By Debbie Ray
Most advice on saving water requires replacing toilets, visiting several hardware stores, or even calling on an expert. You can go that way - or - you can do it yourself. Here are some cheap and easy ways to save on your water bill without fancy hardware, expensive help or hours spent doing research at your neighborhood hardware store.
1. Put a clock where it is visible from the shower; you don't have to get a more expensive waterproof clock if you can place the clock on a highly visible point on a wall outside the shower. Your definition of a long shower will shorten. My husband's long showers have since decreased from his past standard of 20 minutes. It was a painless 33% water savings.
2. Put one or two bricks in the tank of your toilet. Make certain it doesn't interfere with the valves. Rather than buying a new toilet with less water volume, you have inexpensively decreased the volume of your existing toilet. One brick is equal to about a 10% decrease in water usage per flush for our toilet. The other advantage is that this is immediately adjustable and reversible. If 20% less water doesn't do the job, use only one brick. If you aren't happy with the results, you can always remove all of them and be back where you started in just a couple of minutes. If you don't like the function of a low flush toilet after you have replaced your old toilet, you don't have such a convenient undo option.
3. When watering your lawn, set an egg timer. Turn off your water when the timer goes off. The cost of forgetfulness can easily run into the thousands of gallons.
4. Don't start bottled water delivery. If your local water is not per your taste, get a water filter. This will save money and free up space in your home.
5. Instead of installing a whole sink water filtration system, get a water filter specifically for the faucet. Only filter the water for drinking water. Paying to filter your dish water or mop water is a great waste.
6. Find out what species of plants are in your yard and garden and how often the species in your lawn need to be watered. We consulted with a gardener on the possibility of replacing our new homes extensive landscaping with something requiring less maintenance. We found out that our wildflower garden only needed watering once a week instead of its nearly daily attention and that our trees only needed attention when there had been no rain for a month. Now lawn maintenance is a small fraction of our water bill.
Note: Don't ask a landscaping contractor; their answer is almost always, "Rip it all out, here's the bill" A gardener, however, will give you the advice that simplifies the maintenance of your plants. Try it for yourself and see. Putting just a few of these ideas in place will help you save money, water, and the world.
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