With water usage increasingly becoming a major environmental
issue, I decided to be part of the solution rather than the cause. According to the EPA, we use 400 gallons of
water per day. Below is a pie chart of
that usage (this does not include water
used to irrigate a lawn).
Armed with that information, I took a look at my water usage
provided by the City of Plymouth (Plymouth, MN) in my monthly utility bill. I then looked at the various devices that
were contributing to this water consumption and what were the cheapest ways to
reduce the outflow.
My first change was to one of the toilets. We were remodeling a powder room and we
replaced a 3.5 gallon per flush (gpf) with a WaterSense rated toilet at 1.3
gpf. (I still have 3 more to
replace). Look into your local
community, there may be rebates available to replace these wasteful toilets. I sit on the City of Plymouth’s Environmental
Quality Committee and we have instituted a rebate program to encourage the
replacement or installation of new toilets, washing machines and water
irrigation controllers.
We then replaced our washing machine and dishwasher with
water efficient units as it was time to replace these devices.
I then took advantage of a CenterPoint Energy’s offer to
reduce water consumption by replacing the showerheads and faucet aerators with
water efficient ones. The impact of this
was greater than I expected. With two
teenage boys taking long showers, the flowrate was cut in half, which resulted
in shorter showers. The boys complained
at first that the flow rate was terrible.
With a little education, they came around. They shortened their showers. The aerators contributed significantly as
they act as restrictors. This means less
water used and less time spent in pre-wash.
I also checked all water consuming devices for leakages and
was unable to detect any.
Lastly, I looked at our irrigation system. As mentioned above, I sit on the City of
Plymouth’s Environmental Quality Committee.
We are charged with developing ideas and plans on how to reduce the
city’s consumption of energy and water, reducing organic and inorganic wastes,
and any other ideas for decreasing waste of any kind. As a geologist, I volunteered to head up the
water analysis program of our lake association.
The watershed in which we live is important to water quality as our
water spills into a downstream system of waterways that eventually connect to
the Mississippi River. We have a very
active and reputable Department of Natural Resources that pushes information
down and out so that we, at the community level, can participate in any water
quality issues and programs that are at the forefront of the DNR.
The City of Plymouth, had just looked at several years of
data to determine where the water usage was the most wasteful. For we Minnesotans, it was lawn
irrigation. We use the same amount of
water on 100 degree Fahrenheit days as rainy days. What that means is that the water controllers
are only good for setting watering schedules on odd or even address days. Thankfully, there are a number of Smart Water
Controllers on the market. I decided to
try - Skydrop (others are equally good,
but this one works with my Nest thermostat).
The interesting part of this combination is that should my Nest smoke
alarm detect smoke, it will signal my Nest thermostat to shut off the heat/AC blower
and turn on the irrigation system for 3 minutes to wet the area around the
house). That is remarkable from a fire safety prospective. I will report next on installation and
functionality of the system and then on whether or not it conserved water.
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