Water Use Calculations and Water Saving Ideas

Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 1:18 am

Water Use Calculations and Water Saving Ideas

Conventional Gallons, By Use
Toilet: 3.5 to 6 gallons per flush for a conventional toilet
Shower: 2.5 to 4 gallons per minute for a conventional shower head
Bath: Up to 60 gallons per bath based on standard tub size, full
Dishwasher: 4 gallons per load if it is Energy Star rated, 6 gallons without
Running faucet: 2 to 7 gallons per minute for a conventional faucet
Watering your garden: 5 to 10 gallons per minute for a running hose

Arkansas State Board of Health Bureau of Sanitary Engineering Individual Water Supply Systems 1961 handbook
Domestic use per person average household: 50 gallons
Per horse, mule, or steer 12 gallons/day
Per dairy cow drinking only 15 gallons/day
Per dairy cow drinking & dairy servicing 35 gallons/day
Per hog 4 gallons/day
Per sheep 2 gallons/day
Per 100 chickens 4gallons/day
Per 100 turkeys 7 gallons/day
Pasture 1 1/2" to 2" per irrigation every 10 to 15 days
Alfalfa 3" to 6" per irrigation every 21 to 45 days
Vegetables 1" to 3" per irrigation every 7 to 21 days
Berries 2" to 3" per irrigation every 14 to 21 days
Orchards 3" to 6" per irrigation every 21 to 45 days
Clover 2" to 4" per irrigation every 14 to 30 days
Root crops 1" to 3" per irrigation every 7to 14 days
1 acre inch of water = 27,100 gallons of water
Small residences, with a 42 gallon pressure tank, 5 gallon/minute pump minimum
Average residence, with a 100 gallon pressure tank, 10 gallon/minute pump.
Per 5/8" hose 200 gallons /day
Per 3/4" hose w/1/4" nozzle 300gallons/day
Per 1 1/2" fire hose w/1/2" nozzle 2,400 gallons/day

Water Storage:
The average U.S. home uses 65 gallons of water per day per person. It is recommended we store 14 gallons of water for each person. This gives us a gallon a day per person, for a two week period. In the event of a major disruption of our water service, it could easily take at least two weeks to restore service with safe drinking water. Storing 1 gallon of water per day allows for only minimal water usage, basically allowing Â½ gallon for drinking and cooking and Â½ gallon for sanitation. When you get into a situation where the water is in short supply it is always better to make sure you drink ample water.

A general priority for uses of water
Personnel (drinking only).
Medical treatment & Decontamination.
Personnel (uses other than drinking).
Food preparation.
Laundry.

Let It Mellow
Hippie had something's right; let it mellow if it's yellow. It's an unpleasant concept if you are fastidious, but the toilet is your home's biggest water suckâ€”it accounts for almost 30 percent of your daily water use. Since the average person urinates six times a day, may we suggest you flush every other time?
Savings Upwards of 18 gallons a day

A Composting Toilet
Potential water savings: Up to 36 gallons per day, per person.
How to forgo water altogether, without a flush; composting your own feces. The knee jerk reaction "It horrifies most people," but humanure practice makes perfect sense. The Nitrogen and minerals that makes plants grow are not only wasted by flush it down the toilet but it creates pollution in our river ways too.

5 steps to composting your own solids.
1. Get a five-gallon bucket and line the bottom with sawdust or chopped vegetation. Attach a lidded toilet seat.
2. Do your business and cover it with sawdust. Repeat. Empty once or twice a week into a 55-gallon composter out back.
3. After each waste dump, add leaf litter, coconut husks, or finely shredded newspaper over the waste into the container.
4. Keep it as moist as a wrung-out mop. You want it to get hotâ€”120 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal, monitored with a long thermometer. Adding earth worms are good, too.
5. Let it age for a year. Fertilize trees& grass plants.
6. Alternatively, it can be composted using traditional methods but waiting 2 to 3 years for fungus and bacteria to completely consume any surviving pathogens before incorporating it in orchard or even garden soil.

How To Bathe
Potential water savings: up to 134 gallons per day, per household
Settling the shower versus bath debate.
Showers use less water than baths depending on a few things. Most conventional bathtubs hold 60 gallons of water. The average shower head spews between 2.5 and 4 gallons per minute, depending on whether it was made before or after 1992. Even if you have a higher-flow shower head, you have to shower for 15 minutes before you're at bath levelsâ€”24 minutes if your head is newer. The average American shower length is under eight minutes. Of course, if you fill your tub halfway and shave in there without water running, you could theoretically be using less water than showering but the evidence seems to heavily favor showering. Also, for $40, you can get a one-gallon-per-minute shower head by Bricor, and for $10 you can get a 1.2-gallons-per minute Real Goods shower headâ€”with a pause button to use while lathering. At those rates, you might feel justified in taking the occasional half-hour shower.

Navy Showers
Get wet, turn the water off, soap up, rinse off. You're done in as little as three minutes, and you've only used a few gallons of water. Conserving water isn't always comfortable, but it's something you can get used to, like anything else.
Savings Up to 50 gallons over a regular 10-minute shower

Your Bathwater
Nearly 60 percent of Japanese people reuse their bath water. Some filter it and use it for other purposes that require clean water (washing dishes, etc.), others use it to water their plants. Traditionally, when water was heated and carried by hand, bath water was reused for bathing with the dirtiest person going last. You know by now you shouldn't be taking baths (from a water-economy perspective, we mean), but if you do, make use of that bath water.
Savings Up to 50 gallons per bath

Dishwashing
Don't throw out the dish water, use a portable sink can make reusing kitchen water a cinch. The portable dish basin sits in the bottom of your sink as you are washing dishes and rinsing fruits and vegetables. The Hughie can then be picked up, its drain hole unplugged, and the water used for plants.
Potential water savings: more than 12 to 24 gallons, per household

Dry Dishwashing Without Water
For dry cleaning pots, pans, skillets, silverware, plates, bowl, rub with sand or dirt to loosen and remove the bits of food and oil, wipe with a damp cloth with a little disinfectant or heat well before adding new food. This works great for camping as well.
Potential water savings: more than 12 to 24 gallons, per household.

Garden Watering
A few ways to water your plants without going broke; rain is basically free water, though it's not the cleanest, thanks to pollution, so you wouldn't want to drink it (unless you rig a sand & charcoal filter), but it's perfectly useable for all your outdoor water needs. Utilize what rain we receive, when we do get a rain event, even a pop up afternoon shower, do not waste that water. One-inch of rain on 1,000 square feet of roof produces 650 gallons of water.
1. downspouts and plastic cisterns to harvest every precious drop of water. You don't have to be MacGyver to rig up a low-cost alternative.
2. A Rain-barrel, if you can get your hands on an old drum, if not, any 5-gallon bucket will do. Place the bucket underneath the downspout of your home's gutter. After a nice rain, remove the bucket and save it to water your plants and yard later.
Potential water savings: more than 40 gallons, per household

Reuse Your Cooking Water
Meal prep is estimated to use five gallons of water per day, per household. Here's one way to cut that down.
1. If you are boiling water, fill the pot with only as much water as you need.
2. Drain water into a second pot, allow the water to cool, then water your plants with it. If you have more than you need, store it in bottles.
Potential water savings: up to 5 gallons per day, per household

Rehydrating Freeze Dried & Dehydrated Foods
2 parts water to 1 part dried food = 2cup of re-hydrated product If you use a Freeze Dried Food reserve , you need store more water to hydrate the food when you eat, but the water you use to hydrate the food all ends up in your body when you eat it. This comes out to around 0.5 gal per person per meal and about another 0.5 gal for cooking. Some vary so experiment and write the results down on the package, so when the time comes you will already have it handy. Allowing for clean up, allow 1.5 gallons per meal if you use Freeze Dried Food.

Preparing MREs
If you are eating MRE food reserve in a disaster, most of the 64 ounces of the water is already in the food.
If your survival food store is MRE then your requirement will be closer to 1 gallon per day for heating the pouches and clean up. The water used to heat individual MRE rations can be reused for washing and shaving.

Military Water Calculations
When calculating water requirements for a whole day, you need to consider other requirements, such as shaving {or save the shave water and grow a beard}, brushing teeth, and helmet baths. On the average, these functions require almost 2 gallons of water per man per day. When B rations are issued, plan for 1 gallon of water per meal for the mess kit cleaning, and 0.5 gallon per meal for food preparation and kitchen cleanup if the unit prepares its own B rations. B ration is a term used in the United States military for a meal provided to troops which was prepared using canned or preserved ingredients. 'B' ration meals may be prepared in field kitchens and served in the field, or served in garrisons without adequate refrigeration or freezer facilities. Three gallons per person per day will give you enough to cook and for limited personal hygiene.

How much water do you need to drink?
Work Temperature
Hard work in hot climates can result in 1-1/2 to 2-1/2 quarts of sweat lost per hour.
Men cannot be expected to routinely perform more than about 5 hours of heavy work per day in heat condition BLACK (90Â° F +). However, using a 20-minute work/40-minute rest cycle, it will take 15 hours to do 5 hours of work. Similarly, in heat condition RED (88-89.9Â°F), a maximum of 6 hours of heavy work can be expected; in heat condition YELLOW (85-87.9Â°F), 7 hours; and in heat condition GREEN (80-84.9Â°F), 8 hours.

Military Water Requirements
Examples of water planning calculations are:
Example 1. A 10-man squad performing heavy work that will take about 2 hours in the Continental United States.
If the squad works in the late morning, with a 30-minute work, 30-minute rest cycle (heat condition RED), the work will take almost 4 hours. At 2 quarts of water per man per hour, the squad will require 20 gallons of water or 8 quarts (2 gallons) per man.
If the squad works at night or in the very early morning (heat condition GREEN or cooler), with a 50-minute work, 10-rninute rest cycle, the work will take about 2 hours. At 1 quart of water per man per hour, the squad will require 5 gallons of water or 2 quarts (0.5 gallon) per man.
Example 2. A 10-man squad doing a variety of work over an entire day.
The squad requires 4 gallons of water per man per day for drinking, and 2.5 gallons per man per day for personal hygiene, or 6.5 gallons per man per day. For the whole platoon, 65 gallons (6.5 x 10) per day are required. (Meals not considered.)
Example 3. 10-man doing a variety of work and eating two B. ration meals and one MRE or MCI ration per day delivered from a consolidated kitchen.
The company requires 4 gallons of water per man per day for drinking, 2.5 gallons per man per day for personal hygiene, and 1 gallon per meal for the mess kit laundry.
6.5 gallons (4 + 2.5) per man per day x 10 men = 65 gallons
+ 1 gallon per B-ration meal x 20 rations* = 200 gallons
Total = 265 gallons per day
NOTE: If personnel operate their own field kitchen, 0.5 gallon per B-ration meal is required. In this example, an additional 10 gallons (0.5 x 20) would be needed.

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Rubies Rubies's Profile E-mail Rubies SHTF Tutor Posts: 1399 Joined: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:14 am Location: NYS Gave Thanks: 88 times Been Thanked: 389 times Blog: View Blog (0)	Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 4:28 pm Amazing amount of usage when you start adding everything up.
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230gr 230gr's Profile	Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:54 pm Most people have no idea how much or how to conserve it.
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Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 9:16 pm

We do not pay for our water, but we do have a shallow well and at certain times of the year, we have to strictly conserve.
-We always follow the "mellow/yellow" rule. I fill jugs and bottles (soda type) with water for when it's in short supply.
-Showering every day is not a nessesity! (at least most of the time. lol)
-I had three kids and when they were younger, they never bathed alone.
-Keeping a pan in the sink to catch water you might normally let run down the drain (filling water jugs, over flow, rinsing something etc), will help you save water as you can use that to rinse sponges/cloths, water plants or even pets, mop up spills.
-Learn organic methods of gardening and mulch well to avoid having to water your garden too often. (I rarely water my garden at all.)
-installing gutters with down spouts that can be fed into a barrel will result in an amazing amount of water! Use this for all outside work, but it can also be used to rinse hair after shampooing, washing clothes and a variety of general water needs.

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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 1:08 pm

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Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2010 10:07 am

I had 5 large (roughly 45-50 gal) plastic food grade barrels, gave 3 away to a poster here and kept two for myself. I have a direct supplier of these, so I can get more for myself.
They had peppers in them. They will have to soak some to help minimize the pepper scent and likely taste too. What uses can you think of for such barrels? Catch rain, water filters, food storage, caches, dry well, ???? etc... open for new ideas.
-RidgeRunner

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Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 6:00 pm

Calculate Volume Of a Cylinder / 6 inch x 72 inch pipe =8146.1376 Cubic Inches

Then I used
Volume converter / signification set to 2 then Pasted the 8146 into cubic inch on the top right
so a 6 inch by 6 foot pipe gives me about 29 gallons

Calculate Volume Of a Cylinder
http://www.calculatoredge.com/enggcalc/volume.html#volume

Volume converter
http://www.lenntech.com/calculators/volume/volume.htm

Pipe Pressure Loss Calculator
http://www.efunda.com/formulae/fluids/calc_pipe_friction.cfm

Pipe Water Velocity and Minimum Pipe Diameter
http://irrigation.wsu.edu/Content/Calculators/General/Pipe-Velocity.php

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Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 6:56 pm

Not slamming the notion, but I do wonder if we really do need to conserve certain things.

OK, I live in the Pacific Northwest. It rains like an SOB. In fact, we had down pours yesterday nd light rains as I type this. We get water from rivers that include melt from the snow pack but a whole lot of rain water in the foot hills. Water doesn't cost much per gallon here. The sewage system is efficient. What we don't use goes down the rivers to the Sound. We've so much water that flooding is common in some of the lower lying areas.

In another community, not far from where, they did some extreme public information campaigning on saving water. The people responded and even obtained and used a lot of rain barrels. Many didn't water their lawns. The utility company then announced that as the water consumption went down, they needed to raise rates to replace the lost revenue, and then they added fees that were rooted in managing the excess unused water.

Why conserve water?

When people comply with conservation efforts, they use the loss of per unit revenue as an excuse to raise per unit cost and therefore they are doing less to get the same amount of money and you are paying more for less product.

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230gr 230gr's Profile	Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2011 9:55 pm Regional fresh water is going to be treated as a saleable resource and piped like oil is now. California pipes its water from the northern part of the state to the big cities in the desert south. The great parts of the west seems licked into a long term drought. It could be a future possibility.
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Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2011 4:22 am

grimOne wrote:
Why conserve water?

Conserving water goes within the same lines as conserving electric.
If i plan to go FULL solar then I will need to pay attention to how much electric i use and cut down on it to conserve my battery bank as is with water if i decided to run on cisterns and rain cache only then i would need to conserve and re-use gray water as much as i can.

And as for your PER unit cost i have a well so i do not pay for city water or city sewage, so that would only apply to anyone receiving water they have to pay for.

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Water Use Calculations and Water Saving Ideas

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