Living Green
From Home Guzzlers to Green Plumbing Trends
By Jathynia Garcia
What are some water guzzlers in your home? From our toilets to our tubs, roughly 60 percent of a home’s water consumption takes place in the bathroom, according to the California Urban Water Conservation Council. After this past summer’s droughts and floods, which wreaked havoc on water quality making it either unavailable or unuseable, any renovations or improvements you make in your bathroom should be done with an eye on the aquatic, especially in older homes. Past manipulations to your existing fixtures may be luring you into a false sense of security about how much water you’re actually using.
Efficient Toilets? Guzzling 27 percent of your household supply every year, your toilet is by far your home’s largest water user. At that rate, you want to be sure that the federally mandated, 1.6-gallon-per-flush (gpf) model sitting in your home really only uses 1.6 gpf—it may use more.
Water heating uses up to 25 percent of the energy in U.S. homes and is the second largest energy expense in U.S. households, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), so it’s definitely worth it to invest the time and effort in researching different water heating options. In fact, the DOE points out in its guidelines for selecting a new water heater that most people don’t get to do their homework before buying one, because they are usually forced to make a quick decision when their current heater fails unexpectedly. Storage Tank models are the most popular water heaters in the United States today. A typical tank heater stores anywhere from 20 to 80 gallons of hot water. The water is heated up slowly and stored for later use. As water sits in the tank waiting to be used it often loses heat and has to be reheated to maintain a pre-set temperature. “Standby heat loss” occurs as energy is lost from warmed water sitting in a tank and not being used. As long as there is hot water in the tank you can use hot water appliances simultaneously. However, once the tank is emptied there is no hot water available until it refills and reheats.
Tankless water heaters, on the other hand, heat water as needed and provide water continuously. They first began appearing in the United States about 25 years ago. Tankless models, also known as “demand” or “instantaneous,” are common in Japan and Europe. As their name implies, they do not have a holding tank. The heating process begins when you turn on a hot-water tap. Cold water travels through a pipe into the unit, and either a gas burner or an electric element heats the water up quickly.
So, if major purchases are in your budget, consider a tankless, on-demand water heater. Households waste 6.35 gallons of water per day waiting for it to heat up, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and 3.48 gallons of that is for showers alone. Tankless systems heat water when you need it, cutting wait times down to about 30 seconds. That’s savings. For some more Green & Eco Friendly Products see our below featured items for this month.
“Living Green,” it’s just one more way Hi-Tech Plumbing can help so Don’t Fret … Call Hi-Tech Check out more advice on Going Green at Hi-Tech.
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