water useage

[Bob Allen]

It's interesting how you can get hooked into one particular aspect of environmentalism and find that you are drawn to many other facets of it. Like being a vegetarian because you don't like the meat packing industry, can lead to an appreciation of Buddhism and the sanctity of life everywhere, an appreciation of fine cooking, an awareness of food resources and protein wasteful food production, etc, etc.
I've been interested in water conservation for quite a while and devised ways around the house to minimize our water useage. My life partner is a dedicated environmentalist as well. I started with something cheap and simple;(we don't have the budget for retrofitting our house with bio-composting toilets, etc, so I was forced to use existing facilities. Putting a sealed quart bottle full of water (or a brick) in the toilet tanks eliminated about three gallons a day. Flushing less often (depending on your sensitivity to this) helped eliminate (so to speak) another five gallons a day. Turning the water off when brushing teeth and while shaving in the shower, reduced the intake by a few gallons a week. Amazing how much water can be wasted if you leave it running while brushing your teeth.
So........when the time came to get a new car, I thought this would be a rare opportunity to make another environmental leap. Once I decided to spring for a Prius, it was as if every other car on the lot disappeared.
My second choice was the Jetta TDI Wagon, which my partner drives on fuel he makes in the garage.
I felt that investing more than I had planned for getting a replacement car in Toyota and the Prius was worth the monetary hit. Sadly, I, like most of us, live in a situation where not having a car is not really an option. I have two jobs and could neither commute on bike nor make my schedule on public transit. Next best thing is to acquire the least consuming vehicle possible....hence the Prius or the TDI. Having both types gives us flexibility in hauling stuff like bikes, and comfortable long trip driving or for times when we need a bigger back seat than the Jetta has.
I like hearing stories from people out there who are trying to lessen our consumption of resources. We just returned from China, which is a great lesson in politeness, hard work ethics, creativity and conservation.
Bob

[bookrats]

When we did a major remodeled of our house 5 years ago, we did a couple of things to conserve energy, use recycled/renewable materials, and use less water. Some have been more successful than others (much like any engineering project); we learned a lot from the failures as well at the successes.

One of the real win-win features has been an "on-demand" hot water system we had installed. You know when you turn the hot water on in the morning, and let the water run for 30 seconds (or longer) while it gets hot? All that water gets wasted, and goes down the drain.

On demand basically puts a water pump in the hot water pipe, with an RF receiver attached to it. You push a RF button in the bathroom, and the pump starts pushing the hot water through the hot water pipes. Wait 15 seconds, turn on the hot water -- and you get hot water.

If I had it to do over again, I might have just put a pump that runs all the time (like most commercial buildings) and continously circulates the hot water. Suspect this is better for the pump -- but it also uses more power. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs....

Even for some of the less-successful things we did, it's like Bob says -- we learned a lot of interesting stuff (that we'd never think about otherwise), and it's made us think of other things we can do -- often much simpler, like taking shorter showers and collecting rain water for garden projects.

[jasond]

Flushing less often (depending on your sensitivity to this) helped eliminate (so to speak) another five gallons a day.

It's shocking how much water you can save just by not flushing the toilet.

I used to be in the "sensitive" category there, but my baby daughter would wake up from naps when the toilet was flushed, so I quickly adapted.

If you have a 1.7 gal/flush toilet, avoiding just one flush a day saves 600 gallons a year!

[cybele]

If you have a 1.7 gal/flush toilet, avoiding just one flush a day saves 600 gallons a year!

As I write this there's a plumber at my house replacing our old 2.4 gallon with a 1.6 gallon per flush toilet. If we like it, we'll replace the other 2.4.

We just did a major kitchen remodel and in addition to better task lighting (so that we didn't have to have ALL the lights on just to see what we're doing), we put in a new super-efficient dishwasher. It saves water and heats the water, so we're able to turn the house water heater down ten degrees. It also actually works, our old one didn't, which meant washing the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.

I'm thinking of getting a cistern/water barrel for collecting winter rains for use in the yard. We don't water much, but we do have some fruit trees that we really are spoiled by (nothing better than fresh plums and figs). Greywater reclamation is interesting, but I'm not sure how I'd implement that in my house ... maybe with water from the dog bath (hey, that's where all that dirt came from anyway) and the washing machine.

I got rid of the lawn in the front of our house a few years ago, it never really made any sense, just sucked up water. Now I have ornamental grasses and gravel and herbs planted there. It's much easier to care for an requires no watering at all.

The good news is that even though these things cost money, my figures show that they'll pay for themselves over the long run. Even the little things we did like replacing old mini blinds with lined roman shades has made a huge difference in the heating and cooling in the house (and made it look better, too).

Living in LA, I know that water will not always be so plentiful and we need to take steps now so that it isn't a hardship when the rationing comes aong.

[naterprius]

bookrats, what type of system (brand, make, model, etc) did you put in for your hot water on demand system? I'm thinking of retroing my house with a grundfos system, but it runs on a timer, and I would love a wireless button to turn it on.

Nate

[Bob Allen]

When we did a major remodeled of our house 5 years ago, we did a couple of things to conserve energy, use recycled/renewable materials, and use less water. Some have been more successful than others (much like any engineering project); we learned a lot from the failures as well at the successes.

One of the real win-win features has been an "on-demand" hot water system we had installed. You know when you turn the hot water on in the morning, and let the water run for 30 seconds (or longer) while it gets hot? All that water gets wasted, and goes down the drain.

On demand basically puts a water pump in the hot water pipe, with an RF receiver attached to it. You push a RF button in the bathroom, and the pump starts pushing the hot water through the hot water pipes. Wait 15 seconds, turn on the hot water -- and you get hot water.

If I had it to do over again, I might have just put a pump that runs all the time (like most commercial buildings) and continously circulates the hot water. Suspect this is better for the pump -- but it also uses more power. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs....

Even for some of the less-successful things we did, it's like Bob says -- we learned a lot of interesting stuff (that we'd never think about otherwise), and it's made us think of other things we can do -- often much simpler, like taking shorter showers and collecting rain water for garden projects.

I forgot to mention my other big idea: we keep a bucket in the bathtub/shower in each of the two bathrooms. When we turn on the water for a shower, we collect the initial runoff in the bucket until the water gets warm. The bucket can be emptied into the toilet bowl and will cause the toilet to flush. It's not quite as hygenic as using water from the toilet tank, but it saves about three gallons every time you do it. We don't use this method in the guest bathroom downstairs because the bowl doesn't stay as clean looking.
I have a 55 gallon aquarium. When I do water changes, I siphon the aquaruim water into a watering can which is placed outside the front door in a flower bed. The watering can gets filled with fish water which I use to water house plants, and when the siphon fills up the watering can, the runoff goes into the Jasmine plant outside the front door. The Jasmine is growing like gangbusters and the houseplants are thriving.
My partner, Lyle, installed a rain collection bucket which he uses to water our garden. Wish we could afford to retrofit our water heaters, etc, with solar but that's about 20k for a really good setup.
Houseplants help keep your home humidity up; most heating systems tend to dehydrate your house.
Using these methods, I have cut our home water useage by about ten gallons a day. It does add up. Contrary to popular belief, we do have droughts in the Pacific Northwest, and we are facing severe problems with water conservation and salmon restoration. As our forests get depleted, and global warming cuts down on the snow pack, our watersheds are in increasing danger. Much of the electrical power in this area is generated by water over dams, not good for fish. We have some tough choices to make and I feel we are doing our part.
As an example of benighted government in action: Seattle Water department issued a request for us to conserve water. Seattlites, being environmentally conscious folks, did a great job. So great a job that the water department actually raised the rates per gallon to recoup the monetary loss they incurred by shipping less water.
Oregon, I understand, is putting a surtax on the Prius to cover what they believe will be a net loss in fuel tax revenue from this car. Is that STUPID or what??? We should tax what we want more of and subsidize what we want less of........I'm gonna stop now before I get going on Bush's environmental idiocies.
Bob

[daniel]

Originally posted by Bob Allen
Oregon, I understand, is putting a surtax on the Prius to cover what they believe will be a net loss in fuel tax revenue from this car.

Hmmm. If it's the fuel tax that pays for the roads, SUV drivers might consider Prius drivers to be freeloaders. Not that I give a fig what SUV drivers think, but sometimes it's interesting to look at something from the other person's point of view.

[bookrats]

Originally posted by naterprius
bookrats, what type of system (brand, make, model, etc) did you put in for your hot water on demand system?  I'm thinking of retroing my house with a grundfos system, but it runs on a timer, and I would love a wireless button to turn it on.

We used the Metlund P-series -- it's built for houses that have a "closed loop" hot water system (i.e., there's a hot water pipe that goes from the hot water heater (in our case, a gas boiler) to all the sinks and showers in the house, and then returns to the boiler.

I'm not sure this is a common system -- we had our house torn down to the studs, and completely rewired and new plumbing (1908 house -- old for Seattle), so we were able to slip this in.

Also, it's a 5 year old system -- the Metlund models advertised at their web site are different than the one we got.

[naterprius]

bookrats, Thanks for the info.

Nate

[Wolfman]

For those wanting to look into solar water heat, and electricity, without forking over the big bux, look at subscribing to home power magazine. It's a great magazine, that details numerous ways to set up such systems without the huge investments.

www.homepower.com