There is plumbing throughout a house, but the two rooms that contain the most piping and fixtures are the kitchen and the bathroom. When you are looking at ways to reduce your residential water usage—and this is always a good idea, both for utility costs and to benefit the environment—these are the two places where you’ll expend the most effort.
Below we’ve put a list of ways to save with your bathroom plumbing in Bethesda, MD. For assistance when it comes to repairs as well as new installations, talk to our staff of professional plumbers today.
Have Leaky Faucets and Showerheads Fixed
Please don’t ignore any leaking fixtures in your bathroom! You may think these are minor water wasters, but the cumulative loss of water is significant. According to WaterSense, an EPA Partnership Program investigating water conservation, the average leaks in a household can account for more than 10,000 gallons of water wasted annually—the equivalent of about 270 loads of wash. Arrange to have water leaks fixed not only in the bathroom but elsewhere in your home.
Install Low-Flow Fixtures
If you have an older bathroom or kitchen (more than 10 years old), you probably have fixtures in it that use more water than they should. For example, older toilets use around 6 gallons per flush, while newer ones use half that much. But updating to new fixtures is only part of how you can save on water use. Special low-flow fixtures with the WaterSense label will help cut down further on water consumption. A low-flow toilet uses approximately 1.5 gallons per flush. Think of how much this adds up to over even a new 3-gallon flush toilet. Our plumbers are glad to go over options with you for the various fixtures in your bathroom.
Check for Toilet Bowl Leaks
Toilet leaks are one of the more insidious ways that a bathroom wastes water, with water moving from the tank to the bowl when it shouldn’t. To check for this, place a tablet of food coloring in the tank and let it dissolve. If the dye starts to appear in the bowl later, it’s time to call professional plumbers to repair it.
Keep Showers Shorter
You’ve probably heard this before, but have you really heeded the advice? We recommend using a kitchen timer to help you lower your shower time so you don’t lose track. Keep showering under 5 minutes and then see if you can’t drop it even further.
Collect Water in a Bucket
There’s no reason to let the water go to waste while you’re waiting for it to warm up for showering. Put a bucket under the shower to collect as much as you can. You can then use this water for cleaning or to water plants. (Watering in gardens is a major source of residential water usage.) You can also pour the water down the toilet to flush it.
No matter what service you need for your bathroom plumbing, you only need to get in touch with our licensed plumbers to arrange for high-quality work.
Mallick Plumbing & Heating is the service contractor of choice in Silver Spring, MD and Montgomery County.