Gault’s Place

At this time of the year, water conservation is one of the most important issues, especially in areas where droughts are commonplace.  Even if you do not live in one of these areas, you can save a large amount of water and money every month by following these simple tips.

One easy thing that you can do is take a Ziploc bag and fill it about halfway up with pebbles.  Put this in the tank of your toilet to raise the water level, so you use less water with each flush.  If you want to save even more money, you can replace your high water volume toilet with a model that uses significantly less water.

While you are waiting for the water to heat up when you take a shower, try catching the water in a bucket to use to water your plants or even your pets.

Checking for leaks in your toilet is also easy and you can lose more water every month than you think if your toilet leaks.  Put some food coloring into the tank and if you come back a while later and the coloring shows up in the bowl, you have a leak.

Saving water is also easy in the kitchen.  Washing dishes by hand is the best way to get it done, but often people use more water than they have to by leaving the water running for rinsing purposes.  If you have two sinks, fill one up with rinse water and the other with soap water.  Even better, if you have a spray hose attached to your sink, use that in short bursts instead.

If you have to defrost food from the freezer, you should do this by setting the item in the refrigerator for a while or by using the defrost feature of your microwave.

Outside, if you have a swimming pool, you can buy a cover for your pool which will reduce the amount of pool water that you lose to evaporation each summer.

When you water your lawn, it is best to do it in the early morning before the temperature rises.  Watering in the afternoon when it is hot is wasteful, since much of the water that you use will evaporate before it is absorbed into the ground.  Additionally, you should avoid watering your lawn on windy days.  You can also use a screwdriver and push it down into your lawn to test how much water is in the soil.  If it goes down easily, you can skip watering for the day.

During this time of the year, water conservation is one of the most important things that you can practice next to staying properly hydrated.  More and more communities are putting up notices for the residents to conserve water due to lack of rain and there are a lot of things that you can do to take part in this. 

Not only should you practice this during the summer, but practicing water conservation year round can save you a good amount of money on your water bill every month even when there is not a drought in your area.

First, if at all possible, restrict the number of baths that members of your household take every day.  Even better, try to switch everyone over to taking showers instead, since these will typically use a lot less water than a full bath tub of water will.  Around 10 minutes in the shower equals usually less than half a full tub of water, so if you want to bathe more than once in a day, switching to showers could be the best thing for your situation.

If you have lawn sprinklers, you can set these on a timer to only be active for shorter periods of time than throughout the rest of the year.  The sprinklers should only water the lawn for a few minutes, then stop for a while, then water again.  You need to give the water that was sprayed a change to soak into the soil before letting the sprinklers start watering again.

Something else you can do is turn your sprinklers off if you know that it is going to rain.  Some sprinkler systems have a rain sensor that you can turn on so your sprinklers automatically stay off if the ground is wet.

If you like to use your water hose to spray off your driveway or your deck, using a broom is often just as effective.  Do this instead.

Watering your lawn early in the morning is the best time if you do not have a sprinkler system to water the lawn for you.  The water that you spray on the lawn later in the day does not have as much of a chance to penetrate into the soil since it is much warmer in the afternoon and the water evaporates.  This will cause you to have to water your lawn again sooner than you normally would.

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