Friday, December 4, 2009

Water Saving Tips for Toilets, Faucets, and Shower Heads


Style and Comfort is not the only thing that has grown with the development of the modern bathroom. Water saving products have started to flourish as well. With an ever increasing population, putting stress on our limited supply of fresh water. Water conservation is more important than ever. The average household's bathroom uses 65 percent of the home's total water usage. Bathroom fixtures like low flow shower heads, low flow faucets and low flow toilets significantly decrease water consumption. Modernization of the toilet has brought about some new environmentally friendly changes. Today's emphasis on being more green has brought water conservation to forefront of toilet design. The first 1.6 gallon per flush low flow toilet appeared on the scene in mid 90s. Unfortunately these toilets were very faulty. So faulty that many people claim they had to flush twice to remove all the waist. Which meant the toilet supposed low flow toilet was now using 3.2 gallons per flush, which is very far from water conserving. Toilet manufacturers knew they had to start developing fully functional low flow toilets. Within time many manufacturers had their own version of a fully functional low flow toilet . Performance improvements over the years make these low flow products make it hard to distinguish them from their dated water guzzling counterparts.Just by upgrading your regular toilet to a dual flush toilet you can save your home over 4,000 gallons of water per year.


When we leave a faucet running, every minute that goes by, between 1 to 2.5 gallons is going down the drain of between. Every time we leave Water one of the most heavily abused resources. Water belongs to everyone, not only those whom pay for it or can pay for it. "Leaving the tap running while we brush our teeth wastes almost five gallons of water. A good way to save water is to wet the toothbrush and rinse, plus get a glass of water for rinsing teeth. This good habit will we save about 5 gallons of water. "When we take showers, the average person washes about sixty gallons down the drain. Therefore it is best to keep showers restricted to a limited time. In general, showers consume about thirty percent of the household's water. For example, a shower head spends about 3 gallons of water per minute, there are shower heads now available that are low flow and cut this water usage in half. To test how much water your shower head uses place a large container, preferably something in the five gallon range, catching all the water that the shower ex-spells. Let the shower water fill up the container for exactly one minute. Now measure how much water is in the container. This will tell you the gallons (GPM) per minute of your shower head. The same type of method can be applied to your faucets. Updating these small fixtures can be rather inexpensive and can save a great deal of money on water bill. Making slight changed and improvements in your daily water usage will have a huge impact on water conservation.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Water saving ways: Dual flush toilet vs Water Bottle Trick

65% water consumption at home, occurs in the bathroom. The average toilet in the US, consumes over 2.5 gallons of water with each use. This is a lot of wasted fresh water. Water is a very precious resource which is becoming more and more expensive. Some cities in the US are paying over 10 cents a flush(includes sewage treatment fees). Therefore every time you flush the toilet you a literally throwing money down the drain. Fortunately there are ways to cut down the water consumption with each flush. One primitive way to start saving water with each toilet flush is putting a filled water bottle in the toilet's tank. The weight of the bottle will raise the water level in the tank. Making the toilet use less water to fill the tank. Leading to a decrease in the amount of water flushed. However this trick does not always work. The smaller amount flushed may not get rid of all the waste in the toilet. The only way to resolve the problem is to stick your hand in the toilet tank and fish out the bottle of water. Allowing the toilet tank to completely fill up, for a full flush. The bottle trick is an inconvenience and slightly messy. Luckily different variations of fully functional water saving toilets are available. One of the more successful water saving toilets is the dual flush toilet. A dual flush toilet has two flush options. A whole flush which flushes 1.6 gallons per flush and a half flush which flushes 0.8 gallons per flush. The two flush option allows a person to select their desired flush amount. The dual flush toilet is successful in saving water because the average person uses the toilet approximately 6 times a day. Most of the trips to the bathroom only require the half flush. A dual flush toilet in my option beats a wet hand, streaky bowl and an old water bottle any day of the week.