Cut 10% off your Water BillApril 8th, 2009 -- by Alex Leigh |
Even with the current rainfall we here in the Bay Area have experienced as of late, there is still a shortage of water for the coming summer months. While we are close to facing mandatory cutbacks, the rest of you could use the money savings gained from our tips to conserve water.
The following tips can have households achieving a 10% reduction in water use by saving about ten gallons a day. Here is what you can do to help meet the challenge of cutting back.
Take shorter showers. Each minute you cut saves 2.5 gallons of water!
Turn off the faucet when you are brushing your teeth of washing the dishes. As I stated above, each minute you cut saves 2.5 gallons.
Don’t pre-rinse dishes. Scrape food waste directly into the compost bin. While this probably won’t add up to a minute, you can still save the proportionate amount of time it takes you to do all the dishes that month.
Use the Dishwater. Surprisingly dishwashers are often more efficient than hand washing. A modern dishwasher’s cycle uses as little as five gallons per load. Compare that to running the faucet at two plus gallons per minute.
Wait for a full load. Full loads are the most efficient way to wash clothes. A traditional clothes washing machine can run at forty plus gallons per cycle.
Use a broom. Hosing down sidewalks, driveways, and pavement is a wasteful practice. Running a garden hose can waste up to ten gallons per minute.
Install aerators on faucets. Installing aerators on kitchen and bathroom sinks can reduce indoor water use by about four percent. Inquire about FREE aerators from your local water department (the SFPUC for the local folks).
Check for leaks. Do you hear the toilet running or your faucet dripping? You could be wasting thousands of gallons per month. To check for leaks, turn off all water taps inside and outside your home. Locate your water meter, and if the dial is moving you may have a plumbing leak.
Adjust your sprinklers. This is so that water remains on the landscape, not the pavement. Reduce evaporation by watering during cooler temperatures at night or in the early morning.
Hope these tips help guys. See you in seven (-ish).
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April 10th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Toilets account for approx. 30% of water used indoors. By installing a Dual Flush toilet you can save between 40% and 70% of drinking water being flushed down the toilet, depending how old the toilet is you are going to replace.
If you are serious about saving water, want a toilet that really works and is affordable, I would highly recommend a Caroma Dual Flush toilet. Caroma toilets offer a patented dual flush technology consisting of a 0.8 Gal flush for liquid waste and a 1.6 Gal flush for solids. On an average of 5 uses a day (4 liquid/ 1 solid) a Caroma Dual Flush toilet uses an average of 0.96 gallons per flush. The new Sydney Smart uses only 1.28 and 0.8 gpf, that is an average of 0.89 gallons per flush. This is the lowest water consumption of any toilet available in the US. Caroma, an Australian company set the standard by giving the world its first successful two button dual flush system in the nineteen eighties and has since perfected the technology.
April 11th, 2009 at 3:33 am
this tips very useful and increasing our saving of managing house or apartment.
in fact, water will become next crisis after oil!
April 14th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Here are some more tips on water conservation:
* Reuse grey water from kitchen/bathroom to water you garden
* Use a bucket for car wash instead of a water hose
* Install a smart sprinkler controller
* Water your yard only before 8 a.m. to reduce evaporation and interference from wind
To see how many gallons of water you can save per day by following these tips, check out http://www.bewaterwise.com/tips01.html