Low Impact

Between the shower and the toilet, the bathroom is one of the big users of water in your average house. We’ve discussed water-saving shower heads in the past, but there are also solutions for the toilet too. The difference it can make to your water usage is significant - up to 35,000 litres a year!

Old style toilets only offer a single flush option, typically around 11 litres. But modern, “low flush” toilets are typically dual flush - you can do a half-flush which uses 3 litres, or a full flush which can use as little as 4.5 litres. So in the worst case, you’re still using less than half the water of an older toilet!

The trick to the low water usage is the bowl - trying to use only 4 or 5 litres in an older style toilet just wouldn’t be effective. The newer toilets are especially shaped so that 4.5 litres can effectively flush the bowl.

Installing new, efficient toilets gives you the best water savings but might be considered a little on the pricey side. You can be looking at around $500-$700 to have one fully installed. Of course, if you’re a bit of a home handy-person you can save yourself some dollars on installation. And if you have expensive tastes, rest assured that you can spend a lot more than that on some of the luxury models out there (the mind boggles as to what extra services these toilets can offer to be worth the cost!)

There are other options as well. Devices like the Toilet Flush Water Saver which you can pick up at a hardware store makes your toilet flush only as long as you hold down the button, so you can use just as much water as you need. While you won’t save as much water as with a specially designed low-flush toilet, the big advantage of this device is that its only $10-$20. Environmentally, there’s also the advantage that it doesn’t require all the resources of manufacturing an entirely new toilet.

Perhaps one of the easiest and cheapest ways of reducing the water use of your old, water-guzzling toilet is to put something in the cistern. Something like a plastic bottle filled with water will take up space in the cistern, stopping it from holding the same volume of water. a 1.25 litre bottle will therefore reduce your water usage from 11 litres/flush toilet to 9.75 litres/flush - around a 10% saving right there!

Trying one of these solutions can make a big difference to your yearly water consumption. For those people who have a tank plumbed into their whole house (or just their bathroom), this is a great way to make the water in your tank last longer. For those people on town water, you’re reducing the need for electricity hungry desalination plants or for building new city dams as well as the energy required to treat and process all that water. The saving on your water bill is an added bonus!

Categories: DIY, efficiency, environment, green, reduce, water

Tags: low flush, plumbing, reduce, toilet, water