toward our greener home
A selection of greener home projects we at TAGWV are doing with our home.
Cutting the water drain
March 2008: The March focus for greening your home was on reducing the flow of unnecessary water going down your drains. During a recent WECAN / WV Sustainable Communities Project event in Morgantown, I received two nifty little money savers, a 1.5 g/minute water faucet aerator and a "toilet tummy" from AM Conservation Group .The purpose of the aerator is to reduce the flow of water while maintaining the pressure. This is done by restricting the size of the faucet opening. Less water is coming out but the amount of water trying to get through is the same so the pressure remains high. The toilet tummy is a plastic bag that is filled with water then hung inside the toilet tank. Because the bag takes up room, less water is needed to fill the tank after each flush.
Quite frankly I was a little leery about the loss in quality of life involved with both. I was afraid that the aerator would leave the water flow too weak and that not enough water would come out during each flush to do the job. You see I had already filled up a discarded large mouthwash bottle with water and sunk it in the toilet tank several years ago. This had worked very well with no problems so I thought that removing more water per flush might be too much.
Well, I was wrong on both accounts. I put the toilet tummy in over a week ago and even though I now have removed a total of 3 liters (over 3 quarts) of water from each flush we can't tell the difference. The aerator was even more impressive. I installed the aerator on the bathroom sink in less than a minute and turned it on. At first I was disappointed. It didn't seem to make a bit of difference. Same pressure from apparently the same flow. I removed it again to compare it to the old one and they looked different so I decided to run a test. First I put my mouth rinsing cup (you know, the one I placed on my sink back in October, 2007) under the faucet without either aerator and turned on the faucet full blast. I timed it filling in two seconds. I did it several times to test my results. Then I did the same for the old aerator. That took two seconds each time as well. Finally I tried it with the new water-saving aerator. Very much to my surprise it took four seconds each time. Me being me, I switched out the aerators several more times but always got the same results. Brilliant. When I put my hands under the faucet now it feels like twice the amount of water is flowing than really is.
Final results, I'm now saving three liters of water on each flush and using half the amount of water each time I turn on the bathroom sink faucet. And neither action is noticeable in our day to day life. This has turned out to be an excellent example of so many of the things we can do around the house where we can rest assured that we are saving money, saving wear and tear on our home systems, and saving the environment all without a change in our routine or quality of life.
my cost: zero. these were public event giveaways. Pay attention to local announcements because green groups are regularly handing out money/earth saving products for free to get you involved. At this same event they were handing out CFL bulbs as well.
Cutting the water drain
March 2008: The March focus for greening your home was on reducing the flow of unnecessary water going down your drains. During a recent WECAN / WV Sustainable Communities Project event in Morgantown, I received two nifty little money savers, a 1.5 g/minute water faucet aerator and a "toilet tummy" from AM Conservation Group .The purpose of the aerator is to reduce the flow of water while maintaining the pressure. This is done by restricting the size of the faucet opening. Less water is coming out but the amount of water trying to get through is the same so the pressure remains high. The toilet tummy is a plastic bag that is filled with water then hung inside the toilet tank. Because the bag takes up room, less water is needed to fill the tank after each flush.
Quite frankly I was a little leery about the loss in quality of life involved with both. I was afraid that the aerator would leave the water flow too weak and that not enough water would come out during each flush to do the job. You see I had already filled up a discarded large mouthwash bottle with water and sunk it in the toilet tank several years ago. This had worked very well with no problems so I thought that removing more water per flush might be too much.
Well, I was wrong on both accounts. I put the toilet tummy in over a week ago and even though I now have removed a total of 3 liters (over 3 quarts) of water from each flush we can't tell the difference. The aerator was even more impressive. I installed the aerator on the bathroom sink in less than a minute and turned it on. At first I was disappointed. It didn't seem to make a bit of difference. Same pressure from apparently the same flow. I removed it again to compare it to the old one and they looked different so I decided to run a test. First I put my mouth rinsing cup (you know, the one I placed on my sink back in October, 2007) under the faucet without either aerator and turned on the faucet full blast. I timed it filling in two seconds. I did it several times to test my results. Then I did the same for the old aerator. That took two seconds each time as well. Finally I tried it with the new water-saving aerator. Very much to my surprise it took four seconds each time. Me being me, I switched out the aerators several more times but always got the same results. Brilliant. When I put my hands under the faucet now it feels like twice the amount of water is flowing than really is.
Final results, I'm now saving three liters of water on each flush and using half the amount of water each time I turn on the bathroom sink faucet. And neither action is noticeable in our day to day life. This has turned out to be an excellent example of so many of the things we can do around the house where we can rest assured that we are saving money, saving wear and tear on our home systems, and saving the environment all without a change in our routine or quality of life.
my cost: zero. these were public event giveaways. Pay attention to local announcements because green groups are regularly handing out money/earth saving products for free to get you involved. At this same event they were handing out CFL bulbs as well.
We've completed many more projects over the last two years having to deal with air quality, heating, furnishings, insulation, lighting, etc., etc. We'll be adding to this list to let you know how and what we've done as the weeks go by.