Spoiler warning: information technology was mostly an blow.

Come across, the other twenty-four hour period I was half manner through writing a lovely little post about how we fertilize our garden for free when my fingers chanced to alight upon our water bill, freshly arrived in the mail. Idly I opened it while thinking near forest stove ash. Idly I glanced at it while thinking nigh mulch. Puzzled well-nigh the ratio of gallons to cubic feet and months to days, I did a bit of sectionalization. And then I had a cow, equally they say.

I accosted my poor married man very rudely. "We must have a leak somewhere! No manner do the four of us use an boilerplate of 24.9 gallons a day!"

I tucked the children into bed while my husband the Data Fiend (DF) dug out two years of our water usage numbers, graphed information technology for me and then explained it to me, when he should accept been using his precious evening moments to edit educatee grant proposals. I did non enquire him to do this just he is a data superhero, and duty called. DF'due south numbers say there is no new leak, and nosotros actually do use an average of virtually 28 gallons a twenty-four hours, varying from a low of around 20 to a high merely above 30.

A graph of household water usage

What a beautiful graph. Thank you, DF.

This sounded like a huge amount to me. I lived in the back of my truck in the Arizona desert for a little while, where I happily got past on about 10 gallons a calendar week. I tin clinch yous that while it is non very pleasant, I tin get plenty clean with near half a gallon of freezing water, standing between cacti in the brisk December wind. My lifestyle has changed greatly since and then, and my mental account of my personal water use had not caught up.

To figure out where it's all flowing I added upwardly what my family unit currently uses, some of it measured and some of information technology guessed. I manus-launder dishes, and have measured myself to use betwixt ii and three gallons per batch, two batches per mean solar day. Lest you call back we must eat on paper and gild takeout, I assure you that I cook well-nigh every meal and also do things in the kitchen my female parent says no sane cook would attempt: homemade pasta, home-fermented products, lots of canning and of course processing dwelling house-grown animals.

In winter we all shower in one case every other solar day under a low-flow shower head. This probably uses at least 20 gallons for the four of us, or 10 gallons per day. Showering every other day would have left me as well stinky before I started making my own deodorant , but now it works fine. In summer nosotros shower every day out in the garden, where the 20-gallon solar shower tank runs dry in nigh iii days if no one remembers to refill it, so summer showering accounts for seven or more gallons per mean solar day.

Then once again we piece of work exterior in the estrus, so every adult has to drink a minimum of one gallon to avert oestrus exhaustion, and nosotros usually do closer to five quarts. Together the iv of us probably drink most iv gallons per day in hot weather condition, plus some for cooking.

We take a high-efficiency washer with which we practice on average two and a half loads per week, amounting to about seven gallons per mean solar day. And no matter how much I talk about it, the children seem to think "delight launder your easily" means "please recreate Lake Superior on the bathroom floor." Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled they're washing. It'll keep the states all healthier. I'm but tired of stepping in lakes.

Washing hands, brushing teeth and the tiny flush on our urine-separating compost toilet definitely uses at least two gallons. Altogether, that puts us at around 28 gallons per day for the four of us. Sheesh.

Stewing well-nigh this, I looked upward the average U.s. water usage and discovered that North Carolina households use an average of lxx gallons per day per person. If our household was average for our expanse we would be using 280 gallons, ten times as much as nosotros exercise. And our state usage turns out to exist some of the lowest in the land! In Idaho where they become far less rain, per person usage tops 150 gallons per day.

Out westward, the point of conserving h2o is obvious. Our civilisation is drawing down aquifers at a terrifying pace, and our ability to feed ourselves will be seriously damaged when they run dry. Merely here in the due east we become 60 inches of rain per year. This past June my area had a hundred-year flood; nigh a twelvemonth later, the bridges in our neighborhood haven't been stock-still and the roads are still closed.

Even though nosotros're soggy, treating that water to drinkability and pumping it to our house does have an environmental impact, about 51 lbs of carbon dioxide equivalent per average US citizen per year co-ordinate to How Bad Are Bananas by Mike Berners-Lee.

That'south about the aforementioned carbon bear upon equally a night in a hotel, or one x-mile round-trip commute in very bad traffic. At ane/10th the usage, my family unit'south yearly water carbon footprint is more similar that of a single cheeseburger. Very small potatoes.

But that'south not the stop of the story. Most household water somewhen goes down the drain. Treating the water after use has a carbon impact about four times greater than making it drinkable in the first place. If y'all're on septic like u.s.a., there is the bear on of edifice the septic system including lot of heavy earthmoving equipment and a giant concrete tank. And so there is the impact of treating the sludge after you have it pumped.

Conserving electric current water doesn't reduce the affect of installing the septic, because that'southward already happened. The only way to reduce the impact of disposing of septic-treated water is to let fewer solids go down the drain, lengthening the time between pumpings and saving both money and trouble.

DF is more than conscious of water than I am, never declining to interruption the shower head while he lathers. But our low usage is mostly a result of choices we made for other reasons such every bit frugality, resilience or doing less work.

an inexpensive water catchment tank

The north side of our house is finally getting a proper catchment tank! More about that in an upcoming postal service, later on I hook upwardly all the gravity-fed irrigation.

For instance, every large construction on our country has a h2o catchment arrangement then I can water trees, veggies and animals with free water that is caught close to where it'southward used. That is by and large because I don't want to dig hundreds of feet of water line or pay for irrigation water, and because I want a relatively make clean source of h2o near the house if the utilities neglect. Our water bill never tops $38/month, and I like that. The catchment has a cost to fix, of grade, but not as much as y'all'd retrieve. I'll tell you all about information technology in an upcoming mail.

We have a compost toilet to capture fertilizer for the garden and produce loftier-quality mulch for trees, with the side do good of conserving water. We shower in the garden because information technology's lovely and saves electricity, with the side benefit of conserving water. Nosotros hand-wash dishes to avert wasting time, free energy and money on machines that don't serve us, with the side benefit of conserving h2o.

This is an important point that I proceed noticing as nosotros try to live kinder: nigh lifestyle changes have more than 1 positive result. Our changes reinforce each other to make our lives better in many unlike means.

Given our high local rainfall, our relatively small usage compared to the average and the relatively small environmental impact of treating water, I'm not going to make changes to farther reduce our usage. Even though it so offended me at first! Every household modify ways a trade-off, or at the very to the lowest degree an expenditure of mental energy. I need to focus on more impactful actions, such every bit our other consumer choices. Only if you live in an already-arid place, reducing your h2o use could mean the difference between keeping your town livable for humans, or abandoning it to the desert as dry places get drier.

Even in moisture areas, expensive and impactful new water treatment facilities will need to be constructed as our cities grow, unless some of us reduce. It'south easy enough to choose an efficient model when your washing motorcar dies, fix leaky appliances, measure your mitt-washing technique against your dishwasher and become with what's least wasteful, and allow it mellow if it's yellowish (affluent information technology downward if it'due south chocolate-brown).

For the shower there are many techniques to reduce water usage: shorten your time or shut off while you lot lather (more than ideas near the stop of this postal service). Using less hot water is especially kind, considering heating water accounts for 14% of boilerplate household energy usage, and the atmospheric impact of that is huge.

Using less treated water can also be an act of solidarity. Correct now, ane.viii billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. A deadly virus is burning through our society and they can't even wash their hands.

Accept you looked at your water bill? Were you surprised? Did you lot make changes, and how have they impacted your life? Tell us beneath.