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Water Conservation

Leak Detection

Water is a precious commodity. Remember to use it wisely. Encourage your family to keep looking for new ways to conserve water in and around your home.

  • Check EVERY faucet for Leaks – Just a slow drip can waste 15 to 20 gallons a day. Fix it and you save almost 6,000 gallons a year!!!
  • Check Toilets for Leaks Periodically. Put 5-10 drops of food coloring in each toilet tank. If, without flushing, the color shows up in the bowl within 15 minutes, you have a leak. It is not uncommon to lose up to 100 gallons a day from one of these otherwise invisible leaks. That is more than 30,000 gallons a year!

Tips for Conserving Water To Lower Water Bills

  • Use your automatic dishwasher and washing machines for full loads only
  • If you wash dishes by hand, don’t leave the water running for rinsing. If you have two sinks, fill one with rinse water. If you have one sink, gather washed dishes in a dish rack and rinse them with a spray device or a panful of hot water.
  • Don’t let the faucet run while you clean vegetables. Just rinse them in a stoppered sink or a pan of clean water.
  • Keep a bottle of drinking water in the refrigerator. Running tap water to cool it off for drinking is wasteful.
  • Stop using the toilet as an ashtray or wastebasket. Every time you flush a cigarette butt, facial tissue, or other small bits of trash, you waste five to seven gallons of water.
  • Take shorter showers. Long, hot showers can waste five to ten gallons every unneeded minute. Limit your showers to the time it takes to soap up, wash down, and rinse off. A bath in a partially filled tub uses less water.
  • Turn off the water after you wet your toothbrush. There is no need to keep water pouring down the drain.
  • Rinse your razor in the sink. Fill the bottom of the sink with a few inches of warm water. This will rinse your blade just as well as running water.
  • Water your lawn only when it needs it. A good way to see if your lawn needs watering is to stomp on the grass. If it springs back up when you move, it doesn’t need water. If it stays flat, it needs a drink.
  • Water your lawn and outside plants before 9 A.M. and after 6 P.M. and avoid watering on windy days. Water in several short sessions rather than one long one. For example, three ten-minute sessions spaced 30 minutes to an hour apart will allow your lawn to better absorb moisture than one straight 30-minute session.
  • Make sure your sprinkler is placed so it only waters the lawn, not the driveway or sidewalk. Also, avoid sprinklers that spray a fine mist which increases evaporation. A single lawn sprinkler spraying five gallons per minute uses 50% more water in just one hour than a combination of ten toilet flushes, two 5-minute showers, two dishwasher loads, and a full load of clothes in the washer. So be sensible.
  • Maintain a lawn height of 2.5 to 3 inches to help protect the roots from heat stress and reduce the loss of moisture to evaporation. Aerate soil at least once a year to help the soil retain moisture, discourage the growth of weeds, and provide essential nutrients.
  • Use a broom, not a hose, to clean driveways and sidewalks. Five minutes of hosing will waste about 25 gallons of water.
  • Tell your children not to play with the hose or sprinklers.
  • If you have a swimming pool, get a cover for it. Evaporation can make hundreds, even thousands, of gallons of water disappear. An average-sized pool with average sun and wind exposure loses approximately 1,000 gallons of water per month. That’s enough to keep a family of four in drinking water for nearly a year and a half. A pool cover cuts the loss by 90%.