Green Water Infrastructure

Posts Tagged ‘Watersense’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the EPA WaterSense’s fourth annual Fix A Leak Week. From March 12th through March 19th WaterSense Partners, consumers, and professionals are asked to check their plumbing fixtures for leaking water.

The EPA estimates that each day over 10,000 gallons of water is lost due to leaking and dripping plumbing in American households. This is over 1 trillion gallons of water lost each year. This water loss is easily and inexpensively preventable by simply checking your toilets, showers, and facets for drips. It does not take much to fix a dripping facet or a leaky toilet.

If each of us makes a small effort to stop leaks we can, collectively, have a large impact.  Click here to see what others are doing.

And here are some things you can do:

Faucets and Showerheads

• A leaky faucet that drips at the rate of one drip per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons per year. A home with WaterSense labeled toilets could use that water to flush for six months!
• Leaky faucets can be reduced by checking faucet washers and gaskets for wear and replacing them if necessary. If you are replacing a faucet, look for the WaterSense label.
• A showerhead leaking at 10 drips per minute wastes more than 500 gallons per year. That’s enough water to wash 60 loads of dishes in your dishwasher.
• Most leaky showerheads can be fixed by ensuring a tight connection using pipe tape and a wrench.

Toilets

• If your toilet is running constantly, you could be wasting 200 gallons of water or more every day.
• If your toilet is leaking, the cause is most often an old, faulty toilet flapper. Over time, this inexpensive rubber part decays, or minerals build up on it. It’s usually best to replace the whole rubber flapper—a relatively easy, inexpensive do-it-yourself project that pays for itself in no time.
• If you do need to replace the entire toilet, look for a WaterSense labeled model. If a family of four replaces its older, inefficient toilets with new WaterSense labeled ones, it could save more than 16,000 gallons per year. Retrofitting the house could save the family approximately $2,000 in water and wastewater bills over the lifetime of the toilets.

Outdoors

• An irrigation system should be checked each spring before use to make sure it was not damaged by frost or freezing.
• An irrigation system with pressure set at 60 pounds per square inch that has a leak 1/32nd of an inch in diameter (about the thickness of a dime) can waste about 6,300 gallons of water per month.
• To ensure that your in-ground irrigation system is not leaking water, consult with a WaterSense irrigation partner who has passed a certification program focused on water efficiency; look for a WaterSense irrigation partner.
• Check your garden hose for leaks at its connection to the spigot. If it leaks while you run your hose, replace the nylon or rubber hose washer and ensure a tight connection to the spigot using pipe tape and a wrench.

Source: EPA WaterSense Fix A Leak Fact Sheet 

Here is a fun commercial from the Wisconsin DNR

“Leaks Don’t Fix Themselves”