APPLIANCES
Switch to water-friendly appliances is on tap
Posted on Sun, Jun. 10, 2007
BY GEORGIA TASKER
How many times a day do you flush a toilet? How long are your showers? How many loads of laundry do you wash a week?
The answers are vital to saving our water resources in South Florida as we face shortages now and in the future.
Nationally, we're flushing away 11 percent of our potable water. In Miami-Dade, the average four-person household uses 628 gallons of water a day, and flushing the toilet may use as much as a quarter of that amount.
Most people flush a toilet about five times a day. In Miami-Dade County, multiply that by 2.3 million -- the number of people served by the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department, the state's largest water utility -- and you get a picture of how much valuable drinking water goes, well, down the toilet.
What can you do inside your home to reduce water use?
• Fix those leaks. A leaky faucet that drips one drop per second can waste as much as 2,700 gallons of water a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, while a leaky toilet can waste 200 gallons of water a day.
• Forego the bath. A bath can use 70 gallons of water, while a five-minute shower uses 10 to 25. And speed it up! Cut that 10-minute shower to five.
• Wash clothes and dishes only when you have full loads. Then, when you buy a washing machine or a new dishwasher, look for high efficiency models.
• Buy a new toilet. The toilet is the single largest user of water in the home.
The EPA has a new Water Sense program, asking manufacturers to introduce toilets that use 20 percent less water than the current 1.6 gallons per flush. Kohler (and Sterling, also by Kohler), American Standard and Toto USA have models certified with the WaterSense label as high-efficiency toilets (HET), requiring only 1.28 gallons per flush.
Switching to a 1.28 HET, says Maribel Balbin, conservation manager with Miami-Dade's water and sewer department, means a savings of more than 125 gallons daily for a household of four.
The savings can be so significant that Balbin's department will give Miami-Dade customers a $100 rebate toward a 1.28-gallon toilet. The county also is offering free low-flow shower heads.
The Florida Legislature has ruled that new developments must find new sources of water. No more tapping into the Biscayne Aquifer.
Instead, it means drilling deeper into the Floridan aquifer, which will increase the cost of treating water for drinking because that water is brackish. It also requires conserving what we have.
Monroe County will begin a limited rebate program this summer, says Colleen Hagel, water conservation manager with the Florida Keys Aquaduct Authority.
''When people get their toilet they also will get shower heads and aerators so they can track their water efficiency,'' Hagel said.
The city of Fort Lauderdale gives its water customers faucet aerators and leak-detection kits.
If one of every 100 American homes was retrofitted with water-efficient fixtures, the country could save about 100 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That's the equivalent to removing nearly 15,000 automobiles from the road for one year.
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