The Benefits of Water Saving Toilets
We all understand the importance of water. However, it is a scarce resource that many people around the world tend to take for granted. If you are looking to cut down the cost of your monthly water views and conserve water then the bathroom is the best place to start. The bathroom is the main source of water use for the average home. In fact, toilets account for nearly 30 percent of an average home’s indoor water consumption.
How to Save Water in the Bathroom
By either upgrading or replacing old and inefficient toilets in your home, the average family can reduce water used by their toilets up to 20 to 60 percent. That can yield up to 13,000 gallons of water savings for your home in any given year. At a national level, if all old inefficient toilets in the United States are replaced with water-efficient toilets we could potentially save 520 billion gallons of water per year.
Why Upgrade or Replace a Toilet
- According to the MWRA, simply upgrading a 3.5-gallon toilet with a dual-flush retrofit kit or replacing it with a low-flush 1.6-gallon model can result in a 54% reduction in toilet water use. So by simply upgrading or replacing an older toilet with low-flush components, you can reduce the water use in your bathroom up to 54%.
When to Replace a Toilet
- Unless the toilet tank or bowl is cracked or in bad shape, it’s much easier and less costly to upgrade it with a dual-flush kit and keep that perfectly good toilet out of the landfill. But if it does need to be replaced, the best time to do that is when you are doing renovations and repairs, because the replacement process can be involved with a different foot print, flooring requirements and plumbing, depending on the newer toilet used for the replacement.
Water Saving Toilet vs Regular Toilets
If you do need to replace your toilet and want the best of both worlds – environmentally friendly with the flushing functionality, then a water efficient toilet may be ideal for you. Water efficient toilets use as little as 1.28 gallons per flush, whereas older toilets can use up to 7 gallons of water with every flush. Federal plumbing standards now specify that new toilets can only use up to 1.6 gallons per flush.
High-efficiency toilets of today surpass traditional toilets in terms of efficiency, lifespan and power. You will not have to suffer multiple flushes and low-flow cleaning issues if you make the switch to a high-efficiency design today.
Also, there isn’t a need to run out and buy a new high-efficiency toilet. Often times it is more cost effective to simply retrofit the toilet than purchase a new toilet. When you consider that your toilet may be flushed as much as 5 times per day you can easily use 15-35 gallons of water per day! As you can see below the water usage of an older toilet can add up.
| Toilet Consumption | Avg. Flushes Per Day | Est. Gallons Used Per Person Per Year |
|---|---|---|
| 7 GPF | 5* | 12,775 |
| 5 GPF | 5* | 9,125 |
| 3.5 GPF | 5* | 6,388 |
| 1.6 GPF | 5* | 2,920 |
| 1.28 GPF | 5* | 2,336 |
Now imagine for a minute you have a family of 5 and multiple those above figures and just look at the water usage in the bathroom! That’s why we say at Water Saver if you want to practice water conservation then you need to start in the bathroom.
How to Determine if Your Toilet is a Low Flow Version
- Put down the seat and check for the flush volume stamp between the seat and tank. If the stamp reads “1.6 GPF or 1.28 GPF,” your toilet is already a low-flow model.
- Take off the lid and check for a flush volume stamp or a date stamp inside the tank. The stamp may be on the walls of the tank or on the lid itself. Look for model numbers and brands, you may be able to find it online.
The date is generally the month and year it was produced and the number, if followed by L, represents liters of water used with each flush. Based on the year, the toilet uses the following gallons of water per flush (gpf).
- Before 1985: 5 to 7 gpf (gallons); 18.93 – 26.5 liters
- 1985 -1994: 3.5 gpf; 13.25 liters
- After 1994: 1.6 gpf (excluding Lamosa)
- Mandatory January 1, 2016: All toilets sold or installed in California must be 1.28 GPF or less
Essentially, if you don’t have a high-efficiency toilet you may be flushing money down the proverbial toilet. But fear not – you don’t have to run off a buy a new toilet. You can simply purchase a dual flush toilet retrofit kit to help you reduce your monthly water bills and conserve water within your home.
In addition, the payback time for a conversion kit is dramatically shorter than purchasing a new high-efficiency toilet. Especially if you consider the payback period ranges from half a year to several years depending.
If you are serious about water conservation in the home, the best place to start is in the bathroom.
