Check Out These Money-Save Hacks That Will Save You On Your Water Bill

Anyone that owns a home knows that with ownership come more monthly financial responsibilities. It’s not just the mortgage you have to worry about, but recurring, unavoidable expenses, like electricity and water.

While you need water in order to survive there are some tips and hacks you can try for yourself to help keep those bills lower.

Eliminate Leaks

The biggest offender for wasting money on a water bill are plumbing leaks, because this is money you have to spend on water you didn’t even get to use. You first need to confirm that you have a leak in your home.

Modern water meters have leak indicators, but even older meters can still track leaks if you just stop using all water in your home and the consult the meter after a waiting period. If it’s gone up, you have a leak.

Once a leak is confirmed, you can either track it down and fix it yourself, or get a professional to do it. The professional may be a better, safer idea in the event that the leak isn’t in some easily accessible portion of your plumbing.

Use Grey Water for Gardening Needs

If you can collect the water used for cooking, cleaning and bathing, it’s called “grey water,” because it’s been used, and may no longer be recommended for drinking.

However, this used water is still fine for more durable life like plants in your garden or grass. Collect your grey water, or even install a rain barrel on your property, and you can get twice as much use out of water in your home.

With a rain barrel, you can even save on the normally huge amounts of water you’d use to water your plants and grass to keep them healthy during the summer.

Don’t Wash Your Car At Home

Common wisdom says that you save money by washing your car at home instead of at a professional facility. However, what you don’t pay in cash can potentially end up costing you in the gallons of water that come out of your hose in your water utility bill.

When you take advantage of more DIY facilities, like self-service car washes, not only do you pay much less to use these centres, you also help the environment, as water with chemically infused waste water that is no longer going straight into the sewer, but is and reused by the car wash itself.

Use the Shower More

A bath is often considered a luxurious form of relaxation, but it can also use up a lot of water, as much 75-190 liters of water, depending on the tub size. Compare this with a shower using modern plumbing that uses only about nine liters of water per minute, and you can see how a five minute shower can make a big difference over a regular bath.

If you live in a home with plumbing that hasn’t been updated since 1992, you may have an unrestricted shower head. This just means that it doesn’t benefit from modern plumbing design advances, but a quick upgrade can get you that water efficiency when you shower!

While we’re lucky in Toronto, ON, to live right by many plentiful sources of fresh water, including a Great Lake, that doesn’t mean we should be wasteful. Don’t pay for more water than you need to, just follow our hacks, be smart, and save!