Your Home

Beat The Leak This Week

Posted: 3/31/2011

Fixing or replacing dripping fixtures can help drop your water use.

(NAPSI) - Drip. Drip. Drip. That’s the sound the average American household makes as it wastes more than 10,000 gallons each year from leaks—enough to fill a backyard swimming pool. If that doesn’t seem like a lot of water, consider that across the country, easy-to-fix household leaks add up to more than 1 trillion gallons of water lost annually nationwide.

That’s why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is encouraging homeowners to find and fix leaks during the third annual Fix a Leak Week. Sponsored by EPA’s WaterSense® program as part of the ongoing We’re for Water campaign, Fix a Leak Week reminds homeowners of the steps they can take to save water in their community now and for future generations. Be for water and start saving today with three simple steps: check, twist, replace.

1. Check. First, check your home for leaks. You can detect silent toilet leaks, a common water-wasting culprit, by adding food coloring to the toilet tank and waiting 10 minutes before flushing. If color appears in the bowl, your toilet has a leak. Visit www.epa.gov/watersense/fixaleak for do-it-yourself toilet repair tips and videos.

2. Twist. Give leaking faucet and showerhead connections a firm twist with a wrench or apply pipe tape to ensure that pipe connections are sealed tight. If you can’t stop those drops yourself, contact a plumbing professional. For additional savings, twist WaterSense-labeled aerators onto bathroom faucets to use 30 percent less water without noticing a difference in flow.

3. Replace. If you just can’t nip that drip, it may be time to replace the fixture. Look for WaterSense-labeled models, which use at least 20 percent less water and are independently certified to perform as well as or better than standard models. Replacing your home’s old, inefficient showerheads with WaterSense-labeled models lets you shower with power while shrinking your household’s water footprint by 2,300 gallons annually and saving enough energy to run a television all year long.

Want to do more? Join thousands of your neighbors by supporting the We’re for Water campaign, organized by WaterSense. Visit www.epa.gov/watersense and take the I’m for Water pledge or “like” WaterSense on Facebook and share why you’re for water at www.facebook.com/EPAwatersense.

For more information and tips about how to save water during Fix a Leak Week, visit www.epa.gov/watersense/fixaleak.

Note to Editors: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense program is promoting Fix a Leak Week, March 14 through 20, 2011. Additional graphics and information for the week itself are available by contacting the WaterSense Helpline at watersense@epa.gov or (866) WTR-SENS (987-7367).

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