How to Flush Your Toilet Using Rain Water

jchait — Sat, 03 May 2008 18:44:55 -0400

If you've ever built a rain barrel, or harvested your own rain water in some way, then you know how easy it is. You can use rain water to water your yard, wash your car, and any number of other uses. What if you could fairly easily use rain water to flush your toilet? Think of all the water you'd save.

Some house do utilize rain water for flushing, as do public buildings, so the possibility is reasonable for you if you own a home. Recently I saw a cool post at Seattlepi.com - at their reader blog section. The post, Flushing Your Toilet with Rainwater, covers a neat resource,a Rain Barrel to Toilet Installation Guide.

The individual who wrote this guide did a good job. It's not hard to follow and there are some great illustrations - both photos and diagrams. It's also a easy project to find parts for; this person snagged everything from the local Home Depot. The guide even discusses extras like backflow protection; a step not required in all states, but it's there, and is simple. Also extra a nice bit about attaching a water meter inside, so you can see just how much you're using. Best of all the entire installation cost around $100. A steal!

Best of all, of course are the environmental impacts. Curiously, the guy who did this is living in Seattle. Being in Oregon and the Washington myself, people often act like water conservation is a joke; I mean, we have so much rain. But rain coming down, does not equal plenty to go around. We still need to conserve when possible.

Learn more:

How Much Do You Know About Water Use?

Four Easy Tactics You Can Use In A House To Conserve Water

jchait — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 02:47:35 -0400

If you’re building or renovating a your house, there are some things you can do to conserve water.

Install ultra low-flush toilets. This is more of a renovation tactic, since Federal law actually already requires that all currently manufactured residential toilets use no more than 1.6 gallons per flush. If you have an older toilet though, you could be wasting lots of water. Per flush, most toilets designed before 1994 waste about four to six gallons more water than the newer ultra low flush toilets.

Consider a composting toilet: Composting toilets can save even more water than a low-flow; cutting up to 50% of your water and cutting your water storage costs up to 60%. Also, a composting toilet is not the outhouse you might think – many are super nice, they aren’t too hard to manage, and it’s not as if you simply have a big hole in your bathroom floor. People are really misguided about composting toilets. We looked into them for the house we built two years ago, and our real estate person was dead set against it – based on “Poor resale value.” However, you can learn more and see for yourself that composting toilets are not something to freak out about.

Install some $5 faucet aerator: One little aerator can save an average family around 6,000 gallons of water per year – or more. A faucet aerator is a low-flow device that can be easily installed (or more attached) to the water faucets in your house. This tiny adjustment can reduce water flow up to 50%. This also helps to conserve energy. Depending on the model you need, an aerator can be super cheap; I’ve seen them for under $2 at Home Depot.

Collect your rainwater: Rain water can be used for a multitude of things – washing your car, watering your garden, and more. When you’re building your home, or making changes, look into how to build or buy a rain barrel, and how to get started with saving rain water.

[photo via stock.xchng]