interestingly, you're pretty much free to drill wells for and extract as much as you want from underneath any land you own in Ireland - no permits required as far as I understand. And then use the hose pipe to your heart's content.

gaelic_oc said:

you're pretty much free to drill wells for and extract as much as you want from underneath any land you own in Ireland - no permits required as far as I understand.

Click to expand...

You can read all about what's permitted without a license here.