Room by room

Save water in your home.

Tasmanian households are great at conserving water, but we can always do better. Read on for some simple changes you can make in the different areas of your house to help ensure we all have access to water when we need it. Click on each room below to see the top expert water saving tips.

Kitchen

Bathroom

Keep showers short. Try for a target of four minutes. Grab a shower timer to keep track. Or pick your favourite song!
Shortening your shower from 8 minutes to 4 minutes can save around $800 a year in combined energy and water bills. This can also reduce your household’s carbon footprint.
Keep a bucket in your shower to catch the excess water and use it on your garden or your house plants.

When you can, choose the half flush when you use the toilet. WELS 4 star toilets use 3 litres for half flush and 4.5 litres for full flush.
Remember, it’s a 1/2 flush for number 1 and full flush for number 2. A reduced amount of trips to the loo have just helped you achieve your 10 litre a day water-saving target!
For toilets, the water rating label will tell you how much water is used in an average flush. Every litre less of water that a toilet uses in an average flush, will save a typical family of four nearly 6kL and $17.50 each year in water supply charges.
If a family replaces an old single-flush toilet with a flush volume of 12L with a new 4-star toilet with an average flush volume of 3.5L, this will save 50kL and $148 each year on their water bills.
Assumptions: each family member flushes 4 times per day, at an average water price of $2.99/kL (the national average price reported in the 2014–15 Australian Bureau of Statistics Water Account).

Laundry

Save 50L of water when you reduce your washing by one load a week.
Washing machines account for 16 per cent of all water used inside the average home. Reducing your washing by just one load a week could save almost 2,600L each year!
That means by doing around one less load per week, you will save around 7 litres of water a day. Swap to your eco-cycle for even more savings.
As an example, an 8kg load capacity washing machine with a 5-star rating uses 55 L per load instead of a 3-star machine, which uses 115 L per load. This alone will save a family 18 kL and $54 each year.

Fixing leaks

One drip per second wastes 12,000 litres per year (that’s around 200L of water per day). The simplest way to check for leaks is to look around your house.
You can also compare your water bill each quarter to monitor for any rapid changes in usage.
If you do not want to wait for your next water bill, you can check for leaks by taking a photo of your water meter before you go to bed and comparing it to the reading first thing in the morning.

Garden

Keeping your garden mulched is essential for creating healthy soil and maintaining a water efficient garden.
Mulch keeps your soil cool, suppresses weeds, adds nutrients and reduces run off and soil movement.
Mulch can reduce evaporation from soil by up to 70%.
Mulch can be in the form of leaves and grass clippings, sawdust, rocks and gravel, straw and other crop residues, bark and woodchips. P
rotect your garden by applying 5-10 cm of a hard, chunky mulch and help achieve water savings of up to 20 per cent. It is also a great way to stop the weeds!

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Room by room

Save water in your home.

Kitchen

Bathroom

Laundry

Fixing leaks

Garden

Bathroom fixtures

Water use calculator

Water-saving tips

Save in your shower

Water hacks wanted - Win Big!

How can we help?

Room by room

Save water in your home.

Kitchen

Washing produce

Fill up the dishwasher

Scrape plates

Bathroom

Quick showers

Half flush

Brushing your teeth with a cup

Laundry

Fewer loads

Front vs top loader

Fixing leaks

Dripping taps

Toilet leaks

Leaking pipes

Garden

Mulch your garden

Water your garden at dusk or dawn

Install a rainwater tank

Bathroom fixtures

Water use calculator

Water-saving tips

Save in your shower

Water hacks wanted - Win Big!

How can we help?