Friday, December 25, 2009

Reducing your carbon footprint, lessen your impact on our landfill, while saving water and $$$!

Here's a great question submitted to AskAquaPro
Ron Whitworth asked;
"Can I make my existing toilet more water efficient rather than throwing it away?"

Well Ron, yes you can.
I am a fan of minimizing the amount of waste that goes into our landfills, and converting/re-fitting your existing toilet rather than throwing it away is one thing I definitely encourage; under the right circumstances. There are plenty of “do it yourself tricks” out there that can be much more of a headache than benefit, so do your home work before deciding on what will work best for you. The good news is there are viable, effective, affordable options for improving the efficiency of a toilet rather than throwing it away and spending big bucks for a new High Efficiency Toilet (HET or UHET).

A couple things to consider;
a) If the current toilet uses more than 3.5 gallons of water per flush you should bite the bullet and get a new toilet. You will recover the cost of buying a new toilet pretty quickly by replacing these old water hogs. Get rid of it!
b) If you have a pressured assist toilet it can be modified but requires a good bit more effort and expense. If this is your situation email me with contact information and we'll discuss things further.

One of the most cost effective ways to improve water efficiency in a toilet is to convert it to a dual-flush. The Dual Flush Pro toilet conversion kit makes this easy to do and cost’s less than $50. This kit comes with everything you need to turn your existing toilet into a Dual Flush water saver toilet in about thirty minutes. The handle has a dual function; push one way for ½ flush to remove liquid waste and push the other way for full flush to remove solid waste.

For most major brand 1.6 gallon per flush toilets the kit is pretty well set up right out of the box to provide a 0.8 gallon half flush and 1.6 gallon full flush. Not all toilets are created equal. Some models will require adjustments to the factory settings of whichever kit you decide to use. These adjustments are simple with the Dual Flush Pro kit.

Thanks for asking Ron & thanks for thinking about water conservation.
AP

There are a lot of options when it comes to saving water, lowering utility bills and improving the quality of your water. I suggest stopping by the Aqua Environmental Resource Center in Asheville. This is a hands on product testing and demonstration facility and community educational resource for water conservation and water quality throughout the region. Come on down and see for yourself how easy and affordable saving water and improving water quality really is.

Happy Holidays,
AquaPro
AquaPro@AskAquaPro.com
Aqua Environmental Resource Center

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1 Comment:

Anonymous said...

The cheapest thing to do is save your shower and bath water in the tub if you have one. Then when it's time to flush fill a bucket with the water and pour into toilet. It works! And I don't flush everytime I use the stool, just when there is solid stuff in there.

 
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