BeFriending Creation
Sustainable water use begins at home!
Another free weekend comes along and there's more to do to the house to make it more sustainable. Having read that 40 percent of the drinking water used in your house each month goes toward flushing toilets, the bathrooms seems like the place to start.
I have an older house with older toilets that use a lot more water than the newer ones. Not ready to buy new toilets, I have another use for one of my stash of milk jugs. I put some gravel in the bottom and add water and put it in the tank. For some tanks, this is not as easy as it sounds, since you have to make sure the jug doesn't interfere with the flush mechanism. The result is that each flush uses less water than before. You can also buy a water displacer or "toilet dam" at your hardware store.
Since most toilets leak, it's a good idea to replace the flappers. New early-closure flappers are even better. They won't affect water pressure but will reduce the amount of water flushed. And they aren't hard to install.
If it's time for a new low-flow toilet, look for the kind that has added pressure, for a more forceful flush. They still use only 1.6 gallons of water but keep you from having to flush twice. The website <www.terrylove.com/crtoilet.htm> ranks the best low-flow toilets on the market.
The water heater is one of the largest users of electricity in a house. Most water heaters are set at 140°F, but 120°F is hot enough for a shower and hot enough to kill any bacteria that could build up in your heater. I had to read the owners manual to reset the temperature (mine is too old to have an energy-saver setting). I'm not ready yet to buy a new water heater, but there were things I could do. I installed a time-control switch and an insulating jacket. The website <www.homestore.com/HomeGarden/HomeImprovement/HowTos/> gives you information on insulating an older water heater.
If you're still using your dishwasher and it doesn't have a booster heater—back to the collection of owner's manuals—you may want to keep your water heater set at 140°F.
My heater is probably not destined to last much longer, so I didn't have a heat trap installed. A heat trap attaches to the pipe leaving your water heater and allows hot water to circulate through your tank when no one is using it.
The next thing I did to cut down the energy usage of the water heater was to get out my calendar and mark off three-month intervals from this weekend. This way I will remember to drain a quart of water from the valve faucet at the bottom every three months. This keeps sediment from building up and makes your heater work more efficiently.
All this messing around with toilets and the water heater left me ready for a shower and one more way to save energy. Installing a low flow shower head isn't all that hard—that's the theory. I used all my loosening tricks to get the old shower head off. Low-flow showerheads, and faucet aerators, work by mixing air into the water. But changing shower heads can reduce hot water usage by as much as 83 percent! And since I was playing with my wrenches I added faucet aerators to my kitchen and bathroom sinks and checked for leaks. A leak of just 1 drip every 3 seconds wastes 30 gallons of water!
For bathroom sinks, you need an aerator that flows at 0.5 to 1.0 gallons per minute, and for a kitchen sink you should get one that flows at 2 gallons per minute. If you wash dishes by hand, you'll want to look for an aerator with a shutoff valve. If you use a laminar faucet (they spray the water through parallel streams instead of the whole faucet opening) in the kitchen, you can save up to 17.5 gallons of water in 5 minutes while rinsing dishes.
And with all these fancy faucets, don't forget to turn off the water while you brush your teeth or shave. Just think how much water you will be saving!
And now we get to the hard part. How long should a shower take? Showers take less water than baths but how often do we have the time to luxuriate in a bath. Well there was that time in Santa Fe (right, Hollister?). For most of us a bath can legitimately be considered a luxury. But can these people who apparently time everything really be serious about an 8-minute shower! I'm fighting this—and I don't want to be timed either. Well, maybe I'll do 10, and when I'm in a hurry I'll go for 8. I'll still be using less hot water than a bath.
Summer is coming and there are special sustainability projects for summer. More next time!•
