Water is one of Earth's natural resources --- and we need to conserve it! What are some ways you save water in your home??
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Video Transcript:
Hello, my name is Anjie Cho. And I'm sharing with you five ways to preserve water in a home. These are simple tips that you can easily and inexpensively implement, so you could start saving water, saving money and saving the earth.
Number one, fix leaks. Dripping sounds are very annoying, but besides that they waste water. The EPA reports that fixing easily corrected household water leaks can save homeowners more than 10 percent on their water bills. Common and easily correctable types of leaks found in the home include, dripping faucets or valves, as well as leaking toilet flappers. Toilet flappers are found inside the tank of the toilet and keep water from being released into the bowl until you flush. For leaky faucets, get one of these, a wrench and tighten it. To check for a leaky toilet, you can add some food coloring to a toilet tank to see if there's a leak in the flapper. If the color shows up within a 15 minutes, it's time to replace that toilet flapper.
The second way to preserve water in a home, is to add a low flow aerator to your bathroom faucet. This is a one point five GPM faucet aerator. An aerator restricts the amount of water that goes through the faucet. And also mixes tiny bubbles of air. Hence the word, aerate, so you don't notice the difference in water pressure. This just screws on the mouth of the faucet. GPM stands for Gallons Per Minute. Most faucets are three GPM. Newer faucets are sometimes better, like two point two GPM. You can check on the side of your faucet to see, sometimes it's stamped on the metal. So, if you had a three GPM faucet, you could save half the amount of water by switching out to a one point five GPM aerator.
The third way to preserve water in a home is to turn off the water when brushing your teeth. I know this seems like a no brainer, but not a lot of people do this. So, I've got to say it, turn off the water when you're brushing your teeth, there's no reason to have it on. If you have a three GPM faucet, we just learned that three to six gallons go down the drain in a couple minutes.
Tip number four, to preserve water in a home, is to make your own low-flow toilet. This only works for toilets with a tank in the back. Typically toilets flush up to six gallons per flush. If you're curious, sometimes this information is listed at the base of the toilet behind the seat. Take an old water bottle, fill it with water and place in the tank. Then you've made your own low-flow toilet. The amount of water that is displaced by the water in this water bottle is saved with each flush. Be careful not to add too many water bottles. Because displacing too much water may affect the flushing quality and mechanism. Start with one bottle, test it out and see if you want to add more to save more water.
The fifth and final way to preserve water in a home, and everyone likes this one, is to use a dishwasher. Most dishwashers now actually use less water than washing by hand. The typical ones use approximately 15 gallons per load, the newer ones use less. And I know it takes longer than five minutes to wash a load of dishes. You can save the most water by running full loads only.
I'm Anjie Cho, green architect and interior designer with Anjie Cho Architect and founder of Holistic Spaces. And this has been the five best ways to preserve water in a home. Saving water can be easy.
by Anjie Cho
