Story

Largest Desalination Plant in the Hemisphere to Supply 7% of San Diego's Water

Preview

How much water / house? (Score: 1)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-22 23:54 (#2SSR)

... An acre-foot is enough to supply two homes for a year.
Half an acre-foot is 162,926 gallons (per a couple of different online conversion programs). I'm in the Great Lakes area where we don't pay much for water and our house (two people) uses about 30,000 gallons/year. Even when we were watering a few new trees we only got to 40,000 gallons/year. We don't do anything special to conserve except the toilets are the low flush type and faucets/sinks have typical 2 gallons/minute aerators (flow restrictors).

What are they doing in San Diego to use 5x the water we use here?

Re: How much water / house? (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-09-23 01:33 (#2SSX)

our house (two people) uses about 30,000 gallons/year. Even when we were watering a few new trees we only got to 40,000 gallons/year
Two-people is a ridiculously small household, and you are in an area where you don't have to water your yard at all, where most of the Southwest you'd have nothing but dirt unless you water the whole thing twice a week.

Re: How much water / house? (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2014-09-23 07:20 (#2STE)

On my monthly water bill, the local utility lists the following:
  • Your water use was 748 gallons.1
  • Your neighborhood average water use was 7,998 gallons.
  • SAWS residential average water use was 10,085 gallons.
I have no idea how some people use so much water.

1One digit on my water meter equals 748 gallons. For some months of the year, my usage is low enough to make the meter read the same as the previous month (meaning my usage is actually a bit less than 748 gallons/month)

Re: How much water / house? (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-09-23 11:07 (#2STR)

Your water use was 748 gallons.1
Your neighborhood average water use was 7,998 gallons.
That's an incredibly low figure. I'd guess you eat out all the time, don't wash your own car, have no plants, don't do laundry, take very short showers days apart, and more. Or otherwise are away from home a great deal of the time. While that behavior may reduce your home water bill, you're still using lots of water, and in a way that's far more expensive than just using water at home.

With the standard 2.5 GPM shower head, 750 gallons is just 5 hours of running the shower per month, total. Some people take 5-minute showers, or skip quite a few days in-between, but most don't, and the average would also go through the roof in a household of several people, so that's not really a practical level of water usage to expect of people, except in cases of extreme rationing.

And showers aren't the biggest water users... Toilets consume more water, so you need to cut your showering time down to 1/3rd of that to fit the numbers, still. Throw in some dish washing, outdoor plant watering, and you get up to those big "average" numbers quickly.

Re: How much water / house? (Score: 1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-23 12:56 (#2STX)

Shhh. Bryan's last name is "Begley, Jr."

Moderation

Time Reason Points Voter
2014-09-24 02:23 Funny +1 eviljim@pipedot.org

Junk Status

Marked as [Not Junk] by bryan@pipedot.org on 2015-01-02 05:36