Water Facts

Hello Everyone,

I have come across some pretty fun facts about water conservation and leaks. It is a dry season right now and we are working hard to conserve and provide for our members with a water restriction. Here are a few of the facts I would like to share with you just to give a bit of an insight on how certain things can truly affect your water usage. Please continue to follow the water restrictions we have in place. When it is lifted, we will contact our members immediately.

In the meantime, check some of these out to see if you may have a leak or you too can continue to help us conserve.

Did you know?

The average family of 4 in the United States does 540 loads of laundry per year. That’s over 10 loads per week! This consumes roughly 21K gallons of water.

It takes approximately 50 gallons of water to wash your car.

75% of the costs of producing municipal water are electricity costs on capturing, treating, distributing, & using water.

Toilets account for nearly 30% of water used by a typical single-family home.

The average American uses between 100 and 175 gallons of water per day.

It takes five to ten times more water to produce a pound of meat than a pound of wheat.

In United States, 50 to 70% of residential water is used for landscaping, most of it to water lawns.

In one year, the average American residence uses over 100,000 gallons (indoors and outside).

The average cost for water supplied to a home in the U.S. is about $2.00 for 1,000 gallons, which equals about 5 gallons for a penny.

American use 5.7 billion gallons per day from toilet flushes.

A water-efficient dishwasher uses as little as 4 gallons per cycle but hand washing dishes uses 20 gallons of water.

It takes about 70 gallons of water to fill a bathtub.

Household leaks can waste more than 1 trillion gallons annually nationwide. That’s equal to the annual household water use of more than 11 million homes.

Ten percent of homes have leaks that waste 90 gallons or more per day.

A leaky faucet that drips at the rate of one drip per second can waste more than 3,000 gallons per year.

5 gallons of water are lost if you leave the water running while brushing your teeth.

A garden hose or sprinkler can use almost as much water in an hour as an average family of four uses in one day.

The average family can waste 180 gallons per week, or 9,400 gallons of water annually, from household leaks. That's equivalent to the amount of water needed to wash more than 300 loads of laundry.

Household leaks can waste approximately nearly 900 billion gallons of water annually nationwide. That's equal to the annual household water use of nearly 11 million homes.

Running the dishwasher only when it's full can eliminate one load of dishes per week and save the average family nearly 320 gallons of water annually.

Turning off the tap while brushing your teeth can save 8 gallons of water per day and, while shaving, can save 10 gallons of water per shave. Assuming you brush your teeth twice daily and shave 5 times per week, you could save nearly 5,700 gallons per year.

Letting your faucet run for five minutes while washing dishes can waste 10 gallons of water and uses enough energy to power a 60-watt light bulb for 18 hours.

Outdoor water use accounts for more than 30 percent of total household water use, on average, but can be as much as 60 percent of total household water use in arid regions.

If the average sized lawn in the United States is watered for 20 minutes every day for 7 days, it’s like running the shower constantly for 4 days or taking more than 800 showers. That's equivalent to the amount of water needed for the average family to take 1 years’ worth of showers.

As much as 50 percent of the water we use outdoors is lost due to wind, evaporation, and runoff caused by inefficient irrigation methods and systems. A household with an automatic landscape irrigation system that isn't properly maintained and operated can waste up to 25,000 gallons of water annually.