puts water conservation in your hands

Water conservation... is a serious issue.

Here in the United States we use more water per person than anywhere else in the world. The EPA estimates that the average water consumption per person is around 114 gallons a day. While in some less affluent countries the average is about 2 or 3 gallons a day! And in some drought stricken areas fresh water isn't even available without carrying it for miles. It's great that we are blessed with such an abundance in the US, but using this abundance wisely takes conscious attention. It doesn't seem to make much sense to spend huge amounts of fossil fuel based energy to purify our drinking water only to then flush large amounts of it down our toilets, wash our cars and irrigate our huge lawns.

We can show you how to easily cut your consumption by as much as 70% by applying a few simple techniques that won't cost you a lot of dollars and can be fun to implement with your friends and family. Best of all, your actions will help to change things for the better.

Together we can make a difference!

The products and services we offer reflect our own commitment here at Being Water to water conservation and sustainable water use. From saving water in the home with dual flush conversion kits to offsetting or eliminating your dependence on public water supplies with rainwater harvesting and graywater reuse, water conservation is our top priority.

Each of the categories listed below  will enable you to move in a positive direction towards water independence or at least reducing your water bill significantly.

Dual Flush Kits AND Accessories	Rainwater Harvesting	In The Garden	Natural Water Filtration

Some Important Questions...

Why use Dual Flush Conversion Kits instead of purchasing a new dual flush toilet?

On the surface it may seem to make more sense to just replace your old porcelain throne with a new efficient one like you would replace your gas guzzling car with a new hybrid vehicle. But let's take a closer look. Virtually ALL new toilets are now imported from either overseas(90%) or Mexico(10%). The production process is pretty astonishing as well. One toilet has to be fired  for as long as 40 hours at temperatures of up to 600 degrees Fahrenheit. The natural gas or coal fired resource consumption of this process is astronomical. And that is only a portion of the production process. Then of course there is the shipping of these 100 pound items in containers half way around the world.

Then  there is the environmental impact of throwing your old toilet into the landfill. This image depicts what is a common site when a city decides to offer taxpayer subsidized rebates for the changing out of toilets. We are told that they can be recycled into road base but that also takes considerable resources to grind them up and process them.

We have been taught that newer is always better.  A new car is better, a new laptop is better, a new house is better, etc, etc. In the case of your toilet though, this isn't necessarily so. Most toilets in North America  operate on gravity and the siphon principle. This process has been in use for over 150 years. The older toilets that had the tanks mounted high on the wall could accomplish a decent flush with only 1 gallon of water. Toilets today still use that principle. But when the tank was moved down to the top of the bowl, efficiency was sacrificed. Nobody was thinking about water conservation 75 years ago or even 25 years ago. There are some minor differences in the toilets of 40 or 50 years ago and the 1.6 gallon toilets that started to become popular in the early 1990's, but the differences, in most cases aren't enough to throw away something that was designed to last 100's of years if taken care of. That's right, if your toilet is taken care of it will never wear out. All that wears out is the metal or plastic mechanisms on the inside. Our Dual Flush Kits will fit most toilets new and old. We have had excellent results with 1.6 gallon and larger 3.5 or 5 gallon toilets with a significant reduction in water consumption  along with an increase in performance that equals and in some cases exceeds the performance of the new 1.28 gallon toilets now being pushed at us via taxpayer funded rebates and plumbing industry lobbyists. We have sold  many thousands of these dual flush kits over that last several years with very positive results. The average water saving per main toilet in a household is in the neighborhood of 10,000 gallons per year. What that means for us at Being Water with over 30,000 units sold is that we have helped to reduce water consumption  in the US by 300,000,000  (yes, that's three hundred million) gallons of water annually. And that is certainly something to think about. We haven't calculated how much energy has been saved by not purchasing a new imported toilet. I'm sure it's an astronomical amount. Yes, you can make a difference.

Why Harvest Rainwater when there are perfectly good public water systems that can supply what we need?

That question will be answered with another question. Have you looked at your water bill lately? Or, when were you last penalized for watering your thirsty tomatoes in mid summer?  Municipal and private water company's are charging more and more for less and less. To keep the revenue stream flowing they charge higher base rates coupled with lower water allotments before the customer is penalized for over use. Some of it is caused by greed and answering to shareholders in the case of private corporations which has come to be expected and reluctantly accepted by the population at large. And some of it is caused by seeming necessity in the case of a municipal water company. With municipal water company's there is more often than not a failing infrastructure that is in constant need of maintenance with little money budgeted from the general funds of the community they serve. It's rare that any public entity gets to use the funds that it collects for the services it renders. If they did, we would not be seeing the collapse of so much of our infrastructure, even though we pay an increasingly higher rate. The high priced upper echelon city leaders that make good financial packages for themselves while allowing the systems to struggle along in a crippled fashion are partially to blame. Increased populations without increased sizing of systems is also to blame. Poor planning and lack of sufficient resources to serve their populations.

Then of course there are the health concerns from using from public water supplies. There was a time when we looked to our public supplies of water as being the safer alternative to our own well water or other private sources. We have since come to realize that a lot of the chemical additives in public water supplies are potentially harmful to us. These include Mercury, Flouride and Chlorine. There is plenty of debate right now as to the real benefits of adding these to our fresh water supply.

We use a lot of water over the course of a year and a certain amount of credit needs to be given to the water company's for storing it for us. The average family of four in the United States will use  about 146,000 gallons of fresh water every year for domestic needs. A large rainwater catchment system is about 10,000 gallons. Most are smaller, 2,000 to 5,000 gallons. A system like this is good during a rainy season because it will be replenished regularly by winter storms, but it is doubtful that it would make it very far through a dry spell. An average family could probably sustain themselves without the need for a public or well water supply for six to seven months out of the year here in Northern California. This makes a lot of sense since the water company's are having a difficult time keeping up. Why not turn the city supply off completely during the rainy season and back on during the summer months as needed? Or, if you live in a rural area, using rainwater will allow your ground water to replenish at a faster rate if you are not continuously taking from it.

If you go to our Rainwater 101 page you will find components and ideas for building your own rainwater harvesting system. Most of it can be done with repurposed items. Some of the products listed we manufacture such as the Floating Intake Filters and the First Flush Diverter Kits.  Both items we came up with because the only available products had to be transported half way around the world. Ours cost less and are made locally. Sounds like steps in the right direction.

Another thought we have been working with recently is Flushing your toilet with rainwater.We are working on a system that will allow you to use rainwater when available for toilet flushing and then revert back to the main system when there is no more rainwater, without having to turn any valves or think about it at all. We are doing this at less than the cost of a new toilet. We're plenty excited about it and it will be completed shortly.