March 23, 2013

It’s dry

By

How dry is a 100m soil moisture deficit, which we have over a lot of the country (yellow, on the NIWA soil moisture maps)?

  • 100mm over 1 hectare is 1 million litres
  • A typical full section in Auckland is about 0.07 hectares [ok, I can’t do simple arithmetic, and the US has made me think in acres]
  • Water at the tap costs $1.343/ 1000 litres

So, a 100mm moisture deficit over the area of a city section would need about $1000 of tap water to make up.

 

avatar

Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar
    David Welch

    Not sure which part of Auckland you are in, but most usually a 600m2 (=0.06 ha) section is considered pretty decent. So that’s be $100 worth of water required…

    12 years ago

  • avatar
    Nick Iversen

    The problem is that you can’t just buy $100 worth of water. When you buy water in Auckland you also have to buy wastewater too and that costs $2.281 / 1000 litres.

    So more like $300 worth of water.

    12 years ago

    • avatar
      Thomas Lumley

      Ordinary householders have to pay wastewater charges on their fresh water, but in principle it’s possible to get wastewater metered and not pay the extra.

      12 years ago