Household Utilities: Conserving Water

by RancherMan ~

Today we’re talking about conservation of one of our most precious resources: WATER.

Come see some simple tips to conserve water (and thereby save money) in your own home. Let’s review some water conservation tips.

(Note: Some links in this post are for further information from earlier posts I’ve written. But links preceded with * are affiliate links. If you click them and buy something (almost anything, not just the item noted) I could receive a tiny commission. But the price you pay will NOT change. It’s an easy way to support this blog without anything coming out of your pocket. So click often! Thank you!)

We have an earlier post on this website that talks all about outdoor water conservation. I urge all of you to check out. It is eye opening.

But today we’re talking about conserving water inside the house. The most water-wasting occurrence of all is from leaks.

Now we all know about the old “turn off the water when brushing your teeth” rule. There are so many more ways to save water that I can’t possibly name them all here.

But here are some simple ways to reduce wasted water inside your home.

Water Leaks And Simple Fixes

Let’s dive into some of the easiest ways to reduce water waste in your home. Eliminating LEAKS!

Leaking Toilet Flapper Wastes Water

Toilets are notorious for stealing water. Oftentimes you don’t even know there’s a toilet leak wasting water and money all day every day.

Depending on how bad your toilet leak is a leaking toilet wastes from 30 to 250 gallons each day. WOW!

How To Check A Toilet For Leaks

Here’s how you check to make sure your toilet isn’t leaking: Put a couple drops of food coloring in the top tank and check in half an hour.

If you see that color in the toilet bowl then your *Toilet Flapper is leaking. There could be many reasons for this. Anything from high concentration of minerals in your water keeping it from sealing properly to natural deterioration over time.

Thankfully it’s just about a $5 fix and makes a big difference in conserving water.

Heck, saving that 30-250 gallons each day means that repair can pay for itself in less than a month if you repair it yourself. And it’s a super easy repair.

Water Heater Signs Of Leaking

Also walk around the outside of your house and look for your water heater’s pressure relief valve drain. If water is running out of it, something is definitely wrong, that means the pressure relief valve is leaking.

Also if you see water leaks around the water heater itself, it could be about to go out completely.

Attic water heaters are the worst offenders. That’s because they’re up in the attic where they’re often not regularly checked or small leaks noticed until it’s too late.

A failing water heater can seep slowly for quite a while before it completely bursts. Have it checked now!

Dripping Faucets & Shower Heads Waste Water

Another thing that’s really simple is to check is to make sure you have low-flow aerators on all your faucets and shower heads.

Low-flow aerators will result in less water coming out of those faucets, but it will seem like it’s more water being delivered at a higher pressure. Win/win.

Also if you find that your faucet is dripping, fix or replace it soon. You’re wasting water by the minute.

You can calculate your water waste through dripping faucets at this United States Geological Survey Water Waste site.

Lawn Sprinklers On ‘Automatic’ Schedule Waste Water

Sprinkler systems are a great way to keep your yard healthy & looking good. But they are also one of the biggest wastes of water in the residential home. Get to know how your system works.

If you don’t have one already, get a *Rain Sensor for your system. This keeps your system from running when it’s raining (when you obviously don’t need it during the rain) and helps you conserve water.

Many of these monitors also have freeze sensors as well to keep you from turning your sidewalk into the local skating rink when the temperatures drop!

Most importantly, keep a check on the sprinkler heads. One bad head can waste hundreds of gallons per cycle.

Conserving Water Saves Money

All of these conservation tips means you’re wasting less water. And less use means a lower bill. A lower bill means SAVING MONEY.

And (this is the important part) you’re not sacrificing at all! You’re just eliminating WASTED water.

Here’s a quick run down of the average usage around our Homestead (as of this writing). Granted there are just 2 of us living in our home. But we work here 24/7 so we’re home a lot more than the average household.

Electricity = $75 a month average.

Propane = one refill a year.

Water = less than 2,000 gallons a month.

Now let’s hear about your conservation ideas. We can all learn from each other.

~TxH~

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References:

United States Geological Survey Water Waste

7 thoughts on “Easy Tips To Eliminate Wasted Water Inside The Home”

Gretchen at

Great tips! It is so important to start with conserving water before we try to solve water problems in other ways, and some of the conservation methods are really so simple.

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LaQuetta Boren at

Where I live it is not legal to collect rain water, you want to check your area.

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1. Texas Homesteader Post author at
  
  LaQuetta, I’ve heard of places where it’s illegal to collect rainwater, I can’t really wrap my head around that but thanks for mentioning that.
  
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Texas Homesteader Post author at

I haven’t done any gray water collection either Jenny, except watering the grass and trees with water from the dishpan when I’m hand-washing dishes. I’m interested though and we have several potential gray water projects coming up this year. I’ll be sure to post about them when the projects come to fruition.

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angi at

We built a grey water collection system to collect our clothes washer water. We attached a 100 foot water hose to it so I can water all of our citrus trees plus our side yard and part of our front year each week.

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Heather at

Water conservation is something I am just starting to learn about, my green steps are serious baby steps 🙂 I live in Maine, where water is in abundance, so much so that we feel the need to ship our water out for people to bottle up and sell elsewhere. But, I have learned so much recently about the lack of clean water in other countries, and how much water we waste here in the US. With the recent droughts all over the south and midwest, I feel like I should be conserving more. These indoor tips are not ones I would have thought of, besides the leaky faucets, so thank you! We hope to get a rain barrel this year to help with watering the garden and for our chickens.

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1. Texas Homesteader Post author at
  
  Heather that’s a good point about living in a place where water is so plentiful and not THINKING about conservation. But at the very least it would still be beneficial to collect rainwater for non-potable outside use, such as garden irrigation or potted plant watering. Thanks for weighing in.
  
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