Toilets use quite a bit of water. The older toilets used to use about 5 gallons a flush now down to a bit under 2 gallons. If you have an older toilet then you are probably using quite a bit more water than you really need to. Replacing the toilet would be the best option but there are some other scenarios that you can go through to help save some of the water on that older toilet if you can’t afford a new one.
The first step is to do the leak test. Take some food coloring and put it into the tank of the toilet and determine if there is a leak. Wait about ten minutes or so and check the bowl to see if the food coloring has made it’s way there. If it has, this means there is a leak that needs to be fixed. Until this leak is fixed the water will be continually running all day and all night. Fix the internal parts of the toilet to save some water.
Another thing you can do is to fill up a 2 liter bottle or a smaller milk jug with water and place it into the tank. This will take up space where otherwise water would be filling up the tank with each flush. It’s an offset for each flush. Test out with different sized containers to make sure you still have the flushing power that you need. This alone will save at least a thousand gallons a year.
At some point it is best to upgrade to a newer toilet that uses less than 2 gallons per flush, but these two tips will help save water even on those older models.
