If you are looking to conserve water for environmental purposes, or simply to save a few dollars on your bill, this is the article for you.
Calculating how much water you and your family use is a fantastic way to save money (and water), and to get into the habit of being mindful of how much you are using. Whether you want to write it all out yourself and figure it out, or if you want to use an online calculator, there will be guides for you here.
Let’s first take a look at how to calculate it yourself, if you want to physically document it for future use.
How to Calculate it Yourself
If you want to write down and measure out the amount of water you and your other household members are using, it will require some detailed steps.
Firstly, you will want to make sure you consider all the different ways you are using water. Baths, toilets, sinks, showers, washing machines hoses, etc. – there may be ways water is being used in your house that you easily overlook or don’t think of right away. Once you are sure you are taking everything into account, you can move on to the next step.
Next, consider how often each of those examples you gathered in the first step is happening every single day. While you only take one shower a day, if you have several people in the house those will add up. Question the other members of the household on how often they take baths, use the washing machine, etc.
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After that, you will want to add up the gallons of water each action uses.
For things like flushing a toilet, you will have to do some additional research. Older toilets tend to use 3.5 to 5 gallons, with the most extravagant ones using 7. Newer toilets only use 1.6 gallons, due to new federal plumbing standards. There are even high efficiency toilets that will only use 1.28 gallons of water as well. You can use a general estimate if you know how old your toilet is, but if you want to be as specific as possible it is a good idea to search online or to read the manual that came with it.
There are also print out PDFs that you can use to write this all down with as well. A lot of them will provide you with estimates on how many gallons of water certain things like washing dishes and taking a bath will take.
Online Water Calculators
If you don’t want to write anything down, and think it would be easier to input everything online, there are many fantastic online water calculators available. We are going to look at a few of our favorites to give you a good idea of what is out there.
The first one we are going to look at is the calculator from Southwest Florida Water Management District. They have a fantastic, very simple layout. You are able to simply put in the number of times each activity occurred during the week, and it calculates the amount of water you are using all together. It also allows you to calculate per person if you would like, or up to nine people at once. A lot of other calculators only allow you to go up to 3-5 people, so if you have a bigger family or household this is a great option.
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The other one we really like is the water usage calculator from USGS (United States Geological Survey). This is a very simple design that allows you to choose from a drop down for much water you consumed in each category (toilets, sinks, washing machines, etc.). Then you just hit submit. We like this one because it also allows you to put in how many glasses of water you drink a day, which is a nice feature. The only downside is that you can’t specifically choose the number of people using water in the house, so you can either just put in your own statistics, or add everyone’s up yourself.
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Good Luck Calculating
We hope that this was a helpful guide to finding the best water usage calculator for you. As long as you are specific with the amounts you are using and fill everything out correctly, you should have no issues finding out the correct amount.
Water conservation is a wonderful habit to get into, and saving some money doesn’t hurt either. Hopefully having this new tool to assist you will ensure that you are getting the most out of it. It is really easy to be unaware of how much water we are truly using unless we make a point to measure it. How do you track your water usage?
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Last update on 2024-04-19 at 08:50 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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