Spoiler alert: it was generally an blow.

See, the other 24-hour interval I was one-half way through writing a lovely little post about how nosotros fertilize our garden for free when my fingers chanced to alight upon our water bill, freshly arrived in the mail. Idly I opened information technology while thinking virtually wood stove ash. Idly I glanced at information technology while thinking about mulch. Puzzled about the ratio of gallons to cubic anxiety and months to days, I did a fleck of partition. Then I had a cow, as they say.

I accosted my poor husband very rudely. "We must have a leak somewhere! No fashion do the iv of us use an average of 24.9 gallons a twenty-four hour period!"

I tucked the children into bed while my husband the Data Fiend (DF) dug out two years of our water usage numbers, graphed it for me and and then explained information technology to me, when he should have been using his precious evening moments to edit student grant proposals. I did not inquire him to do this but he is a data superhero, and duty chosen. DF's numbers say in that location is no new leak, and we really do use an average of virtually 28 gallons a mean solar day, varying from a depression of around 20 to a high just above 30.

A graph of household water usage

What a beautiful graph. Give thanks you, DF.

This sounded similar a huge amount to me. I lived in the dorsum of my truck in the Arizona desert for a piddling while, where I happily got by on nearly x gallons a week. I tin assure you lot that while it is not very pleasant, I tin can get plenty clean with virtually half a gallon of freezing h2o, continuing betwixt cacti in the brisk Dec current of air. My lifestyle has changed profoundly since so, and my mental account of my personal water use had non caught up.

To effigy out where it's all flowing I added up what my family currently uses, some of it measured and some of it guessed. I paw-wash dishes, and have measured myself to use between two and three gallons per batch, two batches per twenty-four hour period. Lest you lot think nosotros must eat on paper and order takeout, I clinch you that I melt nearly every meal and likewise do things in the kitchen my mother says no sane cook would endeavour: homemade pasta, home-fermented products, lots of canning and of class processing home-grown animals.

In winter we all shower once every other twenty-four hours under a low-flow shower caput. This probably uses at least twenty gallons for the 4 of u.s., or 10 gallons per day. Showering every other solar day would have left me as well stinky before I started making my own deodorant , simply now it works fine. In summer we shower every day out in the garden, where the 20-gallon solar shower tank runs dry out in nigh iii days if no one remembers to refill it, so summertime showering accounts for 7 or more gallons per 24-hour interval.

And then again we work outside in the oestrus, so every adult has to drink a minimum of one gallon to avoid heat exhaustion, and nosotros normally do closer to 5 quarts. Together the four of us probably drink almost four gallons per day in hot weather condition, plus some for cooking.

We have a high-efficiency washer with which we do on average two and a half loads per week, amounting to about seven gallons per twenty-four hour period. And no affair how much I talk about it, the children seem to remember "please wash your hands" ways "please recreate Lake Superior on the bath floor." Don't go me wrong, I'1000 thrilled they're washing. It'll go along us all healthier. I'm just 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 effectually 28 gallons per day for the four of u.s.. Sheesh.

Stewing about this, I looked upward the average US water usage and discovered that Due north Carolina households employ an average of 70 gallons per solar day per person. If our household was average for our area we would be using 280 gallons, x times as much as we do. And our state usage turns out to exist some of the lowest in the country! In Idaho where they go far less rain, per person usage tops 150 gallons per twenty-four hour period.

Out westward, the point of conserving water is obvious. Our civilization is drawing downward aquifers at a terrifying stride, and our ability to feed ourselves will exist seriously damaged when they run dry. But here in the east we go 60 inches of rain per yr. This past June my expanse had a hundred-yr flood; near a year later, the bridges in our neighborhood haven't been fixed and the roads are still closed.

Even though we're soggy, treating that water to drinkability and pumping it to our house does have an ecology bear on, about 51 lbs of carbon dioxide equivalent per average U.s. denizen per year according to How Bad Are Bananas past Mike Berners-Lee.

That's about the same carbon impact as a dark in a hotel, or 1 10-mile round-trip commute in very bad traffic. At 1/tenth the usage, my family'south yearly water carbon footprint is more similar that of a single cheeseburger. Very small potatoes.

Just that'due south non the finish of the story. Nearly household water eventually goes downwards the drain. Treating the water after employ has a carbon touch about iv times greater than making it beverage in the first place. If you're on septic like us, in that location is the touch on of building the septic organization including lot of heavy earthmoving equipment and a behemothic physical tank. And and then there is the impact of treating the sludge after you lot have information technology pumped.

Conserving current h2o doesn't reduce the impact of installing the septic, considering that'due south already happened. The only way to reduce the touch on of disposing of septic-treated h2o is to allow fewer solids go down the drain, lengthening the time between pumpings and saving both money and problem.

DF is more conscious of water than I am, never failing to pause the shower head while he lathers. Only our low usage is generally a result of choices we fabricated for other reasons such equally frugality, resilience or doing less work.

an inexpensive water catchment tank

The n side of our business firm is finally getting a proper catchment tank! More about that in an upcoming post, afterwards I hook up all the gravity-fed irrigation.

For instance, every big structure on our state has a water catchment organization so I can water copse, veggies and animals with costless water that is defenseless close to where it's used. That is by and large because I don't desire to dig hundreds of feet of h2o line or pay for irrigation water, and because I want a relatively make clean source of water near the house if the utilities fail. Our water bill never tops $38/month, and I like that. The catchment has a cost to ready up, of course, but not every bit much as you'd think. I'll tell y'all all nearly it in an upcoming mail service.

We accept a compost toilet to capture fertilizer for the garden and produce loftier-quality mulch for copse, with the side benefit of conserving water. Nosotros shower in the garden because it's lovely and saves electricity, with the side benefit of conserving water. Nosotros hand-wash dishes to avoid wasting time, energy and money on machines that don't serve u.s., with the side benefit of conserving h2o.

This is an important betoken that I proceed noticing as nosotros endeavour to live kinder: most lifestyle changes take more one positive outcome. Our changes reinforce each other to make our lives ameliorate in many different ways.

Given our loftier local rainfall, our relatively small usage compared to the average and the relatively small ecology bear upon of treating h2o, I'1000 not going to brand changes to farther reduce our usage. Even though it so offended me at starting time! Every household change ways a trade-off, or at the very least an expenditure of mental energy. I need to focus on more impactful actions, such every bit our other consumer choices. But if y'all live in an already-arid identify, reducing your h2o employ could hateful the difference between keeping your town livable for humans, or abandoning it to the desert equally dry places get drier.

Even in wet areas, expensive and impactful new water treatment facilities volition demand to be constructed as our cities grow, unless some of the states reduce. It's easy enough to choose an efficient model when your washing machine dies, fix leaky appliances, measure your hand-washing technique against your dishwasher and go with what'due south least wasteful, and permit it mellow if it'due south yellowish (flush information technology down if it'southward brown).

For the shower there are many techniques to reduce water usage: shorten your time or shut off while you lather (more ideas near the end of this post). Using less hot water is specially kind, because heating water accounts for 14% of average household energy usage, and the atmospheric touch of that is huge.

Using less treated water can too exist an deed of solidarity. Right at present, 1.8 billion people lack admission to adequate sanitation. A deadly virus is burning through our society and they can't fifty-fifty wash their hands.

Have you looked at your water bill? Were y'all surprised? Did you make changes, and how have they impacted your life? Tell us beneath.