Kilbarron National School

Jan 28 2015

Water

We’ve been trying to conserve water in our school for the last 2 years. The graph below shows how successful we’ve been!!

Water usage in our school 2012 to 2014

The pupils of Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Classes produced our own guide to conserving water.

Kilbarron N.S. Water Conservation Tips

Turn off the taps when washing your teeth – you can save up to 6 litres of water.
Take a shower not a bath.
Don’t use power showers as a 10 minute shower uses as much water as three baths!
Time your shower for less than 5 mins. as you can save up to 4,500l of water per month.
Never use a hose pipe in your garden. Use a sprinkler watering can instead of a hose to water your plants. A hose uses as much water in one hour as a family uses in one day.
Always fix leaking taps – a dripping tap can waste as much as 1l of water per hour. That’s enough to fill a bath in one week!!
Use your dish washer and washing machine only when they are full thus saving energy as well!
Visit Irish Water’s website to learn more about being water smart in the home www.water.ie
Only fill your kettle with as much water as you need – you’ll also save on your electricity bill.
Keep a jug of water in the fridge instead of running the tap to make the water cool to drink.
Flush the toilet only when necessary – depending on your cistern’s age and size one flush can use up to 9 litres of water.
Consider adding a displacement device to your cistern to reduce the amount of water used.
Collect rainwater to use in your garden instead of using drinking water from the tap.
Avoid watering your lawn – grass can survive long dry spells and recovers quickly with the next rainfall.
Use a bucket and sponge to wash your car or windows instead of a hose.
Regularly check your outdoor taps, pipes and plumbing fixtures for leaks.
Read your water meter regularly – this is a good way of spotting leaks.
Wash your vegetables in a basin and then use this water to water plants.

Facts on Water

99% of the world’s water cannot be used as it is salt water or locked up in icy glaciers.
A dripping tap will waste 45,000 litres of water in a year.
A hose pipe can use 1,000 litres of water per hour – as much as a family would use in 2 days.
The human body is 2/3 water.
Water is made up of two elements – oxygen and hydrogen.
The human brain is 85% water.
A human can only survive 5 or 6 days without water but can survive a month without food.
A powershower use 125 litres of water every 5 minutes.
5 billion people in 48 countries experience water scarcity daily.
20 countries depend on the flow of water from other countries for their water supply.
In our school we get our water from the Kilbarron Group Water Scheme.
We have a waste water treatment system in our school.
There is a water treatment plant in Coolbawn.
The chemical symbol for water is H_2O
Water has three different states – liquid, solid and gas.
Water covers 70% of the earth’s surface.
The three largest oceans in the world are: 1^st The Pacific Ocean, 2^nd The Atlantic Ocean and 3^rd The Indian Ocean.
There is water in the polar ice caps on the planet Mars.
Pure water has no smell or taste.
Water boils at 100 °C and freezes at 0 °C.
As water freezes it expands – this is why frozen water pipes burst.
Electricity can be generated by moving water at a Hydroelectric Power Station.
It takes 200 million litres of water per second to grow enough food for the people of the world.
90% of the world’s fresh water supply is locked up in the ice of Antarctica.
Since life began we have had the same amount of water on our planet.
We use 2/3 of our fresh water supply in our bathrooms.
One cotton T-Shirt has 25 bathfuls of water embedded in it.
The average Irish person uses 150 litres of water per day. That’s 675 million litres per day for the country.
30% of all water used in the home is flushed down the toilet.
The average cow will drink over 200 litres of water per day.