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HOW MUCH ARE YOU WASTING ON WATER LEAKS EACH YEAR?
Let's say your kitchen sink has a steady drip going. It's just ten drips per minute, right? How much is that leaky faucet (or leaking shower head, toilet, etc.) costing you in water bills each month?
Doing The Math Of How Much A Dripping Faucet Costs:
One gallon = 15,140 drops of water
If your home has one faucet leaking at a (very typical) rate of ten drops per minute, that one faucet is wasting three liters of water per day. That's 347 gallons of water per year.
Let's say you have a leaky faucet and two leaky shower heads. If that's the case, you're wasting (on average) 1,041 gallons of water per year.
Got a fast drip going? A faucet or shower-head that drips 60 drips per minute wastes 5 gallons of water a day. That's 2,082 gallons per year.
And Running Toilets?
While we're talking about leaks, we have to address running toilets. The typical running toilet wastes 200 gallons of water a day. That's an incredible amount of water that just gets flushed into your sewer system. It's also usually an easy project to complete, requiring nothing more than a replacement of a flapper or other item.
How Much Does That Translate Into Water Bill Costs?
A leaky shower head or faucet will cost you about $20 a month, which doesn't seem like much (unless you have several leaky faucets or you let it go for a long time). However, cracks in pipes and pinhole-sized holes in pipes typically cost a household between $100-$600 a month and a leaky toilet will cost you between $75-$150 on an average month.
The Take Home Message.
When you are wondering if you should spend the “extra” money to hire someone to fix a small leak in your home, compare that cost to how much money you will be spending over the course of a year.
