Water saving techniques - Reduce, reuse, recycle

These days, new toilets are required to use less than 1.6 gallons per flush; this is a far cry from the 7 gallons per flush back in the 1950's but still enough to make toilet flushing one of the biggest water wasting culprits in your home. A simple change can be made to reduce, if not completely eliminate, water waste from flushing the toilet.

Consider the following: you have a water conserving shower head that pumps out 6 gallons per minute, and you are showering for about 10 minutes per day. Using these numbers, there are 60 gallons of water per day that are washing your body, and then going down the drain and out to the sewer. Now consider this, you don't even have a new water conserving toilet, you have an old fixture which is using 4 gallons per flush, and you are using the restroom 6 times throughout the day, this means you are using 24 gallons of water to flush the toilet.

What if you could use the water that washes you in the shower, and subsequently goes down the drain, to then flush the toilet as well? Makes sense right. With a storage tank and a pump, this idea can become a reality. A plumbing reroute will allow water to be stored and a pump can be used to refill the toilet tank after each flush. Unless you have a problem with using your shower water to flush the toilet, this will eliminate waste from toilet water usage in your home. Excess water can be routed to water the garden as well.