Even though washing our clothes by hand may save ourselves the most energy, it’s not ideal for our modern era. Whether you are washing your clothes at home, or run a laundromat business, here are our top tips and tricks on saving money on your next electric bill.

Update Your Equipment

1. Purchase An Up-To-Date Machine

In case you don’t currently own a certified washing machine, it may be time to purchase one for yourself or your business. By choosing the best water efficient washing machine, you can save nearly 8 gallons of water per use. These savings can even amount up to $25 per year for every machine you own.

2. Purchase A Font-Load Specific Washing Machine

Buying you or your business a front-loading washing machine can seriously help you reduce your heating and water costs since they use much less water than top-load washing machines.

3. Buy Energy-Efficient Hot Water Heaters

An energy-efficient water heater can help you save money every month. Plus, the purchase may qualify you for a variety of discounts for solar or tankless units for your home or business. Check with your local energy suppliers to see how much you can save.

4. Improve Your Hot Water Tank’s Insulation and Turn Down its Temperature

If you notice that your hot water tank is costing you in energy bills, it might be smart to improve its insulation to have it function more effectively. Additionally, turning down your hot water tank’s temperature below 120 degrees can also help you save money.

Washing Tips

5. Use Cold Water More Often

Instead of using hot water, switch to cold water. According to a washing machine water usage comparison, you can save up to 90 percent on your energy bill. Plus, making the switch can save nearly enough energy to run your house for a full week. Not to mention, cold washing your clothes can reduce wrinkles, remove stains, and brighten colors.

6. Load Up Your Washer or Dryer Before Using

No matter how many clothes you have in your wash or dryer, it will always use the same amount of energy. Load up your machines as much as you can to prevent overusing electricity for half full loads.

7. Optimize Energy Saving Options

When using your washer or dryer, optimize your energy saving options. For example, choose a high spin option for faster drying times and don’t wash your items longer than what’s required. Believe it or not, some things only need to be washed for 10 minutes or less.

8. Opt Out Of Extra Rinse Cycles

Even though the majority of washing machines have extra rinse cycles, you can opt out of this cycle to help save water and electricity.

Drying Tips

9. Always Clean the Lint Filter

After each load, clean out the lint filter. This will boost air circulation and reduce drying times.

10. Optimize Your Settings

Using the correct settings can help you to save energy. For your delicates, choose a low temperature. For most other laundry, select medium. Opt in for auto-dry instead of timed dry. This will prevent over-drying, shrinking, static electricity, and wear.

11. Keep the Room Warm

If you can, put your dryer in a warm room, rather than a cold basement. With warmer air entering your dryer, it will require less energy to heat up.

12. Choose Gas

When picking out your dryer, choose an energy-efficient one like this Electrolux gas dryer which saves between $75 to $100 per week.

13. Dry Faster

You can dry your clothes faster by tossing a dry towel or tennis ball in the dryer with your wet laundry. A towel can help to absorb the extra moisture. A tennis ball, on the other hand, can help the air to circulate more freely between your clothes.

The post 13 Water and Energy Saving Tips for Washing Machine and Dryer appeared first on Make Every Drop Matter.

Reasons homeowners need to save water

Many homeowners simply need to know what their options are, and then the home designer can put these pieces of the puzzle in the right places at the right times. As far as general reasons for designing a water conscious plumbing plan for a new home, most people will tell you that they want to save water to save the planet. Regardless, it makes sense to do this with any new home because there has always been the added benefit of saving money on utilities in the long-term.

On top of that, in some areas of the country, water shortages can certainly push the price to unexpected levels during certain times of the year. Of course, lessons from Michigan about public water facilities becoming grossly contaminated with lead may also push homeowners to provide their own water. Thankfully, if you are building your own home, you can put all of the important measures in place to ensure the plumbing in your home saves the most water and provides the healthiest environment.

The basics of designing plumbing to save water

In addition to appliances that are designed to save money, you can reroute many traditional plumbing features to reuse wastewater. For example, most homes lose a great deal of water by flushing the toilets. Instead of getting a low-flow toilet, many homeowners find that using wastewater from sinks and the shower is a better way to keep their water conscious homes functioning optimally. Naturally, to get the benefits reusing wastewater, certain features like Perkins diesel engine parts or water collection basins or reservoirs must be included in the original design to save on installation costs and space usage.

Adding other high-tech designs to your plumbing

For environmentally friendly homeowners, there is often a long list of options for saving water that are so advanced that it takes a specialized engineer to understand how they work. Although you may have to leave the installation to the professionals, the basic idea is that a homeowner can install a type of toilet that allows for less sewage to be produced. This green toilet is often called a composting toilet, and there are a number of benefits to using this method. In the end, if you decide that you would like to have this type of toilet, it is best to included it in the original blueprints for your home.

Incorporating water filtration into your plumbing design

Have you considered digging a well or incorporating rainwater into your homes new plumbing options? Homeowners that are adding improvements to an existing home find they often do not have a place for a large-scale water purifier or filtration system to add rainwater or well water to their drinking water. Instead, these are usually reserved for brown water or wastewater options in the home since they cannot filter the water first. However, with basic planning, you can save and drink all of the water you can collect, and the tap water in your home can be as healthy as bottled water.

Adding water heating and HVAC systems

Many homeowners that are unfamiliar with home design and architecture may not know that other components of the plumbing can be connected to environmentally friendly options. For example, HVAC systems that have boilers can benefit from your plumbing design plans to save wastewater. Naturally, you can also use the same type of strategic planning for addressing your water heater. One other important step that can be added at this level is wiring the water heater and HVAC unit to solar panels.

Designing the roof, landscaping, and pavements for water collection

Sophisticated plumbing design that uses rainwater collection can also be pushed to new levels when the rest of the home is built toward this goal. For instance, gutters are not the only way to collect rainwater. Instead, the pavement can be built in a way that facilitates extra rainwater collection through a cistern drain in the yard. Saving water can also be increased if landscaping plants are not reliant on being watered regularly.

The post How to Design Residential Plumbing System to Save Water appeared first on Make Every Drop Matter.

When you understand how water pump works, it becomes easier for you to take the proper measures. You can tell the advantages of power supply and the impact it has on the water pump installation cost. All your efforts must be towards preventing energy loss.

Efficient Pump Management

Proper maintenance of your pumps allows you to keep your facilities running efficiently. Regular maintenance can reveal any deterioration in capacity and efficiency which occurs before the pump fails. There are many different types of power supply. If you are in Australia and New Zealand you must have heard of DEUTZ DRIVE, a low fuel consumption engine that has been designed locally and specifically. The installation company must understand how water pump works beforehand.

Maintenance activities are classified as either being predictive or preventive. Preventive maintenance focuses on conventional system needs e.g. removal of contaminants, adjustment, and lubrication. Predictive addresses the tests and inspections that detect a looming problem.

In some places, this is called condition monitoring or assessment. With modern testing equipment and methods, testing has become a lot easier. With such measures, you can reduce costly unplanned outages. The kind of water pump engine you choose determines the amount of energy and cost you’ll save.

Choose Efficient Pump Type

The average pump efficiency is below forty percent. Over sizing comes in the design phase as the practice for adding multiple safety elements is common. It requires both the engineer and the pump manufacturer to work close cooperation in choosing the right water pump engine. On top of size, they must look at the power needs, speed, and drive type.

Proper Pump Size

Proper sizing of the pump reduces energy consumption. Remember that centrifugation pumps consumer up to sixty percent of motor energy and carries the highest process equipment maintenance cost. You can consider diesel water pumps to save on energy cost and consumption. Engineers add many safety elements in the designing phase making the pump oversized which only skyrockets the maintenance and energy cost. You can ask around for small diesel engines for sale and chose one that fits your interest.

Using Multiple Pumps

You will save more energy when you allow multiple pumps to run as part of a parallel pumping system. Such systems work well when each pump run independently and not at the same time. Operating multiple pumps concurrently is okay as stipulated by the flow requirements that are unique to the application in use. From this, you can begin to appreciate the advantages of power supply that run efficiently.

Eliminating Unnecessary Uses

Many people overlook the impact of reducing unnecessary energy consumption. Pumping facility efficiency measures involve using pressure switches, closing down pumps that are not in use, or even using diesel water pumps. All pumping units are unique; meaning more opportunities to save energy. Again, to help you accomplish this consider choosing from the many small diesel engines for sale.

When you install a proper power supply, it will keep your system safe even where you suffer a blackout. Nonetheless, everything begins by hiring an experienced professional with an understanding of how water pump works.

The post Water Pump Maintenance Tips l Save Energy Save Money appeared first on Make Every Drop Matter.

To properly conserve water in your garden, it’s important to plan ahead. Plant your garden according to plant genus. For example, group succulents, plants that require more moisture and plants that require sporadic watering, according to soil moisture. If garden soil tends to hold moisture in one area more than another, this may help decide where to locate plants. Many gardening services can provide garden maintenance that helps gardeners maintain a lush, garden with minimal use of water. This is a few suggestions from The Irrigation Shop on how to conserve water in your garden most efficiently.

Know Your Local Water Table

Most gardeners overlook how important it is to know your local water table. To get an accurate assessment of your local water table, that is the underground aquifers that supply water to soil, consult with professional gardening services that can test the range of water in soil. This will help gardeners achieve a higher quality of garden maintenance and conserve water. The topography of the landscape is another factor in water conservation. If your garden lies atop a sloping, high water table, it’s important to understand how rain events and regular watering will affect runoff. On flat, even landscapes with less runoff, the plan for water conservation may be less difficult since soil will retain water naturally whether or not the water table beneath the soil is high. This will result in less watering of plants, trees and shrubs and allow for a natural ingestion of water into roots.

Unique Water Conservation Techniques

In many areas, rain water is conserved by storing in artistically designed rain barrels. In other areas, mulching is a great way to conserve water. Consider the natural effects of rain and wind events. To keep plants from deteriorating while in winter hibernation, consider using fallen leaves as a mulch to protect plants. Fallen leaves are nature’s protection from severe drought and extreme temperatures. Use decorative rain spouts to collect rain water. Consider an attractive rain chains that trickle rain water slowly and disperse it into soil more expansively.

Water Conservation and Lawns

Lawns tend to be water thirsty. To conserve water, consider reducing the size of the lawn by adding plants that require less water. To determine which plants need water most, study the root system. Roots that lie closets to the surface of soil are water thirsty. Roots that seek water deep down into soil require less water. Consider adding flexible “sleeves” to downspouts so water can be properly directed toward gardens and away from structural foundations.

Watering Times

Check with municipal authorities to determine best water times.

The post Ways to Conserve Water in Your Garden appeared first on Make Every Drop Matter.