NI Water has yet again asked the public to reduce water use as the system is under extreme pressure due to an increase in demand over recent days.
It said it had pumped 740 million litres of water into the system on Saturday – an increase of about 30% on an average day.
Tankers are moving millions of litres to keep reservoirs topped up.
The infrastructure minister said there had been in increase in water usage due to the prolonged dry weather.
On Saturday, the North of Ireland recorded its hottest day on record when the temperature at the Ballywatticock weather station reached 31.2C.
NI Water said people need to reduce their water use or risk running dry.
Des Nevin, customer and operations director, said: “Normally we would put in around 580 million litres into the distribution system on a daily basis.
“Yesterday we put in 740 million, so we had an increase of over 160 million litres into our distribution system.
“We can’t sustain that for a long period of time.”
Minister Nichola Mallon said people needed “to act now to protect water levels and prevent interruptions to supply or low pressure”.
“How we use our water can have a massive impact on water levels,” she said.
“A hose for example uses more water in one hour than the average family uses in a whole day.
“Large swimming pools and pressure washers also use massive amounts of water.”
Mr Nevin said NI Water was asking people to think about the water they are using.
“Do you really need to use it? And if not, don’t,” he added.
“Otherwise we will find ourselves in a position whereby we just can’t keep up with the demand – in other words, supply will not be fit to meet demand, and customers will be out of supply
“We’re asking people not to do things that are not necessary – in other words the watering of gardens, the filling of paddling pools, the washing of your car.”
NI Water said it also noticed huge demand for water overnight which suggested people were leaving on sprinkler systems to water their gardens.
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