My dd's school project--estimating family water consumption

[miss_thenorth]

She is to monitor how much water we use, and she pulled this info out of her text book.

Water Consumption:
Washing clothes-150 litre
having bath-120 l
shower- 75 l
dishwasher-45 l
leaky tap-25 l
flushing toilet- 20 l
brushing teeth-6 l

What!!!???!?!?!?

I know for a fact that we only use 12500 litres (approx 3300 gallons)in three weeks. I know this b/c we truck in our own water. but by these numbers, we would be using almost twice that much.

Please tell me that no one uses 6 litres of water to brush their teeth. And toilets taking 20 litres to flush? Thats not possible is it????

 

[keljonma]

I have seen figures like that before... I was reading some magazine article that most people don't shut off the water while brushing their teeth, which can waste up to 1.5 gallons of water.

And I think an old toilet would use 20 L or 5.5 gallons of water when flushed.

My son has a friend who runs the shower until the entire bathroom is steamed up - BEFORE getting in to take a shower!

For those of us on a private well or tanking water in, we can't afford to be that wasteful.

Maybe your daughter can amend the report to show your usage versus the text book information. It might make a great class presentation on conservation of water resources.

 

[miss_thenorth]

that's exactly what i said. I told her we would monitor all the water but we would figure out just how much water we used for everything--and NOT use their guidelines.

 

[FarmerChick]

yes use YOUR water consumption, compare to the guidelines, then show ways to save water in use. You know this is an A project!!!!!

Cool

 

[poppycat]

My kids did the water detective thing too, just last week. Here' s the thing, they are using estimates from the 90's on how much water the average suburbanite uses. This is before low flow shower heads, new toilets, front load washers, and assuming people don't shut the water off when they are brushing their teeth.

In my house, both as a kid and now as an adult we were/are VERY conservative with water. I would imagine that most SS types are too. But most people are NOT AT ALL conservative with water. My DD had a friend over and she probably used 20 gallons just washing her hands. I tried to kindly tell her that her hands would be just as clean with about a hundredth of the water but she just looked at me like I was a weirdo.