Typical water usage?

[Shawn Clark]

I was looking at the EPA's Watersense site. They claim that the average use is about 100 gallons/day per person for a family of 4! (That must include irrigation.) Our current average is at around 5,000 gal/month for 4 of us or about 42 gal/day per person (if there is no irrigation.) This is as a result of the front loader and low flow showerhead that have reduced our average in the past few months.

Others here seem to be in a similar range. My target is 4,000 gal/month for 4, about 33 gal/day per person for indoor use. Looks like fuzzy1 is already there as far as use goes. It would be easier if we weren't such homebodies and nobody was home during the day or if we ate out more or had more dry cleaning.

If I was doing things from scratch I would probably look at a cistern for roof runoff and use that as the suction tank for the sprinklers. That would be enough to eliminate irrigation for us. I really only use irrigation as life support anyway. I ran it for a few minutes this year during an early spring dry spell, just to make sure none of the heads had frozen this winter and so that I knew it would pass backflow inspection. I haven't needed it since due to some well-timed rains. When the lawn is getting dry enough to warrant watering the birch trees start shedding some yellow leaves...that's what I figured out last year as a tell.

Water is probably the one utility most directly correlating to body count in a home. Shower/baths, toilet flushes, laundry loads, dishwasher loads, etc. are all almost perfectly correlated to the number of occupants. (Irrigation is not.) Contrast this with electric/gas that are more strongly correlated to the size of the residence and somewhat insensitive to the number of occupants.

Compare this profligate target (33 gal/day/person) with backpacking or primitive camping/canoeing I budget about 2 gal/day of filtered, treated or boiled water per person for everything including cooking, dishes and the occasional sun heated shower. Of course the laundry is a lot more primitive...and the toilet involves a small shovel and a bit of paper at worst.

[tripp]

So you've effectively converted yours to an HET (High Efficiency Toilet) at the expense of a brick.

The brick was free, mate. I found it in the back garden. Good to know about the volume calc. Thanks for that info.

[Rae Vynn]

Ours is metered in Cubic Ft... and we are billed every two months. Three adults, one of which only comes home to shower (!) (That's just one cubic foot, btw... not 100 cubic foot. Once cubic foot contains 7.5 gallons of water, according to wikipedia)

In the previous two months, we used 730 CF. Our usage a year ago (when there was just the two of us...) was about 600 CF for two months. (730 CF = 5475 / 56 days = 98 gallons per day)

I do have a garden this year, and am watering my raised beds every few days... and we have four new trees I'm keeping alive by watering them until they get well established (I lost the little japanese maple by not watering it enough )

I do have a dishwasher -- it runs about 4 times a week. I do three or four loads of laundry a week, in a front-loading washer. We tend to shower more than bathe.

Does this help?

[PriuStorm]

Well, whaddaya know... reading Rae Vynn's thread, I just realized that my 'monthly' winter usage of 4 CCF is actually a TWO month usage! That puts us at 50 gal per day with two people, or 25 gal per person during winter. OK, I feel much better now. Same with the other usage of 15-18 CCF in summer... that is two months.

Update on my hall toilet... funny, right after I wrote my post above, the bar off the handle that lifts the flapper broke. When I went to ACE Hardware to price replacement parts, it was not that much more expensive to just buy the kit that converts the toilet to a dual flusher. And Voila! Now we have two dual-flushers in the house.

[Shawn Clark]

Ours is metered in ccF as well, but I figured folks could relate better to kgal, especially since I anticipated the discussion drifting to gpf, gpm and gpd.

The nice thing about these threads is that most folks here actually analyze their various utility bills in units of consumption rather than just dollars. It is so much easier to have a productive conversation with folks who speak the same language. Whereas it is frustrating to have this sort of conversation with highly intelligent folks who only think in terms of dollars on each statement and have never even considered their engineering unit consumption.

[JamesBurke]

Less than 2000 gal. every 3 months. 2 adults. No washer/dryer. And feet of rain this spring. Sump pumped 500 gal + a day for most of spring.

[Shawn Clark]

Originally Posted by JamesBurke

Less than 2000 gal. every 3 months. 2 adults. No washer/dryer. And feet of rain this spring. Sump pumped 500 gal + a day for most of spring.

Man, that's low! GPD per person would work out as:
2000 / 3 / 2 / 30 = 11.1 gallons/day per person.

To cut water back that much we would have to curtail toilet flushing in a big way (2 about 2/day per person) and shower about every other day for 5 mins with 1.5 gpm showerheads.

I'm assuming the clothes washing is done at a laundromat. Are you showering at work? One could cut a lot of home water use if using change-house showers and if the company laundered uniforms/overalls.

Eating out would cut home water use as well. (Of course using the laundromat, showering elsewhere, and eating out really wouldn't reduce personal water use, just shift it out of the home.)

[qbee42]

Not a clue for me. Water is one thing we have in spades. In this area, the only issue relating to water is the cost of pumping. We have amply fresh water, and after use it recycles right back into the same aquifer.

I have the figures here somewhere - let me check. Ah, there it is: we have 5,000 cubic miles of drinking water right outside our house, and that's just surface water. There is more if you consider what's down in the ground.

Tom

[PriuStorm]

Wow! ~22 gallons per day total for the household. That's a little more than 4 buckets of water per day... total! (5 gal buckets).

[F8L]

Originally Posted by PriuStorm

Wow! ~22 gallons per day total for the household. That's a little more than 4 buckets of water per day... total! (5 gal buckets).

If you think about it, you would end up using more water during shower days so on some days you would use less than 22ga. lol