Concerned about conserving water or leaving a carbon footprint behind? Reducing the amount of water used in your home can reduce its carbon footprint, conserve water, and save you money.
Water conservation is actually easy to do, and there are many different ways to do it. Installing water-saving devices in the home is the place to start. There are all kinds of new showerheads, taps, flush reducers, aerators, and water flow valves on the market that can help reduce water usage.
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Here are nine of the best water-saving devices to install in your home…
- Dual-flush triggers are now a common feature of the modern toilet. Usually mounted on the tank cover, these devices feature two buttons and allow you to decide how much water is needed to flush after each toilet use. While it will pay for itself in the long run, adding this function probably means you need to buy a new toilet or add the TapNFlush, which is a conversion kit.
- The toilet tank bag is an inflatable device that is inserted into the tank of the toilet. Tank bags are easy to install, and they shrink the size of the tank, reducing the amount of water that goes down into the bowl every time you flush.
- Fill cycle diverters can be used on older toilets to direct more water to the tank and less to the bowl, so the two refill at the same time. A fill cycle diverter can save about half a gallon of water with each toilet flush.
- Toilet dye tests can be used to determine any leaks from your tank to the bowl. If color appears in the bowl, there’s a leak, which likely means your toilet flapper valve needs to be replaced. Even a slow trickle from the tank can cause the toilet to kick on frequently in order to maintain the water level, thus creating water waste.
- Install aerators on your faucets. These screw-on tips at the end of most faucets control the flow of water by mixing air with the water as it flows through your faucet. Aerators can reduce the flow of a faucet by 30 percent and cost very little. You can install them in the kitchen, the bathroom and in the shower. Be aware that the use of aerators could cause a drop in the water pressure throughout your home.
- Switch to a more efficient showerhead. Changing from a 2.5 gallons-per-minute shower head to a 1.5 gallons-per-minute head could save 10 gallons of water for each 10-minute shower. For the average family of four, this saves 1,200 gallons of heated water per month and will be a great saving by the end of the year.
- Use automatic shutoff nozzles to help your family conserve water. Shutoff nozzles are placed between the pipe and the showerhead, and they allow you to turn the water off while shampooing and soaping your body. Just turn it back on when you are ready to rinse. These also work on garden hoses.
- Shower managers can be set for a variety of shower times – just before the time limit is up, the water flow is reduced by two-thirds, warning that the water is about to shut off. They save water and help make sure your teens leave hot water for those showering after them in the mornings.
- Outside your home, you can use watering gauges to measure the amount of water a lawn sprinkler is using, then come up with a watering schedule to help conserve water. There are also rainfall shutoff devices that connect to a sprinkler system and automatically shut off when there is moisture on the soil from a rain shower.
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