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Shoutout to the EPA chart that says a leaky faucet wastes 3,000 gallons a year, because I did the math on my own house
I was killing time reading a water usage page on the EPA site and hit a stat that stopped me cold: one drip per second from a leaky faucet wastes more than 3,000 gallons of water a year. I thought no way, so I grabbed a bucket and a stopwatch and measured my bathroom sink. Sure enough, I counted roughly 47 drips in a minute, which works out to about 2,400 gallons if I left it alone, and I had left it alone for like 8 months. What got me was how quiet the whole thing is. Nobody calls a plumber over a drip, but it is basically a running hose you never see. I want somebody here to dig into where that 3,000 gallon number actually comes from, because I have seen a few different versions and I cannot tell if it is a real average or just a number that got copied around. Also curious how much of this applies to the water heater side of things, since hot water leaks feel like a whole different bill. Has anyone here actually tracked their own meter before and after fixing a drip?
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fiona_kim9725d ago
That 47 drips a minute hits home, I had a showerhead doing the same thing and just tuned it out for months while the bill crept up. Fixing it was a $4 washer and the meter barely moves now when I check it at night.
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