Conserving Water

Water conservation is a great way to save money. Every time you take a shower, flush a toilet, or use a sink, all that water heads to your local sewage treatment plant. The more water you send the more water has to be processed and that costs money. Reducing the amount of water you use with the installation of high efficiency fixtures will save you the cost of fresh water up front and the taxes you pay your municipality later for processing.

If you are serious about conserving water, you’ll need to pay attention to your water meter. When reading your water meter, remember that a cubic foot of water equals roughly 7.5 gallons. Take a reading now and take a reading later, let’s say in a day. Subtract the new reading from the old and you now know how much water you used that day. If you do this daily you can see which days you use more water and figure out why. You can also divide your totals by the number of days that you read to calculate your average daily use of water. A good baseline to remember is that a family of four averages about 1500 gallons of water daily. This includes activities requiring water inside the house as well as maintaining a garden or landscaping outside.

You can also use your water meter to determine if you have a leak somewhere in your plumbing. Shut all of the plumbing fixtures off in your house. Don’t forget things such as automatic sprinklers and ice makers. Now take a reading and go out to run some errands. When you return, take another reading. If the meter says you’ve consumed water while you were out, there’s a leak somewhere.

It should come as no surprise that your bathroom consumes the greatest amount of water in your house. The toilet alone can contribute to almost 40% of household water usage. If you have an old 7 gallon toilet, transitioning to a 1.6 gpf (gallons per flush) toilet can cut that usage by more than 25%! Not quite ready to make that great of a leap? You can still opt for a 3.5 gpf toilet and save.

Keeping your toilet in good working condition will also help conserve water. Whatever the size of your toilet, if it leaks it could be wasting 50 gallons of water per day! Here’s a neat trick to check and see if your toilet is leaking. Just place a few drops of food coloring in the tank and walk away for about a half hour. When you return, check the bowl. If it’s turned color you have a leak somewhere. The culprit could be a dried out washer that needs to be replaced or a loose bolt that needs tightening.

Additional savings can be had in your shower. Older shower heads flow about 7 gpm (gallons per minute). Take a relaxing 10 minute shower and you’ve consumed 70 gallons of water! In contrast, a new, low flow shower head only uses half that so you would save 35 gallons just by changing out the shower head. And since no one likes to take a cold shower, you also save because you don’t have to heat as much water.

For more information on water conservation, contact Mies Plumbing. We can help select and install the right fixtures to reduce your water use and save you money.