The most effective water savings: a $10 aerator
The easiest, biggest step toward reducing water use.
The most impactful water savings upgrade I made dropped my total water use by 30%, by installing a $10 faucet aerator. Get one that is 0.5 Gallons Per Minute (GPM) or less (1.89 litres per minute). You may want some teflon tape and a set of pliers to install them.
I mention this in the New Homeowner’s Guide, but it’s worth calling out by itself.
Upsides
Large, immediate reduction. Four of these installed on four sinks dropped our water use by nearly a third, immediately. This tells me: we waste (use?) a lot of water washing our hands.
No need to change your habits. Once installed, you don’t need to do anything. You automatically conserve water every time you turn on the tap.
Downsides
Can take longer to get hot water. By definition - less water moves through the tap, so it takes more time to move the same amount of water. If you have a tap with a long run of pipe, that is far away from your hot water tank, it may take a lot longer to get hot water.
I left a regular 1.0 GPM aerator on the kitchen sink, to be able to fill cooking pots faster. And left one regular aerator on a bathroom sink that is very far away from the hot water tank. Some day I might try to retrofit our water pipes to improve this.
But if your sink is close to the hot water source - or you mainly use cold water - you likely won’t even notice a difference.
There are many steps you can take to capture, store, and conserve water in and around your home: capturing water with rain barrels, taking shorter showers, or replacing your lawn with drought-hardy species like vetch, creeping thyme, or microclover.
But the first, biggest bang for your buck might be: $10 aerators on your faucets.