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Sustainable Plumbing Solutions for Your Home

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October 8, 2023

Sustainability is the current buzzword in every sector, including building sites, gardening, travel, and groceries. Everybody, including building contractors and architects, should be aware of how their activities affect the environment. One area that often gets overlooked is plumbing systems.

Ensuring your home plumbing system is eco-friendly is crucial to achieving sustainability in your home. Sustainable plumbing essentially starts with hiring eco-conscious plumbers like Grable Plumbing for your plumbing needs. It also involves adopting eco-friendly plumbing materials and water-saving practices.

What are the Benefits of Sustainable Plumbing?

Adopting sustainable plumbing solutions benefits the environment and your wallet. Key benefits of these solutions include:

Reduce Waste

Green plumbing solutions significantly conserve water and energy. Eco-friendly fixtures like low-flow showerheads and faucets reduce the amount of water used during showering and toilet flushes. Tankless water heaters also consume low amounts of energy, which saves energy drawn from the national grid.

Saves Money

While the initial costs of sustainable plumbing solutions are high, these options are money-saving in the long run. For starters, sustainable plumbing solutions use less water than traditional plumbing. This significantly decreases your monthly or annual water bills. Even if water usage in your household doesn’t appear to be much, the extra gallons that go into each flush, shower, laundry, or dishwasher load quickly add up.

Green plumbing also decreases energy bills. Reduced energy consumption directly translates to a low monthly energy bill. For instance, using tankless water heaters reduces energy consumption as they heat water only when necessary. Insulating your plumbing pipes also conserves energy.

Prevents Water Shortages

Projections from the U.S. EPA show that 80% of state water managers expect water shortages in the next decade. On average, American households use over 88 gallons per day. Using less water conserves natural water sources, ensuring communities remain with enough for their daily use.

Decreased Impact on the Environment

Designers, architects, and homeowners significantly minimize their environmental impact by adopting green plumbing solutions. For instance, using less energy curbs pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and the use of fossil fuels. These reductions reduce the rate at which the environment gets depleted, averting a global catastrophe.

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Sustainable Plumbing Solutions to Consider

You can reduce environmental impact using plumbing solutions in the following ways:

Install Low-Flow Toilets and Showerheads

Though surprising, showers account for over 30% of every household’s typical water use. While showering takes less than 10 minutes, you use over 60 gallons of water using old-school showerheads. Traditional shower heads release more than five gallons of water per minute, while low-flow systems average 2.5 gallons per minute.

Similarly, modern faucets release as low as 1.6 gallons per minute, significantly reducing the amount of water used in a single shower. Installing low-flow toilets and showerheads is certainly an environmentally-conscious decision. While it looks like a simple decision, these systems save up to 15,000 gallons per person in a year. This translates to over 60,000 for a family of four.

That aside, using less water also means using less heating energy. There will be minimal activity for your water heaters and less electricity consumption. Besides saving on electricity costs, less energy consumption also reduces carbon dioxide emissions.

Install Water Efficient Appliances

Using water-efficient appliances is probably the main sustainable plumbing solution. Most old-fashioned appliances and fixtures are outdated and extremely inefficient. Upgrading your appliances and plumbing fixtures is a cost-effective option for reducing water consumption. These fixtures include:

High-efficient toilets: Decades-old toilets are significant water wasters. Most toilets manufactured before 1990 used 3.5 to 7 gallons of water per flush. However, the federal standards were revised to a maximum of 1.6 gallons per flush in 1994. Modern models use less than 1.2 gallons, making them highly efficient.
High-efficient faucets: Modern faucets not only improve the appearance of your kitchen and bathroom but also significantly reduce water usage. Compared to first-generation faucets that use 2.2 gallons per minute, new, efficient faucets use less than 1.5 gallons per minute. These systems have aerators, which mix water with air to create a steady stream of satisfying water. Homes that have multiple faucets save significant amounts of water.
Dishwashers: The temptation to hold on to your old dishwashing appliance to avoid the cost of buying a new one isn’t good. Dishwashing technology has made significant improvements. New dishwashing units are water and energy-efficient.

Washing machines: Like dishwashers, modern washing machines use modern technologies that make them energy and water-efficient. Energy-star certified machines use 25% less energy and 35% less water than regular machines.

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Energy-Efficient Water Heating

Hot showers are essential for most homes and an integral component of plumbing. Traditional water heaters work inefficiently and easily break down. Household water heaters account for a quarter of most household’s energy use. Fortunately, homeowners can enjoy showering with hot water without spending much on their electricity bills.

Energy-efficient heaters consume less energy than traditional heaters, primarily because modern heaters take less time to heat water. Besides, energy-efficient heaters are well insulated, which reduces energy loss. That aside, modern heaters have low maintenance requirements. These appliances use advanced technologies that guarantee efficiency.

Apart from the environmental and financial benefits, installing energy-efficient heaters makes you eligible for tax benefits. Switching your old water heater for an efficient model entitles you to energy efficiency tax relief.

Greywater Systems

Most architects, contractors, and homeowners overlook the importance of refining greywater systems during home construction. However, greywater systems are a practical, sustainable home plumbing solution. Greywater systems essentially involve reusing household water from sinks, showers, and washing machines.

These systems treat wastewater to make it safe for non-potable use. Treated recycled water can be reused at home for flushing toilets or gardening activities. This option is a perfect alternative to rainwater harvesting, especially for homeowners in dry regions.