Excerpt: Use it up, wear it out, fix it again, or do without!

Chapter 1:

Let me pay for this book...

Seriously. I want to give you back the cost of this book. If after reading this book, you find none of these suggestions helpful, none of the ideas thought provoking, nothing of redeeming value... I don’t want you to walk away from the experience feeling as though you have been duped.

You have to meet me half way on this, but it is not hard.
Your assignment:
Put a Rock in the back of your toilet!

Not in the toilet itself, but in the tank. You know that big squarish box you lean back against when you are sitting down. You might have to move the tissue box and some magazines to lift the tank cover, but they aren’t screwed down and should lift easily.

Go down to the nearest beach, out to your garden, down to your local garden store... come home with a rock. It doesn’t have to be a big rock. About the size of your fist or an orange. If you can’t find a good rock you can subsitute a brick.

Go on. Go do it now. Put this book down and just do it. The book will be right here when you get back.

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Welcome Back!

While you were out finding a rock, this book was doing some of the math for you.
Assume for the moment that the rock you just put in your toilet tank is large enough to save you approximately 8 ounces of water every time you flush.
There are 128 ounces in a gallon. So every 16 times the toilet in your house gets flushed, you are now saving one gallon of water.
The average person flushes the toilet 4 times a day. For a family of 4, this translates to one gallon of water every day that has now been conserved by putting a rock in the back of the toilet. 365 Gallons of water a year.
At the going price for water in the Boston area, approximately half a cent per gallon, that is only $1.82 a year in savings on the water end, but it is a good bet that if you put the rock in the toilet, you are not going to take it out.

Now, hese numbers were all calculated without actually knowing how much water your toilet is using. The results are not based on how much you used, but how much you saved.

There are standards for how much water an American toilet should use, on average, per flush:

1 gallon per flush = urinal
1.2 gallons per flush = high efficiency
1.6 gallons per flush = low flow (mandated in California post-1992)
3.6 gallons per flush = high flow
anything higher = yikes

These are not written in stone, and there are a number of variables that can effect the volume of water you are flushing down the toilet... but this is a decent guide. If you currently have a “high flow” toilet, you should seriously consider replacing it! But realistically, that is nor possible for everyone. If you live in a rented apartment you are probably not paying for water directly, but indirectly you are, and the environmental impact remains the same no matter who is paying the bills. If you can’t afford to remodel your bathroom, a rock is a good place to start trying to reduce the amount of water your particular toilet is using. After 10 years, you will have saved $182.50 (assuming the price per gallon of water doesn’t go up). With the kinds of rebates that many companies and communities are offering, you could take that money and buy a much more efficient toilet!

This became an art project at our house. My children were encouraged to go out and find rocks the size of their fists. The rocks were found, brought home, decorated with sharpie markers, even named. I am told that a brick will work just as well, but that you should put it in a resealable plastic bag of some kind. It was explained to me that bricks don’t like the chemicals used to treat drinking water and will start to disintegrate over time... don’t want to clog up the pipes... we just want to save some water.