Simple and Affordable Ways to Reduce Your Water Bill

Most homeowners are always looking for ways to save money around the house, and lowering your water bills is one of the easiest, fastest, and most environmentally friendly ways you can accomplish this.

There are ways you can reduce water use in every room in the house, but some methods are more effective than others, and will save you more each month. Here are three easy ways you can get started with lower water bills today.

1. Head to the Carwash

Most people who wash their cars in the driveway use a typical garden hose, which has a flow-rate of about 10 gallons per minute. This means even if you get your car washed in 10 minutes, you’ve still used about 100 gallons of water.

Although this may not seem like much, imagine what you could do with that water: you could keep a single person hydrated for about four months, you could take 10 water-conscious showers, or you could cook 800 cups of rice! By contrast, a commercial car wash will use less than 50 gallons.

2. Switch to Showers

Taking a bath might seem like a great way to relax and get clean, but when it comes to water conservation, baths just can't compete with the shower. The reason is that if you fill up a tub to take a bath, you're going to use about 70 gallons of water. On the other hand, a five-minute shower will use about 25 gallons or less. Moreover, you can actually cut your water use to 10 gallons per shower if you:

• Take shorter showers
• Install low-flow shower heads
• Turn off the water when you're lathering up

3. Make Use of Greywater

In America, each family uses about 300 gallons of water per day, and about 30 percent of this is for outdoor use. Therefore, you can reduce water use by reusing greywater—water that’s been used to cook food, wash hands, clean dishes, etc.—in the garden to feed plants and the lawn.

If you're really dedicated, you can set up an irrigation system that pipes water right from the source (something like your dishwasher or washing machine) out into the garden. Otherwise, just collect the water in a bucket and haul it into the garden.

Safety tips: Toilet, waste, and sewage water is blackwater, and shouldn’t be reused. When using greywater for vegetables and fruits, don’t get the water on the edible plant parts.

4. Take on Some DIY Plumbing Inspections

Did you know that 10 percent of homes have a leak that wastes over 90 gallons of water each day, and that an average household leak can waste as much as 10,000 gallons per year?

You may not have realized how much leaks can contribute to high water bills, but take our word for it: inspecting pipes, faucets, and toilets regularly for leaks can drastically reduce your water use and your water bills.

Expert leak-detection tip: To determine if you have a leak, check your meter reading, stop using water for two hours, and then check the reading again. A change indicates a plumbing leak. The great thing about these water-saving tips is that they won’t cost you any money to implement, and they’ll actually result in lower water bills.

Plus, you'll be doing your part for a healthier planet, because water is a precious resource that we should all be doing our part to conserve. There are plenty of ways you can save water, but these simple and affordable tips will get you well on your way to becoming a water-conscious St. Michael, MN home.