The Biggest Water Wasters in Your Home
The #1 water waster in your home is the toilet.
A leaking toilet can waste 15,000 gallons of water a month. To check if your toilet has a leak, place several drops of food coloring in the toilet tank. If the color seeps into the toilet bowl within 30 minutes without flushing, your toilet has a leak.
Water efficient toilets use 1.5 to 2 gallons per flush, if you have an older model it can be using up to 8 gallons per flush. Newer toilets cut total indoor water usage by 30%.
The toilet as not a trashcan.
Only human waste and toilet paper should be flushed.
Fix Dripping Faucets
Did you know that a dripping faucet that runs at a rate of one drip per second wastes 3,156 gallons a year. That is enough water to fill 63 bathtubs to the top. Imagine if every home in Spokane had a dripping faucet! Millions of gallons of water would be lost.
A leak the size of a pinhead can waste 360,000 gallons of water a year. That is enough water to fill 20 average sized backyard pools.
Use your meter to check for leaks.
Some leaks are easy to spot. Dripping faucets, for instance, are hard to ignore. Yet, many leaks are hidden and can potentially waste thousands of gallons of water, driving up your water bill unexpectedly.
If you suspect you have a water leak on your property:
- Turn off all devices using water (taps, dishwasher, sprinklers, evaporative cooler, etc.) inside and outside of your home.
- Record your water meter reading.
- Make sure no one in your home uses any water.
- Check the meter again in a few hours. If the meter has changed at all you have a leak.
- If you find you have a leak, call a leak detection company to have it repaired as soon as possible.