According to the EPA’s WaterSense program, the average American family of four uses about 300 gallons of water a day. We have been working hard to reduce water usage at our home. Since moving into the city in August of 2014 our average family of four’s water use has been 43 gallons per day – 14% of the national average! Wow Wow Wow.
It appears that overall we US citizens have been working to save water. Just two years ago the EPA was reporting average use at 400 GPD; that 300 gallons represents a reduction of 25%. What can you do to help reduce it even more? Easy.
WaterSense measures outdoor water use at 30% or 90 gallons per 
day. That means that good, clean, potable, drinkable water is used OUTSIDE to water flowers, lawns, the driveway. That is criminal. Instead of using that drinkable water why not install a rain barrel or cistern and then use the captured water to irrigate your garden with fresh, un-chlorinated rainwater. That could reduce your average use to 210 GPD.
Then fix your leaks. Most of the time there is a simple solution to leaks – install a new gasket. Start with the low hanging fruit – your running or dripping toilet, then move on to the dripping faucet, and then start investigating for the others by looking at the joints in your pipes. That 13.7% of usage that EPA attributes to leaks is 41 GPD. Stopping the leaks could bring your usage down to 169 GPD.
Next check your aerators. What are those? Look at your faucet. The piece where the water comes out is the aerator. Unscrew it and look at the little teeny tiny print that reads the GPM (gallons per minute) 
rating. If it is over 1.5 GPM replace it with a low flow aerator of 1.0-1.2 GPM. Look at your shower head. If it is labeled 2.0 GPM or more, replace it with a 1.5 or lower GPM. You still get great pressure but you save clean, potable water….somewhere around 12 GPD… for a new usage of 157 GPD
And then, when you replace your appliances, replace them with WaterSense units. uses 9.1 gallons per load. We do about 6 loads a week which accounts for about 7 gallons of our daily usage. That is a huge change from our old 36 gallon per load machine which was roughly equivalent to 30 gallons per day! If we use my case we can estimate total usage now at 127 GPD for a family of four that is 42% of the national average.
And always practice conscious consumption. Think about water use every time you turn on the tap and you will be shocked how much you can save by consciously turning it off. Maybe you can even beat our new average! That would be great for you, your reservoir, and the earth.
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