Start by finding where the water goes
Household water use is spread across a handful of jobs: toilet flushing, showers and baths, laundry, dishwashing, cooking and drinking, and the garden in warmer months. The split varies from home to home, so a quick look at your own habits is more useful than a generic average. If you have a water meter, reading it before and after a day at home gives a rough picture, and a bill that falls over time suggests your changes are working.
Whether saving water also saves money depends on how you are billed. If you pay by metered use, using less generally lowers the bill. If you pay a fixed charge, you will not see the difference directly, although heating less water can still reduce energy costs. The five steps below are ordered roughly from easiest to most involved.
1. Fix leaks and drips
A dripping tap or a toilet that keeps trickling can waste a surprising amount of water over weeks, and the problem often goes unnoticed because the water goes straight down the drain.
- To check a toilet, add a few drops of food colouring to the cistern. If colour appears in the bowl without flushing, there is probably a leak, often a worn flush valve or float.
- Check taps and shower heads for drips, and look under sinks for damp.
- If your meter keeps moving when everything is off, there may be a leak in a pipe. A plumber or your water supplier can help.
Washers and seals are usually inexpensive to replace, and repairing instead of replacing also avoids waste.
2. Shorten showers and think about baths
Showers often use less water than a full bath, but a long shower with a powerful head can use more than a modest bath. Shortening the time is the simplest change. Turning the water off while you soap up is another option if you find it comfortable.
Since hot water takes energy to heat, shorter showers can reduce both your water and your energy use. The size of the saving depends on your shower and your heating system, so it is best to treat any figure you read online with caution.
3. Use efficient fixtures
Some fixtures are designed to deliver the same experience with less water:
- Aerators on taps mix air into the flow so it feels full while using less water.
- Low-flow shower heads reduce the flow rate. Some feel weaker than others, so it may take trial and error to find one you like.
- Dual-flush or low-volume toilets let you use less water for each flush. In older homes, a cistern displacement device is sometimes used to reduce flush volume, though results vary and it should not cause the toilet to need repeated flushing.
Check water-efficiency ratings or labels where your country uses them, and remember that a fixture only saves water if it is actually used. If a low-flow shower head is so weak that people stay longer in the shower, the benefit shrinks.
4. Run appliances full and choose sensibly
Washing machines and dishwashers generally use a similar amount of water whether they are half full or full, so waiting for a full load tends to use less water overall. Eco programmes often take longer but are designed to use less energy and sometimes less water. Good washing machine habits help here, and household appliances in general are worth choosing with water use in mind, using energy labels as a guide where they show water consumption.
For dishes, the comparison between a dishwasher and hand washing depends on how you wash by hand. Washing under a running tap tends to use more, whereas filling a basin can use less. If you are weighing the two, dishwasher use has trade-offs in both water and energy that depend on the model and your habits.
5. Change small habits in the kitchen and garden
Small routines add up over a year:
- Turn off the tap while brushing your teeth.
- Keep a jug of tap water in the fridge rather than running the tap until it gets cold.
- Rinse vegetables in a bowl rather than under a running tap, and use the leftover water on plants, provided it contains no soap or salt.
- Reuse cooled cooking water from boiling vegetables or pasta on plants, once it has cooled and with no added salt.
- In the garden, water in the early morning or evening, water the roots rather than the leaves, and mulch beds to reduce evaporation.
- Collect rain from the roof in a water butt. Rainwater harvesting for the garden works best when the water is kept for plants rather than the house.
What to expect
None of these changes is dramatic on its own, and the effect on a bill varies with tariff, household size and how much water you use to begin with. Households that already use little will see smaller changes than those that start with leaks or long showers. Even so, using less water tends to ease pressure on local supplies and reduce the energy needed to pump, treat and heat it, so the benefits can extend beyond the bill.