Living Green on the Front Range
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Easy Water Conservation |
| Posted by Administrator (admin) on Jun 29 2009 at 1:04 PM |
By Lara Williams, The Green Team Real Estate
It may sound a little odd for someone to be harping on conserving water in northern Colorado, when we're experiencing the wettest summer in memory. But, the fact is we're living in a water deprived area, and the situation is only going to get worse as the population here continues to grow.
While the average northern Coloradan is pretty water conscious, sometimes people waste water without even knowing it, and by making a few simple changes, can save thousands of gallons annually. Below are a few recommendations that you can do today to assess if you're wasting and make some changes that tackle the key water using activities. We've targeted these recommendations based on where people use the most water, so these changes can have the greatest impact.
Indoors, the biggest water consumer is toilets, which make up almost 27% of the average American's water use, according to the EPA. Here are two ways to reduce unnecessary toilet water waste.
Reduce the gallons per flush on your toilet. If you have a home built after 1994, then by code your toilet will be 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf) or less, which is lower -flow, and you're in pretty good shape. With an older home, if you don't see any marking on the back of the basin indicating that you have a 1.6 gpf toilet, you probably have a toilet of between 3 and 7 gallons per flush. That means for a family of 4 your toilets are consuming between 22,000 and about 51,000 gallons annually, based on average use. (Wow!)
If the older, high water consuming toilets still work well and you aren't ready to replace them, the best option for reducing the gallons per flush is to install a "tank bank". These products can be bought for less than $5 at and local home stores, such as GreenLogic. Unlike the old technique of placing a brick in the tank, or a plastic bottle filled with sand, the tank bank (which you fill with water) hangs from the edge of the tank and displace about .8 gallons of water for each flush. It's less likely to interfere with the operation of the toilet over time because it's not sitting on the bottom of the tank. Over a year, for a family of 4 the tank bank can save 6,000 gallons of water.
If you are willing and able to replace your toilet, consider the ultra low flow models and the dual flush toilets. Both operate considerably better today than their earlier cousins. For more information on ultra low flow toilets, visit www.blog.GreenTeamRE.com and check out "How to Select a High Efficiency Toilet".
Test whether your toilet leaks water. A surprising amount of water is lost by leaky toilets, and most people never realize it. Take some food coloring and put a few drops in the tanks of all of your toilets. Come back 10 to 15 minutes later and check the bowl. If you notice that the food coloring has seeped into the bowl, you have a leak. If you have a leak you can either fix your flapper to stop the leak ( a fairly simple repair), or if you have an older toilet, consider upgrading to a low flow toilet. (See link above for suggestions for ultra low flow options.)
Outdoors, it's no surprise that most water use goes to maintaining green lawns. And, often in-ground sprinkler systems will either leak, are misdirected, or are set improperly. One of the best things you can do to make sure your system is functioning property is have a sprinkler audit done.
If you live in Fort Collins, the City will do a free audit of your system during the months of June to August to make sure that it's functioning optimally. If you live in another area, check and see if your local sprinkler maintenance company can perform a similar audit.
The Fort Collins audit includes a visual inspection of each zone to identify problems, tests that measure how water is being applied, the creation of a custom watering schedule and information about your lawns seasonal water needs. For more information, go to http://www.fcgov.com/water/cnsrv-sprink_audit.php .
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