A toilet story worth reading
March 8th, 2007 by Eric
Have you ever wondered how your water supplier determines how much to bill you each month? Well, I asked. And my water company works like this: rather than send someone out every month to read my meter (that costs them money), they use information from past meter reads at the house plus averages from other homes in the area to provide an estimate, and they charge the estimated bill. Then two or three times a year they will come out and do an accurate meter read. Your next bill will reflect the actual usage. Sometimes it’s a few bucks more and sometimes a few bucks less, but nine times out of ten (that’s my own estimate) it’s pretty close.
So imagine my surprise when I got my bill and it was three times what they were previously estimating. How could a household with three people, one of them not yet using a toilet, use that much water? I was sure they had made a mistake. But when I called customer service they assured me that the bill was accurate. To her credit, the lady pointed out the most frequent cause of overuse, and explained how I could fix it. Now I’ll pass it on to you.
The culprit in my case, as it is in so many cases, was a “silent leak” in my toilet. It doesn’t sound very scary, but it is. According to this utility company:
A “running” toilet can waste two gallons of water per minute. A silent leak in a toilet can waste up to 7,000 gallons of water per month.
That’s 84,000 extra gallons a year, which would double the average in the US.
To test if this “monster” is invading your WC, put a few drops of food coloring into your toilet tank. That’s the thing on the back of the toilet that you rush to remove the top of so you can hold up the floaty-thingy when the water races you to the top of the bowl. Don’t flush! Come back and look in the bowl twenty minutes later. If the food coloring has found its way to the bowl, you have a leaky flapper.
The good news is that there is an easy fix. Three bucks, a quick trip to the hardware store for a new flapper, and a two-minute installation later, and your problem is solved. For more detailed information, check out this site. The 30 second movie is worth the watch and the information at the end can save you big bucks and help the environment.
See? You can even make progress with your toilet.
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