Every household runs on a budget. When you can find simple ways to save money on your utility bills, it leaves more wiggle room for fun activities, investing, or building up a nest egg. Smart homeowners are always on the lookout for items that will help save money, time, and valuable natural resources. Today, we will explore a few new tools to help you save water around your home and some of your hard-earned money.
Smart Watering
Many areas in the west face drought conditions and watering restrictions every summer. And going along with those time restrictions are increases in the cost of water. These changes lead many to look for ways to reduce their water usage and the expense that goes along with it. And the first place they choose to cut back is almost always the lawn and garden. After all, you can’t stop bathing, washing dishes, and doing laundry. But you can opt to reduce the amount of water going to your grass and plants. And hopefully, they will find a way to survive, or you will need to convert to xeriscape, a very low water usage plant palette.
Fortunately, homeowners in these areas now have another option. They can install a smart sprinkler controller. These devices tout water savings of up to 30% over traditional sprinkler controllers. And it is not that they are magically able to stretch the benefits of the water; instead, they are watering more effectively and efficiently. These units are connected to your home’s Wi-Fi and can monitor weather conditions and adjust your watering times accordingly.
You will need to complete some basic programming to tell the system the types of plants, soil conditions, and sun exposure in your yard. Once the system has some basic data, it will manage each irrigation zone’s watering time to provide just enough water for your grass and plants to thrive. In the event of sufficient natural rain, your system will automatically shut off to save you a substantial amount of water and money. We have all seen someone’s sprinkler system running when it is raining and thought how wasteful it appears. But who has time to monitor the weather that closely and run out to turn off the sprinklers? Now you never need to worry about that, thanks to a smart sprinkler controller.
Smart Hot Water
Every homeowner has seen those “helpful” blogs about reducing the cost of your hot water. But what they are really telling you is to use less hot water, or get used to water that is not as hot as you really want it to be. Both of these options reduce the power that your water heater is using. But they also reduce your level of satisfaction and even enjoyment of your hot water. No one wants to take a warm shower. Hot water is much more soothing and relaxing.
Now you can continue to enjoy a truly hot shower and use the amount of water that works for you. But thanks to smart monitoring, your water heater will operate more energy-efficiently. These systems begin by monitoring and learning how your household uses hot water. The most important factor is when you use hot water and have the most significant demand for it.
Knowing when you will need a massive amount of hot water allows your water heater to heat the water just before there will be a predictable demand for it. And it also tells your water heater that no one is using the hot water from, say, midnight to 5:00 am. And the water temperature in the holding tank can be allowed to drop below your optimal setting. This will create significant savings when you think that your water heater maintains hot water 24/7/365. By finding just six hours a day that there is no demand, your water heater can reduce its function for a quarter of each day. The result is an excellent cost-saving for you, but no change in the availability of hot water when you want it.
To learn more about how to reduce your water-related expenses, call (214) 388-8838 to speak to a Flow Plumbing expert.
