Water Conservation

Water Conservation Tips

Water conservation is a growing concern in our city. The preservation of this valuable resource will help sustain the growth and prosperity of our community and, therefore, its citizens. We are providing a few tips on how you can save water inside and outside your home. These ideas will not only save water, they will save you money and there is nothing wrong with that. So look over the tips and see if you can use any of them. If we all try a little we can save a lot.

Outdoor Water Conservation

• Water your lawn only when it needs it.
• Deep-soak your lawn. Water long enough for water to seep down to the roots where it is needed.
• Water in the cool part of the day. Early morning is better than dusk.
• If you wash your own car, use a self-closing nozzle. Soap down your car from a pail of soapy water. Use a hose only to rinse it off.
• Use a broom to clean driveways and sidewalks. Using a hose wastes hundreds of gallons of water.
• Plant drought-resistant trees and plants. Check with you local gardening center for suggestions.
• Put a layer of mulch around trees and plants. Mulch slows the evaporation of moisture. (The City of Quincy sells great compost)
• Check for leaks in pipes, hoses, faucets and couplings. Leaks outside are easier to ignore since they don't mess up the floor or keep you awake at night. However, they can be even more wasteful than inside leaks especially when they occur on your main line.

Indoor Water Conservation

• Check you toilet for leaks. Put a few drops of food coloring in your toilet tank. If, without flushing, the coloring begins to appear in the bowl, you have a leak that may be wasting more than 100 gallons of water per day.
• Don't use your toilet as an ashtray or wastebasket.
• Install a low flow toilet or a water saving device in the tank.
• Take shorter showers. ~ minutes, yeah I know, but the typical shower uses five to ten gallons per minute. You do the math. This will also help your power bill. You won't have to heat all that water.
• Or install low flow shower heads. They use 2 to 3 gallons per minute
• Install faucet aerators or flow restrictor on all your faucets.
• Turn the water off while you brush your teeth.
• Turn the water off while you are shaving.
• Run full load in your dishwasher. A dishwasher can use 25 gallons of water per load.
• The same goes for the laundry. A washing machine can use 30 to 35 gallons of water per load.
• Check faucets and pipes for leaks. Even a small drip can waste 50 or more gallons per day. One drip per second wastes 2,400 gallons per year.
• Check any new appliance or fixture going into your home for it's water saving characteristics. Look for the Energy star label.

Don't waste it … you are paying for it.

Water Facts

• The United States uses more than 346,000 million gallon of water per day!
• If all of the world's water were fit into a gallon jug, the fresh water available for us to use would equal only about one tablespoon.
• Less than one percent of the water supply on earth can be used as drinking water.