Conserving Water for fun and profit

This is a more in depth follow up to this post.

I mentioned that we spent about $100 on a low flow toilet and shower head.

The toilet was because the original one installed in our house was a custom made item, that after over 50 years of absolutely no maintenance whatsoever gave up the ghost and leaked. From everywhere. And getting custom seals to fix the pink abomination* would have been more expensive than buying the basic model at local home improvement warehouse for all of $80 plus taxes and installing it, which we did ourselves and it was EASY.

The new toilet is a low flow model that uses 1.4 gallons per flush. Our old model used 9 gallons per flush. We pay $0.02969 (that's 3 cent) per gallon of water, so that's a total savings of $0.225644 or 22cent per flush.

The new toilet saves us more than a dollar a day in water.

We are actually really upset that we didn't change it out years ago. (staves off descend into the shouldacouldawouldas by focusing on the fact that we have now done it and it's over)

The low flow showerhead (which I actually bought with points from the credit card, but I'll count the cost for this exercise) took us from 2.8 gallons per minute of shower to 1.5 gallons per minute of shower. That's a savings of $0.038597 per minute of shower time, which at Pinch Manor pretty much adds up to at least $1.16 a day. Hey, we drink cheap coffee, we get to take looooong showers.** Your luxury allowances may vary :D

So with those $100 we are saving probably to the tune of $2.25 on an average day, which means that that investment will amortize in 44.44 days, or in a little more than a month.

I'll take it.

The point of this little exercise? Those pennies add up. And up and up. An average savings of $2 a day means that we are at this point (it's been over a month since we installed these) saving about $60 dollars a month or about $720 a year, give or take a few dollars. That is something that will show itself over the next few months in our water/gas bill which I have already adjusted down a bit (we were at $115 for those two, $85 now).

And the new showerhead, while having a lower flow, means that neither hubbin nor I have run out of hot water (40 gallons last a lot longer now) while contemplating life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the shower. This is a win for us.

Next water related projects we are saving up for: On demand water heater so we can pinch a few pennies out of the gas bill and a reverse osmosis water filtration system for our drinking water (not a savings in money, but in health)

That's all I got for now,
Happy Pinching



*our bathroom is the kind of pink that always puts me in mind of someone who has kidney failure and a really bad sunburn, not a pretty colour.

**at least until we can afford a hot tub, which you will know, because there will be water stains on this page