Good Guide to Reducing Your Water Use, Part 1: Bathroom
- Posted by: Siobhan O'Connor , Adam Matthews
- on July 28, 2009 at 5:59 am
1A: A (Clean) Toilet Hack
Potential water savings: Up to 18 gallons per day, per person.
How to easily reduce the water wasted by every flush.
Toilets waste tons of water every year. When you flush, that’s about five or six gallons right there if you have a conventional toilet, and on average we each flush six times a day. Thankfully, there are now all sorts of products to lessen gallons per flush. There are low-cost add-ons like the Toilet Tummy or the British-made Hippo the Water Saver. You can also purchase a dual-flush toilet, which can save up to five gallons per flush by offering one kind of flush for each bodily function. But the lower-tech and less-well-heeled among us might want to try this easy and free hack.
Get Started
1. Remove the lid from your toilet.
2. Observe the black floating ball. This thing determines the water level in your toilet.
3. Reach into the toilet tank and grab the thin metal rod attached to the black floating ball.
4. Bend the rod downward just a little. It won’t break easily, but be ginger, yeah?
5. Be an optimist. Your tank is now half full.
Idiot-proof Version
Put a brick or two—or other heavy, noncorrosive objects—in the tank. That will let the toilet think it has more water in it than it does, and reduce the water used per flush.
1B: A (Dirty) Toilet Hack
Potential water savings: Up to 36 gallons per day, per person.
How to forgo water altogether, without a flush.
Most of the readers of the Urban Homestead blog, a guide to self-reliant city living, buy in to the lifestyle strategies of authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. Except one: composting your own feces. “It horrifies most people,” Knutzen admits. For Knutzen, an adherent of “humanure” guru Joseph Jenkins, the practice makes perfect sense. “Nitrogen makes plants grow,” he says. “You flush it down the toilet and create pollution in our riverways. So you are taking two valuable things and making trash.” Instead, Knutzen suggests following these five steps to composting your own solids.
Get Started
1. Get a five-gallon bucket and line the bottom with sawdust. Attach a lidded toilet seat.
2. Do your business and cover it with sawdust. Repeat. Empty once or twice a week into a 55-gallon composter out back.
3. After each waste dump, add leaf litter, coconut husks, or finely shredded newspaper over the waste into the container. “You’re basically making crap lasagna,” says Knutzen.
4. Keep it as moist as a wrung-out mop. You want it to get hot—120 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal, monitored with a long thermometer. Adding earth worms are good, too.
5. Let it age for a year. Fertilize plants.
1C: How To Bathe
Potential water savings: up to 134 gallons per day, per household
Settling the shower versus bath debate.
You’ve probably heard that showers use less water than baths. This is true—or can be—but it depends on a few things. Most conventional bathtubs hold 60 gallons of water. The average shower head spews between 2.5 and 4 gallons per minute, depending on whether it was made before or after 1992. Even if you have a higher-flow shower head, you have to shower for 15 minutes before you’re at bath levels—24 minutes if your head is newer. The average American shower length is under eight minutes. Of course, if you fill your tub halfway and shave in there without water running, you could theoretically be using less water than showering, so it’s not cut and dried, but the evidence seems to heavily favor showering. Also, for $40, you can get a one-gallon-per-minute shower head by Bricor, and for $10 you can get a 1.2-gallons-per minute Real Goods shower head—with a pause button to use while lathering. At those rates, you might feel justified in taking the occasional half-hour shower.
Other DIY Bathroom Options
Let It Mellow
Everyone’s been to someone’s hippie parents’ country house where you’re instructed to let it mellow if it’s yellow. It’s an unpleasant concept, but by now you know that unless you have a fancy new low-flow or dual-flush toilet, the toilet is your home’s biggest water suck—it accounts for almost 30 percent of your daily water use. Since the average person urinates six times a day, may we suggest you flush every other time?
Savings Upwards of 18 gallons a day
Keep a Bucket Handy
You can lose about four gallons per minute when you run the bath, so consider the loss that happens as you run the water to get it to the right temperature. Keep a bucket handy in the bathroom and collect the water as it falls for plant watering and an additional flush. When enough volume is poured into the toilet, it essentially flushes itself, as the water level in a toilet remains constant (in other words, a flush is just water being poured into the toilet from the tank; you’d be doing it with a bucket instead).
Savings Up to 10 gallons a day
Navy Showers
As with most things imported from the military, it’s simple: Get wet, turn the water off, soap up, rinse off. You’re done in as little as three minutes, and you’ve only used a few gallons of water. Conserving water isn’t always comfortable, but it’s something you can get used to, like anything else. Think of our men in uniform.
Savings Up to 50 gallons over a regular 10-minute shower
Reuse Your Bathwater
Nearly 60 percent of Japanese people reuse their bath water. Some filter it and use it for other purposes that require clean water (washing dishes, etc.), others use it to water their plants. You know by now you shouldn’t be taking baths (from a water-economy perspective, we mean), but if you do, make use of that water and don’t take a shower after. If you do, you’re using more than half a day’s worth of total water for one bath.
Savings Up to 50 gallons per bath
Pee in the Shower
You can save one flush a day by urinating in the shower—two if you shower more than once a day. Sure it’s gross, but unless you have an infection, your urine is sterile and nontoxic, and it washes down with your shampoo and soap anyway. An unscientific poll by Glamour magazine recently found that 75 percent of respondents do pee in the shower.
Savings Up to 6 gallons of water a day
The GOOD Guide to Reducing Your Water Use
Part 1, Bathroom
DISCUSSION: 9 Comments
We are always under water restrictions here in Florida, so I have been turning the shower off while getting lathered up. I didn’t know this was called a Navy Shower. Now if I could only get the wife to do it…
Most bricks are not designed to be constantly submerged. They can dissolve over time. This can be bad for your toilet’s longevity. But, brick “crumbs’ can also get under the flapper and cause it not to seal correctly.A 1/2 gallon jug filled with water serves the same purpose, and doesn’t fall apart. Just make sure it doesn’t block the flapper or the float arm.
I’m surprised this article didn’t mention one other easy way to save water – don’t run the water while brushing your teeth.
Rather than a brick, I just tear off the labels from one or two plastic bottles, fill them up and stick them down there. They fit readily, they’re easy to get out of there, and don’t dissolve.
[...] read more environmentally friendly water tips here at GOOD. [...]
Here is another water saving tip (I’m not sure how much, but hey, anything helps!)When waiting for your water to warm up (shower or sink), turn only the hot water on until the water warms up-then turn on the cold to temper. This way you are not wasting cold water while waiting for the water to get hot.
If you aren’t comfortable with a Navy Shower, then take a cold one. Obviously, you won’t want to be in there very long and you will take care of your business quickly.Also, I’ve heard of people peeing directly into the faucet of their shower or sink. I don’t know how well it works though, haha.
Great article! My husband and I live in Central Texas and do everything we can (without being “weird”) to save water. Here are my suggestions for saving some more water. (The goal I always keep in mind is; Is this water really dirty enough to dump down the drain or is there something else I can use it for?)1. FOLLOW THE MELLOW RULE. If you’re properly hydrated, your urine will be very diluted (pale yellow) anyways. Girls can usually flush every 3rd or 4th time and boys can go all-day without a flush. If you have a guest bathroom, make sure it’s flushed before company comes over (or not, if you don’t like them!)2. CAPTURE FAUCET WATER. I place large (tupperware) bowls in all my sinks to catch hand-washing, tooth-brushing, face-washing water. When the bowl is full, I empty it into a 5 gallon bucket (with lid) that I have in my kitchen. When the 5 gallon bucket is full I take it outside and dump it on the grass or some plants3. USE WATER SAVING SHOWERHEADS. We got ours at Wal-Mart for $12. It has an on-off switch and is designed to decrease water-usage while increasing the perceived water-pressure. If you REFUSE to turn off the water during a shower (I don’t understand why you would refuse, but apparently some people do?), then start showering with a buddy. While you lather, they can rinse. Saves water, saves time, and is a great conversation time.4. CAPTURE RAIN WATER. Capture the rainwater with buckets (5 gallon works well) and then pour those buckets into any large container with a lid and store it outside. Use this captured water to water plants and lawn during drier months.5. CAPTURE WASHING MACHINE WATER. I bet you didn’t see this coming, but you’d be surprised how much water is wasted when washing your clothing! Instead of buying a water conserving/energy saving washer prematurely, try capturing the washing water instead and using it later to water your yard. However, there are some IMPORTANT tips you need to follow for this one. a) Use biodegradable soaps and never capture any water that has bleach in it b) Your washer will use between 40-70 gallons total, split into usually two “draining cycles.” If you don’t have a container large enough to fit the total amount of water, then you need to dump the container multiple times during the washing cycle. c) Don’t bend or kink the drain hose when placing it into your storage container, this can break it. d) This method for saving water works best for washers in the garage. Worst case scenario? A clean garage floor.6. WASH YOUR CAR ON YOUR LAWN. A good environmentalist won’t have a car but if you’re like us, your large toys are numerous and dirty. If your lawn is large enough, park your car on it to wash it. Brownie points if you have a large tree you can park under for some shade while washing. Remember; Biodegradable soaps and don’t drive quickly or turn your steering wheel while stopped/parked (this will rip up your now-soggy lawn).For any supplies you may need (rain barrels, water-saving faucets and shower heads, buckets, etc) don’t forget to check out used merchandise sites such as http://www.craigslist.com – Saving money while saving water? You can’t beat that!
This toilet issue confuses me… I read about people trying to solve this with brinks and plastic bottles, but my toilet has a mechanism which allows me to stop the water flow any time I want to. And it only has one button. I push it down and if I want it to stop, I’ll push it again. I do this all the time when I’m just going number one.
Why isn’t this standard for all toilets?