How to Cut Back Substantially On Your Water Bill

November 20, 2007 By Matthew Paulson

The weather that the United States has been having this fall has been ironic if nothing else. Some parts of the country have more water than they know what to do with mean while others are droughts and record low amounts of rain. If you’re in part of the country that just doesn’t have enough water to go around, there are some things that you can do to significantly lower your individual water usage in and around your home.

Get a Low Flow Showerhead – Nobody enjoys a shower with a traditional low flow shower head and without a good shower chair, they just don’t do good enough job at rinsing us off, however a new low flow technology has been invented which feels like a full shower with a good shower chair but uses substantially less water than a traditional shower. The way it works is that the head injects air bubbles inside of the water that flows down upon you, and these new shower heads are cheap! You can get them for less than $50 and the return on investment is just a matter of months.

Get Energy Smart Appliances – Don’t go out and throw away your old appliances, but the next time you are going to purchase a washer, dryer, dishwasher, or any other appliance that uses water, look for one that’s energy star compliant and uses a lower amount of water than other appliances of the same class.

Optimize Your Toilet – There are a number of European toilet designs which use a significantly less amount of water than the traditional toilets we have in the United States. Consider one of those as an option, or if you don’t want to replace your toilet, just throw a brick into the tank to displace some of the water for each flush.

Get a Desert Lawn – In the south western part of the United States, especially in desert places such as Las Vegas, some individuals try to keep up a full lawn of green grass, but this just isn’t feasible. It simply places too high of a demand on the water supply that the city has. The Las Vegas strip only uses 3% of the city’s water demand, the vast majority of it is from home-owners with green lawns. If you’re in this situation, consider moving to a more arid-friendly landscape.

Lobby at City Council – There are a lot of things that cities as a whole can do to reduce their water usage. There are grey water systems that they can make use of which partially treated waste water to water lawns and provide other irrigation and can reduce a city’s water consumption by 30% or 40%. City’s can also implement urinals which do not use water in public facilities that will decrease water usage.