Water Saving Tips at Home

What are some water-saving tips for the home? Let’s talk about some ways to conserve water.

When you are living off the grid, and your only water source is what you can collect in tanks, suddenly the need to save water and use it wisely becomes a high priority. We all need water to live, so we certainly wouldn’t want to run out! Even if you have a steady supply of water, it is still good to use it wisely and not be wasteful.

First, let’s think about what we use water for each day.

Drinking

Adding it to foods (soups, stews, boiling water for pastas, etc.)

Washing our hands, brushing our teeth, shaving, etc.

Washing inside the house (mopping the floor, cleaning the bathroom(s) and kitchen)

Washing dishes

Washing clothes

Showering

Flushing the toilet

This list goes from least amount of water used per day per person to the most water used on average. So, the water we drink and use for cooking is barely anything compared to the gallons of water used for flushing toilets and showering. This list only includes interior water usage in the home and not exterior uses, such as watering the lawn or garden, or washing the car.

So, how can we conserve water? Here is my list of Water Saving Tips at home:

Water Saving Tip #1

Turn off the faucet. Simple right? When you are washing your hands, lather with soap first, then turn on the faucet to rinse them off. Brushing your teeth? The faucet does not need to be on when you have your toothbrush in your mouth. Quickly turn on the faucet to get your toothbrush rinsed, then turn it off. Shaving? Same thing. A household can save gallons of water per day simply by turning the faucet off.

Water Saving Tip #2

Check your appliances for how much water they use. Water-efficient appliances are a must, especially if you have a limited water supply. A front-loader washing machine uses a lot less water than the standard top-loaders.

Check for this HE symbol when looking for a new appliance.

High Efficiency (HE) front-loader machines can typically us 10 gallons per 8-pound load of laundry. Although, HE top-loaders are not too far behind using 12 gallons. Depending on how many loads of laundry you need to do each week, those few gallons can quickly add up! Dishwashers are the same. Definitely look for the HE symbol when looking to purchase a new dishwasher. That is of course, if your off-grid power system can handle such appliances. The other option of course, is to wash your dishes by hand. To save water that way, put just enough water in two sink basins, one for wash and the other for rinse. Rinsing dishes with the faucet on uses more water than using a basin. You can keep the rinse water in the basin to be used for other things, like washing your hands, and later pre-rinsing your next round of dishes.

Water Saving Tip #3

Don’t turn the faucet on all the way. When you are washing your hands, brushing your teeth, washing or rinsing your dishes, turn on the faucet just a little bit as opposed to full blast. Another option is to switch out your faucet aerators with a low flow faucet aerator. These can allow only 1/2 gallon to flow through your faucet per minute (gpm). This type is especially useful in your bathrooms. I would recommend a higher water flow for the kitchen. Filling up a jug or even just a glass of water will take too long. There are low flow faucet aerators that are adjustable, so you can choose .5, 1.0 or 1.5 gpm.

Water Saving Tip #4

Does your hot water tap take a long time to get hot? Keep a large jug or watering can near the kitchen sink, and fill it while you are waiting for the hot water to come through. Then use that water for drinking, cleaning or watering your garden. If your bathroom sink has a tall enough faucet, keep a jug or something in there too.

Water Saving Tip #5

Showering… There are many tips and tricks to saving water while taking a shower. Like Tip #3, you can put a low flow shower head in your shower or not turn the water on full blast. A timer works well, including a one-minute warning. If only there was an automatic shutoff only accessible outside the bathroom when time is up! Can you tell we've had teenagers? Lol. Then there is the “military shower”, which we do all the time in our off grid home. Our shower is a bucket that we fill with about two gallons of water and pulley up above our heads. The bottom of the bucket has a shower head looking thing up inside it that turns to open and close. So, you turn it on to quickly get wet, shut it off, lather all up and turn it on again to rinse off. Even with long thick hair and a second round of rinsing out the conditioner, the two gallons is enough! You, of course, don’t need a bucket shower to do this same thing. Turning the water off while soaping up is a great way to save water in any shower.

Water Saving Tip #6

Have your house checked for plumbing leaks. Even a small gradual leak somewhere can cause you to lose thousands of gallons of water in a few months. Just last year, we had this happen to us. There was a tiny hole in an underground pipe between our house and our 1000 gallon water tank. It hadn’t rained for about a week or two, but typically we could go without rain for over a month and still have water in our tank. Meanwhile, we didn’t realize why the ground was damp near our house until we noticed that our water tank was empty! Since that is our only source of drinking water, we were in trouble! Thankfully, our next door neighbor had plenty of water in their tank and allowed us to bring jugs over to fill up at their tank. Once the leak was fixed… and we had a good rain, we could get water straight out of our indoor faucets again.

Water Saving Tip #7

And last but not least, the biggest water hog in the home — the toilet. We will talk more about these in another post. But, for this post, there are two things you can do to conserve water for toilets. There is an old saying, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.” Not flushing the toilet every time someone just urinates can save gallons of water per day. However, if you are not able to bring yourself to do that, another trick is to put a brick or something that won’t float or move around, in the water reservoir area of the toilet. This takes up the space where water would normally fill, making your toilet use less water. The bigger the object you can put in the back of the toilet (without it getting in the way of the mechanism that makes the toilet flush properly) the less water will be used for each flush. Another option for your toilet is to use one that does not use water at all. Again, more on those options in another post.

There are numerous ways we can conserve water. What are some of your tips or tricks? We’d love to hear them!