24 June 2008

Who says dishwater's dull?

In the US and Canada, up to one-third of the water used in a typical household gets used to flush toilets. In Florida, the actual percentage is less than that (23.3% according to the City of Tampa) but our gallon per person per day use is a staggering 243 gallons a day. And 75 of those increasingly scarce gallons get wasted on lawns. Appalling! Appalling and incredibly wasteful and it's the wastefulness that bothers me more than anything.

The United States is on a collision course with a big water problem. Florida's number will come up sooner than the rest of the country's. As much as I would LOVE to blame Florida's plight on lawns, they are only part of the problem. Another big, wasteful part is the water gets thrown down the toilet, 1.6 gallons at a time.

Yes, this is wrecking the environment; but for most people, that wreckage is something that they have to go out of their way to see. I mean, who bothers to drive to the Everglades, get out of the car and look? Freaks like me for starters and it ain't pretty. But aside from that, where it has a major effect on people in the short term is in the amount of money they spend on municipal water and sewer rates. As Florida plows into an era of increasingly scarce water, those rates are going to skyrocket. So what can you do now to save money immediately and save a whole lot of money down the road?

An answer is a BRAC Greywater System from AquaPro Solutions. AquaPro Solutions is a North Carolina-based water conservation and management company. The BRAC Greywater System sets up a parallel plumbing system in your home that will allow you to make your own reclaimed water. Waste water from your bathroom sinks, clothes washer and shower gets filtered, saved and re-routed for use to flush your toilets and run your irrigation system. Check out the schematic below. Depending on how much water your household uses, you could cut up to half of your water use with a system like this. A-maz-ing.

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