Small efforts can save lots of water
| Saturday, Dec 05 2009 12:00 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Dec 05 2009 12:00 PM
Vaughn Water Company
Website: www.vaughnwater.org
For conservation tips, click the conservation tab.
What you will find: A list of practical ways to reduce your water usage.
Unique tip: Put two plastic bottles in your toilet tank.
Your toilet can probably flush just as efficiently with less water than it now uses. To reduce water waste, put an inch or two of sand or pebbles in each of two plastic bottles to weigh them down. Fill them with water and put them in your toilet tank, away from the operating mechanism. In an average home, the bottles may displace ten gallons of water or more a day.
California Water Service Company
Website: www.calwater.com
Conservation link: http://www.calwater.com/conservation
What you will find: A list of water conservation tips, a link to order a free water-conservation retrofit kit, a list of rebates for water-efficient fixtures, links to other conservation sites and educational materials.
Unique tip: How to diagnose (and fix) a leaky toilet.
California Urban Water Conservation Council's H2ouse
Website: www.h2ouse.org
What you will find: A room-by-room interactive map of how to conserve water, including expansive tips for building and watering a low-water landscape in your yard.
Unique resource: The "Smart-from-the-Start" landscape design page with region-specific plant lists and model plans for landscapes and irrigation systems.
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
Website: www.bewaterwise.com
What you will find:
Unique resource: An irrigation calculator that takes into account the type of landscaping and soil at your home and gives you a schedule for how many weekly waterings you should do for each month of the year and how long you should let the water run.
Tip: You have to use a Los Angeles area zip code -- such as 91505 for Burbank -- to make the calculator operate.
Bakersfield, generally speaking, is not the most water-conscious of towns.
At best the average local resident spends more than twice the water at home that an average United States citizen does.
That is good news for people who might be looking to make some changes in the way they use water:
There is plenty of room for improvement.
A few simple alterations can make an immediate impact on consumption -- and on pocketbooks.
You don't have to re-plumb your home or convert that lawn into a rock garden.
"Some people will find two or three things to do and, for them, that's enough," said Chris Brown, executive director of the California Urban Water Conservation Council. "It makes a lot more sense for the pocketbook to do this one step at a time. You don't have to do it all at once."
Where can you get the most bang for your buck?
Inside the home the answer is -- without question -- the toilet, Brown said.
"If they haven't done anything at all, the toilet is the single most water-using (fixture) in the house," Brown said.
Replacing an older toilet, which can use more than three gallons during each flush, with a modern 1.6 gallon-per-flush toilet can save more than 1,000 gallons of water a month, according to data on the conservation councils' H2ouse website.
If you can't afford a new toilet, try this tip from the Vaughn Water Company:
Fill two sturdy plastic water bottles with a little sand or gravel and some water and put them in the tank of your toilet. They can reduce the amount of water used in each flush.
Tim Treloar, district manager for California Water Service Company in Bakersfield, said basic household leaks can also be terrible culprits.
"Check for that leaky toilet, those leaky faucets. Those leaks add up," he said.
Hundreds of gallons of water can flow out of those leaks daily, according to the Conservation Council website.
"The second most important thing to convert is your clothes washer," Brown said.
Replacing a low-efficiency washer with a conserving model can save up to 40 percent of the water used, according to data on the CUWCC website.
For a family of four, that can add up to 8,000 gallons of saved water a year.
Brown said the lower water bill for metered water users can pay off the cost of the new machine fairly swiftly.
Since many Bakersfield residents pay for their water in units of 100 cubic feet, every 748 gallons they save each month means a smaller water bill.
Saving water inside your home can shave a few dollars off a monthly bill.
But the big savings happen outside.
In Bakersfield, in the summer, local water districts say more than 70 percent of all residential water is used to irrigate landscaping.
Cutting back on a day or two of watering each week, or watering for shorter periods each day, can cut water use by thousands of gallons a month.
Doing both can magnify that savings.
"Turn your sprinkler timer down," Treloar said. "Water every other day at the most."
Brown said watering less often causes lawns -- the big water leech of any landscaping plan -- to dig deeper roots and become more resilient and tough.
"The lawn does not need to be watered every day. Watering twice a week has been shown to be sufficient to keep our lawns alive," Brown said.
Treloar said those actions can make a big difference but ultimately homeowners may need to think about finding a way to go further.
A customer recently suggested banning the planting of winter grass, he said.
Treloar isn't a big fan of such government dictates. But, he said, the idea is sound.
"I thought it was a really excellent suggestion for people to think about," he said. "My lawn's brown (right now)."
But Treloar said drastic steps -- like a complete landscape makeover -- can be done slowly.
He recommends replacing water-hungry plants and planting areas with species that need only a small amount of water to survive.
"You can do it one plant at a time," he said.
