Water. You can’t live without it. Bountiful as it may seem, gushing out of your faucet or gurgling from the toilet bowl at a pace of 1.6 gallons in just a few seconds, water is actually pretty scarce in other places of the world. Besides, it’s expensive, precious and not to be wasted.
So, how can you save it? Here’s a list of five water-saving home ideas. Check these out and see how you might be able to save a few more gallons in your home.
High-Efficiency Toilets
The best place to start is with the toilet. Why? Because 30 percent of all the water that comes into your home goes down the toilet. It’s easy to save on this major drain. A high-efficiency toilet (or HET, if you want to be cool) cuts down on the 1.6 gallon capacity that most toilets use. Whether the extra flush push comes from gravity, flushometer valves or pressure-assist, they flush better and save water.
Showerheads
Want to take a 10-minute shower and not feel guilty about it? A gushing showerhead is a major culprit for major water loss. A 60-second shower under an old-style showerhead could be gulping as much as 5 gallons. Ouch. Using a low-flow showerhead will slash this desperate wastefulness, using only as much as 1.5 gallons per minute. Check out products by ETL, Bricor, and Hansgrohe. These modern showerheads are designed in such a way that they retain the high-pressure feel without using nearly as much water.
Smart Faucets
When we talk about wasting water, the first thing we think of is the faucet. Turn it off when you brush your teeth, make sure it’s not leaking, and all the other stuff that you’re used to hearing. Great as those ideas are, they don’t solve the real problem. The real problem is faucets that gush indiscriminate gallons of water when you don’t really need that powerful of a gush.
Low-flow faucets are now available with foot and knee operators to flex the level of flow and adapt it to needs. Studies have showed that this innovative approach to flow-control actually saves more water than those faucets that are simply designed to allow limited flow the entire time.
Washing Machines
Keeping your clothes clean takes a lot of water. A recent trend in washing machines has been the development of front-loading (commercial-style) clothes washers. These washers, known as horizontal or H-axis washers, use two or three times less water, but get your clothes just as clean. Nearly every H-axis washing machine also uses less energy.
Dishwasher Savings
Dishwashers have been around for over 30 years now. But the clunkers made way back in the 80s didn’t quite cut it when it came to water-saving efficiency. Modern, water-saving washers use advanced technology that creates simulated scrubbing action on the dishes by employing water bubbles that burst onto the dishes, getting all the grime off even more effectively. In the meantime, you’re saving water.
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