Wasting water in a heatwave. Private schools keeping grounds green with sprinklers..

[ifonlytheydlisten]

I’ve seen this twice now this week whilst everywhere else has bans or people just accepting grass will be hay and water in short supply. Opposite end of spectrum to wild wire concerns and grassland burning near us. Do they have wierd exception? Is it just me that it really winds me up as entitled? It’s made me really annoyed.

I don’t know why people jump on private schools at every opportunity. The operate under the same rules as everyone else.

Because on MN private schools are considered a front for wealthy Illuminati and satanism. And a secret network promoting ultra-processed foods and unfashionable Roman sandals. Bad all round in the MN universe.

Equally very bizarre.

I have more sympathy with car washes. And in some areas there is no hosepipe or sprinkler ban anyway. But yeah, school watering grass in a heatwave is ridiculous.

YABU.

Ah, but at our school they play rounders on the front lawns once or twice in the summer term so they are sports fields 🫠

That’s not true - only recently Portsmouth Water have built an 80 billion litre reservoir in Hampshire!!

https://www.portsmouthwater.co.uk/new-reservoir/

Water companies knew for decades climate change was coming yet refused to invest in water infastructure, green tech for desalination and rainwater harvesting amongst a myriad of options to plan for water security. Our govt can't just keep building homes where the sewage and water systems are already broken and home owners currently there are paying for a service that doesn't work. It is WATER not something we should be gambling with by leaving up to global businesses. If we were still under EU laws they would have taken them to CJEU for risking life over the last few years, as they did prior to Brexit, but now we have no one in our corner and the govt needs to take control back.

You have to love the private school bashing... Do you know the source of the water? If it's not coming from the mains, it's fine.

It’s not private school bashing. I made it clear regardless who it was it looked very odd and out of kilter. Same as the mansion someone mentioned & a roundabout. Maybe they have own water source as other suggested. But still makes it look out of place and people would question it

I’m sure I read the other day that it’s ok to water new turf with the hose for so many weeks after it’s laid.

Same. New lawn cost me £200 for 30 rolls of turf. There is no way I'm letting mine go brown. I have been showering at least 3 times a day to cool down, so I have put my shower down to 2 quick showers and use my third shower to water the grass. I tried using the watering can but must get through at least the same. It's quicker n easier with the hose.

In this case the school is being “jumped on” because it is not following the rules that we are all expected to follow in the current circumstances. Its role in the imposition of Satanic Rule is best kept for another thread.

Come on. Private schools’ sprinklers are irrelevant to the subject of abuse of water restrictions. There are relatively few of them for a start, compared to state schools, car washes, cricket clubs, golf courses and so on, and it may be that only a small number of those few schools are actually using hosepipes to water grass.

So why have a thread about private schools and water?

I should say that I have no motive for defending private schools. I went through state as did all my children. I just find the MN obsession with their supposed iniquities amusing.

There's been loads of threads about other people arguably being irresponsible with water. This time the incident involved a private school. I think its a stretch to say the school is being singled out. Most of the threads I've seen have been bleating about how unfair it is that disabled people can use hose pipes to water their garden and disabled children are 'allowed' paddling pools.

Yes, I’ve seen the fuming about disability and hosepipes. Quite funny in its own way. Like a sort of little crew of female Alf Garnetts moaning about ‘special treatment’.

But I still cannot see what the conceivable relevance of private schools is to this subject. They’re only doing what any school or sports club can do. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference that they charge the parents.

I take your point, but isn’t it that local authority schools would have to comply and be seen to comply with national and local requirements? Private schools aren’t subject to the same authority

As far as I understood it - but am absolutely happy to be corrected - the same rules apply to state and private schools about water use during a ban. I googled it and that suggested my understanding was right.

@DenizenOfAisleOfShame it wasn’t sports pitches. It was vast lawns. And I’ve seen it twice now with diff schools

Ok, but as people have said, it’s not necessarily mains fed.

And in any case, if people are flouting the ban the amount of water being used wrongly by private schools will be negligible compared to misuse by hundreds of thousands of self-important garden owners, clubs and others.

I just don’t get the need for you to pick out private schools.

Or they aren’t on mains water, and as such are exempt from the ban. It’s not unusual for private schools to have their own water supply.

OP has merely assumed they aren’t following the rules.

I think the issue is its being done for asthetics rather than utility. It's not a sports field, its a front lawn where greeness serves only to make it look pleasing. I think it grates because it serves as another example of inequality.

Ordinary people are showering standing in buckets, avoiding car washes so those businesses lose income, doing their bit, either due to the law or due to social responsibility. Meanwhile, this school obviously believes the privileged are entitled to look at a green front lawn. So I guess it is relevant its a private school because it raises deeper issues for people.
Though I'm certain if it was a state school there'd be plenty saying the DC didn't need green grass, the school should be setting an example, and it was a waste of tax payers money.

The OP seems to be saying that the schools she’s seen are breaching the ban (on the assumption that they actually are doing that).

In which case they run the risk of action against them. Just like anybody else. But it’s still irrelevant that they’re private schools. Unless of course fee paying education is truly a source of unmitigated evil.

I’m sorry but the idea that a load of unwashed Tiny Tims are peering at sprinklers through the gates of the private school and quietly quivering with anger at the injustice of the world is laughable.