Conservation Tips

The bathroom is where over half of all water inside your home is used. To conserve water in the bathroom: 

• Turn off the tap while shaving or brushing teeth.
   
• Showers use less water than baths, as long as you keep an eye on how long you've been lathering up. Learn tips on how to Shower Better.
   
• If you’re dreaming of a Better Bathroom, get ready for your mini-makeover.
   
• Calculate how much you can save with WaterSense labeled products in the bathroom.

In the kitchen, saving water is easy with a few changes in behavior and habits: 

• If washing dishes by hand, put a stopper in the sink or use a wash basin. Reuse that water to irrigate your plants.
   
• Use a dishwasher—and when you do, make sure it's fully loaded.
   
• Scrape your plate instead of rinsing it before loading it into the dishwasher.
   
• Keep a pitcher of drinking water in the refrigerator instead of letting the faucet run until the water is cool.
   
• Thaw in the refrigerator overnight rather than using a running tap of hot water.
   
• Add food wastes to your compost pile instead of using the garbage disposal.

Tips to conserve water in the laundry room include:

• Wash only full loads of laundry or use the appropriate water level or load size selection on the washing machine.
   
• To save money on your energy bills, set your washing machine to use cold water rather than hot or warm water.
   
• Install a graywater system to irrigate your landscape safely.

• Home tour: Take an interactive virtual tour of a water-efficient home. 

• Quick tips: Californians use on average 196 gallons of water per person per day compared to only 111 gallons per person per day in Santa Clara County. These quick tips will help you save!

• Cleaning hardscapes: Cleaning hardscapes outside your home doesn’t need a lot of water, if water is allowed at all. Using a broom can clean most hardscapes. Spot-cleaning with a bucket and coarse brush is another option. Pressurized waterbrooms can clean outdoor surfaces just as well as a hose and nozzle with as little as 2.8 gallons per minute (versus 8 to 18 gallons per minute with a hose). Waterbrooms use a combination of air and water pressure to help the work area dry in minutes (avoiding slip hazards) while removing dirt and food spills.

• Get free gear: Learn about free water saving devices, and how to find and fix leaks. Get free gear here.

Valley Water provides several services to help commercial businesses, industrial sites, and multi-family complexes save water. These include:

• Learning about water saving devices and equipment
   
• Receiving free services and equipment
   
• Applying for commercial and facility rebates
   
• Requesting free large landscape surveys 

Whether you manage an office building, school, hotel, hospital, restaurant, or another type of facility, it’s important to ask:

• What Water Savings Strategies should you pursue and prioritize? The best place to start in familiarizing yourself with options for your business to save water and money while conserving our natural resources.

• What are the Best Management Practices for your business to be implementing already? Provides an overview of tips for operating, maintaining, retrofitting options, and calculating savings potential and Return-On-Investment of technologies and behaviors to implement.

• What free tools and resources are available to identify where you can save? Offers water assessment checklists that range from simple and easy to use, to targeted for specific facilities like hotels and multi-family properties. 

• How can you better measure your water use so you can manage it? This free online Portfolio Manager tool from Energy Star will help. Join the 40% of commercial buildings in the US that already use this free tool for managing your energy and water use today.

Multi-family properties

• Find free resource guides and tools to help you understand, manage, and improve water use efficiency cost-effectively.

Hotels

• Learn how to assess, upgrade, and track water savings by joining more than 860 hotels in the US in the H2Otel Challenge. You’ll find case studies, webinars, and easy to use tools to save water and money while maintaining the level of service your guests expect.