5 ways to lower your homes water bill
- Shower heads should be 1.8 Gallons / Minute, some older models maybe 2.5G/M. By checking your shower head and possibly changing the shower head to 1.8G/M that could save a family of 4, 0.7 G/M x 4 showers daily at an average of 5 minutes would be 5,110 gallons a year.
- Fix running toilets. Depending on what the water pressure is to your home, a running toilet can leak on average over 1 gallon per hour, that’s 8,760 gallons a year. Some cite that it can be upto 200 gallons a day. That’s over 70,000 gallons a year on a single toilet.
- Use your dishwasher. An average dishwasher uses only six gallons of water per cycle (and just four gallons of water per cycle if it’s Energy Star rated). However, and washing your dishes you can manage to use up as much as 20 gallons of water every time you do it. One load of dishes a week could save 728 gallons a year & 2 loads in the dishwasher could save 1,356 gallons a year.
- Turn off your faucets. While washing your face, shaving, or brushing your teeth turning off the faucet can save you 2G/M. If we just use 2 minutes of brushing your teeth for a family of 4, 2x a day that equals 5840 gallons of water wasted while brushing teeth during a year. Not to mention the lost water while shaving or washing your face on top of that.
- Yard Irrigation (sprinkler system) if not properly maintained can waste upto 25,000 gallons of water annually. Between wind, overspray, evaporation, and damaged equipment. The EPA guesstimates that if you are hiring a professional to install or audit your landscape irrigation system, be sure they are certified by a WaterSense labeled irrigation program. If your irrigation system is well maintained and managed, a household’s irrigation water use can be reduced by upto 15 percent, that can be nearly 7,600 gallons of water, annually.
**Information gathered from several sites.
https://www.epa.gov/watersense/statistics-and-facts
https://fieldturflandscape.com/turf-tips/10-ways-to-reduce-your-water-bill-at-home/
https://www.moving.com/tips/12-ways-to-lower-your-water-bill/
https://www.deltafaucet.com/il/home-improvement-101/understanding-shower-flow-rates
https://www.codb.us/DocumentCenter/View/10032/High-Consumption?bidId=#:~:text=The%20average%20leaky%20toilet%20can,the%20water%20in%20the%20bowl.