Watering the lawn with bath water. How???

[EmmaGrundyForPM]

We have stopped using our hosepipe on the lawn due to the current water situation. I keep seeing advice to use bath water to water the lawn. But how do you get the water from the bath to the garden? Do you scoop it out with a jug into a watering can? Wouldn't that take hours and loads of trips up and down from garden to bathroom?

Or do people use some sort of pump attached to a hose? Is that even a thing?

If the bathroom is upstairs, easy. Stick a hosepipe through the window and siphon it out. You put one end in the water, and then suck on the other end, like a giant straw. Once it gets going, gravity takes over..

I shower standing in a big builders flexitub bucket and then carry it outside. Then empty it into the water butt so that I can easily fill the watering can as needed.

Why on earth do you water your lawn? Flowers/plants I get but lawns just recover as soon as it rains (Wednesday this week for example)

This - basic physics makes it easy provided there's a height differential.

This is exactly how I used to drain a goldfish tank for cleaning, years ago.

Watch what's in your bath water though, so you don't inadvertently bump off a load of insects, crawlies, frogs etc with detergents, salts and various additives masqerading as 'pamper treatments'.

But yeah, siphoning into buckets is fun if you can manage it, or catch the drainage water as it comes out of the bottom pipe in a few shallow bowls or buckets. Not for the arthritic of back any more, sadly ...

Fitting a rain diverter to your drain pipe is the easiest way.
you can’t store the water for long though.

A waste of time imo, you will never be able to give the amount of water required to really soak the lawn (which is what would be needed). Lawns recover very quickly once it does start raining, although they might look yellow and parched right now.

I tried the “sucking on the end of a hosepipe to get a siphon going” once (for the purpose of emptying out a large paddling pool that was hard to tip on its side). I’m extremely relaxed about these things normally but it felt outrageously and disgustingly unhygienic to be sucking on a scabby garden hose that normally sits around in the garden, likely with little patches of residual water in there growing exciting microbial concoctions etc. I would not drink out of a glass I’d filled up with the garden hose, so I really didn’t like trying to suck on it to create a siphon. And it was a pretty long hose and it just didn’t work. I know it works in theory but I tried for about 5 mins and couldn’t get it going.

I agree with PP, grass is bloody sturdy, it'll recover. My stupid neighbours have been watering theirs all morning. I collect our bath water and scoop it all i to buckets and carry down the stairs (not fun) to water plants/trees but why do I bother?
I don'f understand why there isn't a hosepipe ban yet.

No way I'd do that either, it's manky inside and you're probably lucky not to have gulped up a slug. 😃

I wouldn’t be doing that either - legionella can live in garden hoses!

It's quite hard to syphon water with a hose, DH has a rowing boat which fills up with rain water and in the winter when he doesn't bail it out for the garden he had to buy a syphon thing from Amazon to help it along. I would use a watering can and think of the exercise you are getting up and down the stairs 😀

It's been a long time since I've done this (we used to do it during droughts back home in my part of NZ), but IIRC if you run the hose, fold it so it shuts off the water, and then, after turning off the tap (and holding the fold) you put one end of the hose into the bath and then unfold the hose. It should then siphon without the need to suck on it.

Your local aquarium / pet shop will have multiple devices to work as siphons. EBay have them from £1.99

If you don’t need the water for the plants you may as well do your lawn rather then send it down the drain

You don't need to suck on the end of the hosepipe to siphon it. Attach one end to your outside tap, put the other in the bath. Turn the tap on and wait for the water to have flowed all the way through the pipe and be coming out into the bath. Turn the tap off and disconnect the hose. If you keep the hose under the water in the bath it will then siphon all the water out, as the gravity pulls it back down when you turn the tap off. You have to use the 'wrong' end of the hose with the tap connection to then water but nicer than sucking on a hosepipe!

The thing that DH bought was called a bilge pump I think

I sort of did this last night - I had a fairly shallow extra bath without products to cool off before bed and then filled one bucket from it using a jug. I carried the bucket downstairs and used it to perk up one particular shrub in my garden which had suffered during the day. I also used some of the rest of the bathwater to help flush the toilet.

This wouldn't really be sustainable for general practice but also I don't feel the need to do it normally as the garden usually sorts itself out. It was only because I was thinking about water scarcity and also hadn't used shampoo, soap, bath salts etc that made it work as a one-off (maybe two-off if I do it again tonight...).

Ooh yes. That's the other way we used to do it. Much easier!

Since you've paid for the water, why not use it a second time rather than let it run away down the drain?

Use the bucket dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry,
Use the bucket, dear Henry, dear Henry, the bucket!

Thanks everyone. I know the lawn will recover, but I thought if there was an easy way I might try it.

I emptied dds bath using multiple trips with a bucket this evening. It didn't take hours but it wasn't quick and was bloody hard work. Going to get one of these siphoning devices. It felt quite decadent to generously water all my pots and several plants in bed that were struggling with no guilt!

No need to suck. Put the entire hosepipe in the bath starting from one end so you expel all air, block one end, put it out of window, when it’s lower than the water height you can remove the bung and water will flow.

Our wastewater system relies on having extra water to carry all the other stuff along . It’s not completely wasted down the drain. Arguably it is wasted on the lawn