If you’ve noticed the words “Level 1 water restrictions” popping up again, you’re not imagining it. The City reinstated them on 1 September, and they’ll stay in place until 31 March next year.
Most homeowners skim past notices like this. But it’s worth reading this one properly, the rules are specific, they’re enforced, and getting them wrong is an easy way to waste water.
What Level 1 Water Restrictions Actually Means
The rules are narrower than “use less water”, they target specific behaviour. Watering gardens and filling swimming pools is banned between 06:00 and 18:00, every day, from 1 September through to 31 March. Washing paved areas and driveways with a hosepipe isn’t permitted at all during that period.
In practice, that means early morning or evening watering only, pool top-ups scheduled outside daytime hours, and driveway cleaning done with a bucket rather than a hose. None of it is complicated, but it’s easy to fall foul of out of habit, especially if your irrigation system runs on a timer that was set for convenience rather than compliance.
Why the City Brought It Back Now
Level 1 water restrictions return every spring for the same reason: rising temperatures drive up garden watering, pool filling, showering and car washing all at once, and that surge lands on a system that was already struggling before summer even started.
September gave a clear demonstration of how little slack is left. On 8 September, the Ministry of Water and Sanitation convened an urgent meeting with Rand Water, the Department of Water and Sanitation, Gauteng’s provincial government, City Power, Johannesburg Water and Eskom, specifically about the unreliable electricity supply to Rand Water’s Eikenhof pumping system. Barely a week later, on 14 September, a power outage at Rand Water’s Vereeniging Pump Station knocked out the Eikenhof and Zwartkopjes stations, leaving Soweto, Randburg, Roodepoort, Lenasia and the Deep South with low pressure or no water. By mid-September, Johannesburg Water was managing eight active outages at once, seven of them from burst pipes, in areas including Highlands North, Athol, Linbro Park, Marlboro and Wynberg.
This is the third month running that a City Power electrical fault has taken out a major pump station, Eikenhof in July, Fordsburg in August, and now Eikenhof again in September. It’s stopped being a coincidence and started being the defining risk to Johannesburg’s water supply this year.
The Numbers Behind the Restrictions
The city is reportedly drawing around 61% more water than its official allocation permits, while losing an estimated 25 – 40% of treated water to leaking pipes before it ever reaches a tap. Recent infrastructure assessments have put the network at roughly 2,300 burst pipes, 422 leaking valves and 42 leaking reservoirs at any given time.
That context matters, because it means the restrictions on your garden hose exist to offset losses that have nothing to do with your household. Fixing your own leaks and using water carefully genuinely helps, but so does understanding that a meaningful share of the problem is happening underground, out of any single homeowner’s control.
Why Electricity Prices Make Solar Geysers Worth Another Look
Eskom’s approved tariff increase for this financial year was 8.76%, with a further 8.83% increase already proposed for next year and open for public comment this month. At current rates of roughly R3.50 – R4.20 per kWh, and with your geyser typically accounting for 30 – 40% of your total electricity bill, that compounding increase adds up fast.
A solar geyser removes most of that cost. A standard 150l flat-plate system, installed for around R25,000, typically saves R765 – R900 a month against a standard electric geyser, paying for itself in under three years and running at close to zero cost for well over a decade after that. It also keeps working through load shedding – the solar collector heats water independently of the grid, and on most days in Johannesburg there’s enough sun to cover your hot water needs without the electric element kicking in at all.
There’s still no rebate for solar geysers, municipal or otherwise, and SARS Section 12B remains a business incentive for solar PV that has never applied to residential geysers. The case for installing one now rests entirely on rising tariffs and outage resilience, which, this September, is a stronger argument than it’s been in a while.
Staying Compliant Without Stressing Your Plumbing
A timer-based irrigation system is the easiest way to stay inside the restricted hours without having to think about it every day, most can be reprogrammed in minutes to water before 06:00 or after 18:00. If you’re topping up a pool, do it outside the banned window and check the pump and pipework for leaks while you’re at it; a slow pool leak wastes far more water than most people realise, restrictions or not.
It’s also worth having your property checked for leaks generally. With the city already losing a quarter to nearly half of its treated water underground, a hidden leak on your own property is effectively adding to a problem the restrictions are trying to solve, and it’s usually cheaper to fix than the water bill that eventually reveals it.
Not sure if your irrigation timing, pool pump or pipework is quietly working against the restrictions? We can check your setup and make sure it isn’t.
The Bottom Line
Level water 1 restrictions aren’t a formality this year. They’re a direct response to a system that’s losing a third of its water to leaks, running on pump stations with a habit of losing power, and heading into the months of highest demand with very little margin left.
Following the rules matters, but it only goes so far if your own plumbing is quietly wasting water behind the scenes. Getting your geyser, irrigation and leak situation sorted now, before summer demand peaks, is a better use of the next few weeks than waiting to see what October brings.