It's in the toilet?

As promised I was going to do some analysis of my water use. I looked at how often we flush (not use) the toilet. Even though my wife works out of the home we each get in about four flushes a day each. Eight total.

We split those flushes between two toilets. One is a 1.6 gallon per flush commode and one is a 3.5 gallons per flush (I measured it). That means the low flow uses 6.4 gallons a day and the high flow uses 14 gallons a day. Or, 192 and 420 a month respectively. Total is 612 gallons a month.

Most water conservation sites will tell you toilet use is 26% of indoor water use. Mine is 6.4%?? (9500 gallons a month / 612). I would have to reduce my use to 2500 gallons a month to even come close to that percent.

Bottom Line 1 - It isn't my toilets that are causing the problem. If I changed out the high flow to a newer low flow of 1.28 a flush I would save 267 gallons a month or a whopping $1.55 on my bill! I would lower my percentage of toilet use to 3.6%.

I have also concluded that men use less water than women. I wont go into the details, but suffice to say, women/girls use more water for everything. The shower longer, flush more, wash more, take more baths (I have a tub in our main bath I haven't been in yet, in nine years!). I think there is a lack of gender qualification for these "household averages". I theorize that women use 50% more water than men, until we include outdoor use.

Bottom Line 2 - A household's gender makeup will skew the averages a lot.

Its time for me to measure my housekeeper's use on her day and my wife's shower time multiplied by 3.5 gallons a minute. It's either that or the cats are using the Jacuzzi tub when we're out...