
Water Supply
During the winter months, the water supply to the troughs located across the site are switched off to prevent their feeder pipes freezing up, bursting and leaking.
When the water troughs ran dry, a number of allotment holders asked when the supply would be switched on. The allotment association contacted Mike Gotobed (Borough of Poole Allotment Manager) who quickly arranged to have the water turned on, and issued the following statement...
The water should now be on between 08:00 and 20:00 daily for a trial period to see how the new timing system works, this will prevent high leakage should there be a fault in our pipes during the nights. If there are problems with these hours I will reset the timers to suit each site individually.
The water is always turned off during the winter to prevent water freezing in the pipes and troughs which would lead to a large wastage of water. Exact timing is decided due to prevailing weather conditions but it is normally turned off in late September or early October and goes back on in March, again depending on the weather at the time as we could still have substantial frost during a cold spell.
Arrangements had been made to turn on the water week commencing 21 March this year due to the extremely wet conditions that were prevailing on most sites, unfortunately I could not foresee the eleven days of dry weather that then came to pass.
I am happy to discuss the turn on dates of the water supply for future years but I will need to arrange this with a plumber in advance of the turn on proposed dates, as we do not have staff in house to carry out this function.
Regards
Mike Gotobed
Allotment Manager
Environmental Development Team
Environmental & Consumer Protection Services
Borough of Poole