How You Can Save Water in the Bathroom
The place where the most water gets used is probably your bathroom, so any conservation steps you take will have to start there. Some measures will be trickier than others to put into practice, but the great news is that living green can help you save big on your water bills. So here are some water conservation tips you can implement in your bathroom today!
In the Shower
First off, showers are better than baths when it comes to conserving water. The EPA estimates that you could save 60 gallons of water every time you choose to shower instead of taking a bath. If you shower, you can also employ these tips:
- Replace a showerhead if it was made pre-1993, that way you can install a model that will limit the stream to around 2.5 gallons a minute (gpm). It takes about twenty bucks to slash your water use by 50 percent! Low-flow showerheads are a great option.
- Install a showerhead that has a dual-control lever. This way you can slow the water when applying shampoo or soap.
- As you wait for the water to heat up, you could place a bucket under the faucet, then recycle that for watering plants, or add to your rain barrel for your garden so that it doesn’t go to waste.
If you are feeling particularly ambitious, you could maintain a shorter shower time of around five minutes (that’s a fast washer!!) to see even more water (and water bill) savings.
When You Purchase a Toilet
Whether it is for a replacement, a new place, or in addition, if you need to buy a toilet, you should look into the water-saving benefits of various models. At the very least, you’ll want a toilet that was made after 1993, which will use less water per flush. Beyond that, you could even get a dual-flush toilet, where a button on the toilet tank is available to use 0.9 gallons per flush, or use 1.6 gallons per flush.
Also keeping an eye on your water level usage, make sure the flapper seals correctly and doesn’t leak and run your home water bill up!
Water-efficient toilet tanks can offer great savings and performance.
At the Sink
Relatively speaking, your sink does not utilize that much water, but water conservation can still happen here. It can be as simple as switching the water off while soaping hands, lathering and brushing teeth before you rinse. This could save three or four times the water you would use, versus if you just simply let the water run the whole time.
How You Can Save Water in the Kitchen
For many homeowners, the kitchen serves as a hub for maintaining other parts of their home, and the water consumption saving efforts you put into your kitchen will help in many places around the home. Kitchen water conservation tips you can try would be as such.
At the Dishwasher or Sink
Just like in our bathroom tips, getting a new faucet that is designed to reduce water consumption is a sure fire way to lower the amount of water you use per minute, but another excellent, low-cost option is to retrofit your faucet with a low-flow faucet aerator. These small devices are inexpensive, and are easily installed on most faucets.
You can of course install an energy-efficient and water-efficient energy star rated dishwasher, but also when running your dishwasher, avoid pre-rinsing, and always try to do full loads (same with your clothes washer)
At the Garbage Disposal
A great tip for reducing water usage and waste water in the kitchen is to scrape as much of the food off of your plate into the garbage can as possible. Even with a garbage disposal, water-saving faucets, low-flow faucet aerators, the more food scraps you have put in the garbage disposals, the you have to let the faucet run while you run the disposal. That can lead to a lot of water if you’re trying to have it chew up food waste that COULD have been scraped into the trash!
At the Refrigerator
When it comes to drinking water, cold water can be so refreshing. We like our cold water as cold as possible, so by keeping a plastic bottle with tap water in the fridge, you can grab nice and cold clean water to drink instead of running the tap water faucet for a time to cool down the tap water coming out.
How You Can Save Water From Leaks
There are systems out there that will send you a mobile alert if it detects a leak. Watersense, Moen Flo, and others are available. These systems can detect leaky faucets, leaks in your irrigation system, hot water heater, washing machine, or anywhere in your plumbing system. Being alerted to this early, and not allowing a leak in some remote faucet or sprinkler go unnoticed and drive your water bills up.
How You Can Save Water Around Your Yard
Setting up a drainage system from your roof, driveway or other hard surfaces where rain water runs into a rain barrel to be used for watering plants, which saves a lot of water in the spring and summer! When you divert rain water runoff like this and recycle it in this way, you save yourself a lot of water usage.
At the Driveway
Clean your driveway, steps and sidewalks with a broom, or leaf blower, rather than rinsing them off with tap water.
In the Garden
When planting gardens, using native plants, which are more resilient to the local climate, also use less water than non-native plants. Using mulch as a way to retain rain water, in addition to utilizing a rain barrel, is a winning combo for water conservation.
Watering your lawn during the early morning is advised, as this will help with the evaporation that comes later in the day with heat and the sun.
Call the Experts
Interested in finding more water conservation tips? Need to replace inefficient plumbing, install a fixture, or select more efficient appliances? Do you need emergency help to diagnose and repair a leak?
You can find the expertise you need for these projects and more at A-1 Sewer & Septic Service, Inc., where our Kansas City plumbers have more than four decades of experience. Call us today!
