Seven Ways To Reduce Your Water Bill – Indoor Edition

As Spring approaches, thoughts turn to making your landscape look great – the manicured lawn, the well-watered shrubs, and healthy trees. For those in many locations around the USA, it also signals the time of year for higher water bills.

Here in the western USA, it is not uncommon to see water bills move from $50 to $100 during peak months. And these rates are only going to increase as population increases demand, water rights battles come to a head, and weather becomes more variable.

What can you do about this? This week we’ll look at some things you can do indoors to save. Follow these seven steps and you’ll save anywhere from 2000 to 5000 gallons per month - and reduce your water heating costs, too!

And check back next week for tips on reducing water usage outdoors.

1. Install a low-flow shower head.

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: About $20

Anyone with a wrench and some Teflon tape can replace a showerhead. While recent regulations have required 2.2 gallon per minute (GPM) low-flow fixtures be installed in new construction, don't assume that is as efficient as it gets.

You can actually purchase 1.50 GPM or less showerheads. For a family of 4 taking 6 minute showers this $20 per-head expenditure will save 500 gallons per month.

Now imagine replacing an old 5 GPM showerhead with a 1.5 GPM head. That same family of four will be saving 2500 gallons in a month.

Either way, these are significant savings. And this doesn’t even consider the fact that your water heating costs will drop.

2. Time Your Showers

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free

Start timing your showers. See if you can shave a couple of minutes off. Even if you’ve installed a 1.5 GPM head, if a family of four can each reduce their shower time by 1 minute, that is 180 gallons per month.

And remember, less shower water also means a smaller water heating bill!

3. Modify Your Toilet

Difficulty: Moderate
Cost: Varies

A number of products exist to reduce the water consumed by toilets. “Bladders” can be installed to reduce the amount of water available for each flush. Or some toilets can be converted to European-style dual-flush (i.e. a low water flush for liquids, and a standard flush for solids).  This dual-flush convertor on Amazon seems to be the highest rated.

Consider that today’s toilets use 1.8 gallons per flush, and a family of four uses them about 14 times per day (assuming the family all works or goes to school for part of the day). If an average of a half gallon per flush can be saved, 210 gallons per month are saved.

4. Install Faucet Aerators

Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Less than $10, usually less.

Just like showerheads, most faucets today are limited to 2.2 GPM. However, many companies offer aerators that can reduce this to 1.5, 1.0, or even 0.5 GPM. Depending on how much you run your faucets, this may or may not be a huge saver. But it is cheap and easy and may just keep your usage under the next tier level.

5. Fix Leaky Toilets

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate
Cost: Less than $20

Over time seals in toilets can leak and cause your toilet to “run” to re-fill the tank. Use of drop-in tank cleaners often hasten this failures.

A leaky toilet may be wasting gallons per day, not to mention be very annoying.

6. Replace Top-Loading Clothes Washers

Difficulty: Easy, most appliance stores will install for you
Cost: Varies, $350 - $1000+

If your existing clothes washer is a top loader and is showing its age, consider replacing it with an efficient front loader. Many top loaders use 30 to 40 gallons per load. Doing 7 loads a week, that is around 900 to 1200 gallons per month.

I recently purchased a $500 front-loader that uses about 15 gallons per load. That translated to about a 600 gallon per month saving, as well as some electricity savings.

7. Replace Old Dish Washers

Difficulty: Easy, most appliance stores will install for you
Cost: Varies, $350 to $1000+

Older dish washers may use 15 gallons per cycle, some even more! Without costing an arm and a leg, you can easily find one that uses 3 to 5 gallons, and some very high end models use less than 2!

I think my household is typical in that we do one load a day. Moving from 15 gallons per cycle to 4 gallons per cycle would translate to 330 gallons per month. And many newer models are quieter and more energy efficient.