My homemade reedbed water harvesting project

 Article on Monday, 13 March 2006, extracted from BBC News.

Hosepipes banned by Thames Water

Britain's biggest water company will ban hosepipes and sprinklers from next month, the firm has announced. Thames Water, whose eight million customers will be affected by the ban, says two unusually dry winters have caused "serious" water shortages. The South East has experienced its driest period for more than 80 years

  I used the water usage calculator on the BBC website and estimated that my family uses approximately 400lts of water per day. That equates to 133lts per person which compares favourably to the national average of 155lts per day. Of this about 60% is for showers and baths. However, the above calculation did not include the irrigation system that I have in the garden. I recalculated the water usage including use of a hosepipe to water the garden, but for a reduced time to account for the difference between a hose pipe and irrigation system rate of flow. This added 90 lts per day. Coincidently the water used for showers and baths equates to 80 lts per day.

We already did some water conservation by collecting rain water using a single water butt and leaving the grass to grow a little longer, and not watering it. So it seemed a simple solution to use the bath waste water to water the garden. At this point I should have just decided to have showers with the plug in and siphon out the water with a hose after it had cooled. As sane people eventually did. You can even now buy special products specifically designed to make it easier.

Development of Epsom Court

Before delving into the maps of Epsom and particularly Epsom Court I would like to refer you to The Epsom and Ewell History Explorer (EEHE) and the article on Epsom Court.

This site brings together articles covering the local history of the area. The articles may have been inspired by many things including specific suggestions, memories, printed works and of course the internet.

Epsom Court is one such article.

Epsom Court Alias Epsom Lodge or Court Farm, formerly the Saxon manor house of Epsom established upon a Roman site?

The Location It may be conjectured that a Roman road linked the villa and tile-works on Ashtead Common to the site of Epsom Court Farm where Toland, in his letter descriptive of Epsom from 1711, mentioned Roman remains. This would have extended from Woodcock Corner on the parish boundary, proceeding south of the present B280 Chessington Road and Christchurch Road to Clayhill Green. Seller’s map of 1690 indicates a secondary route to Ewell which passed Ashtead’s Woodfield before continuing north of Ebsham Wells and then on by Ebsham Court generally following a line suggested by Reginald White on his map in Ancient Epsom (1928). This way would have crossed a stream which still issues from The Cricketers’ pond at Stamford Green but has been contained in a culvert below Christchurch Road. At some time in history, however, a ford here would have been lined with imported stones (likely to have been flints) to improve the going over clay and so the location became known as Stamford as a corruption of the Old English stan [stone] ford. Then, as a letter in The Times of 31 August 1925 reported, ‘at the back of West Hill House, Epsom, there was a piece of Roman road showing … [which] might only have gone to Ebba’s Hame, the Court Farm, Epsom’. From Clay Hill Green the route continued along the present bridle path, Pound Lane. The supposed Roman road appears on the 18th century Rocque map included later in this piece.

UK Housing Stock

The first port of call on this discussion is the BRE Trust Report, the Housing Stock of the UK.

Domestic Hot Water Control

How much hot water you need and how to control it?

Immersion Heater

I recall a time when the immersion was controlled by two switches, one labelled sink and the other bath.

Not very high tech, but functional compared to a single on of switch. However, both are manual only, with the only other control being the immersion element thermostat.

When we moved to our current home the immersion heater was plugged into a switched 13A socket. When yo wanted to have hot water using the immersion heater, a quick flick of the switch beside the plug, and there you go, after a couple of hours, you had a bath full of water. This solution was even simpler than the wired, two switch variety.