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bathroom is a place where it’s easy to waste water and electricity. But a few small changes can go a long way to reducing your water and energy use — and lower your bills for both.
According to the EPA, every American uses between 80 and 100 gallons of water a day. (The U.S. Geological Survey National Water Use Science Project estimates that Clark County residents used 88 gallons a day in 2015.)
Much of that — nearly 44 percent — is used for showers and flushing toilets. Leaving the spigot running while brushing your teeth drains away a gallon or more. You use about the same to wash your hands or do a daily shave. Turn the faucet off during these routines for automatic savings.
Cut down the overall volume of water flow by adding aerators to faucets. Plumbing and hardware stores carry them for about $5 dollars and up, depending on the fit your faucet needs.
Older shower heads spurt out 5 gallons of water a minute. Water-saving shower heads can chop that to 2 gallons a minute while maintaining pressure and a pleasant experience. Many models are available at hardware and plumbing stores starting at $35. For more savings, you can add a flow-control valve in front of the shower head. The valve allows you to get wet, turn off the water, lather up, and turn the valve on to rinse using a small amount of water.
Bathroom leaks are another quick fix for flushing out hidden costs. A leaky toilet loses up to 200 gallons of water a day. In a month, a dripping faucet can fritter away another 200. If it’s a hot-water leak, there’s wasted energy in addition to water. Fixing leaks yields immediate savings.
Each flush of an older toilet drains between three and seven gallons of water. Newer high-efficiency toilets use only 1.6 gallons. Without replacing an ancient porcelain throne, you can cut its use by installing a water-saving repair kit (about $25 at a big box store). Or, you can add a brick, or a small plastic bottle filled with water to the tank to limit the volume used for each flush. These displace an equal amount of water and save that much with every use — a simple improvement as long as the object doesn’t interfere with the tank’s fill and flush mechanisms.
On the electrical side, the bathroom is where many use lights, hair dryers, and hot water daily. Across the whole home, an electric water heater makes up about 14 percent of your electric bill warming water for washing hands, dishes, laundry and showers. Setting your water heater to 120 degrees reduces its demand for electricity.
Swapping an old water heater out for a new heat-pump version can further drop the energy needed for making hot water.
About 12 percent of a home’s electricity goes toward lighting, but swapping out existing bulbs for LEDs can shave significant amounts off the bill — and those savings add up. Today’s LEDs come in many designer shapes desirable for bathroom lighting and can last for more than a decade.
When doing any work in bathrooms, remember that water is an excellent conductor of electricity. The mix of water and 1,500-watt hair driers, or other devices in the bathroom, poses a potentially deadly hazard.
Make sure your bathroom outlets are ground-fault circuit interrupters, and always take care to keep electronics of any kind away from water.
Energy Adviser is written by Clark Public Utilities. Send questions to ecod@clarkpud.com or to Energy Adviser, c/o Clark Public Utilities, P.O. Box 8900, Vancouver, WA 98668.
