I think it’s fair to say that most of us want to help the environment, reduce waste, and contribute in some way. I don’t know about others but for me, it comes and goes in phases. During the cooler months, instead of turning on the heat, our family would simply put on an extra layer of clothing like a light sweater around the house. This not only saved us money but we reduced the use of natural gas. And when it comes to water, I have a bad habit of taking long ass showers and running the hot water the entire time. But during my “water-saving phase”, I would reduce by getting my body wet in the shower, turning off the water, lathering up, then turning water on to wash off the suds.
And now, I’m back in my water-saving mode and I’ve made a ghetto adjustment to my toilet in order to reduce the amount of water it takes to flush the toilet. I call it the EnviroToilet. I actually saw a Facebook acquaintance doing this project with his kids and I thought I would give it a shot myself. I liked the results so here I am sharing with Unfinished Man readers. The entire process is super simple but I hope I don’t screw up the plumbing by doing this. Hopefully my modification is still able to send all of the human waste being flushed down far, far away from my toilet.
Step 1
Fill an empty two-liter bottle with water. I used a milk jug but you can use a soda bottle or any bottle that will fit inside the water tank for your toilet. Make sure the bottle does not interfere with any of the mechanisms inside the water tank.
Step 2
Place the water filled bottle inside the tank and watch the water level rise. Don’t worry, the excess water will go down the overflow tube. After this step, simply flush the toilet to see how everything works. The water tank will fill up with water again to its usual level but thanks to the volume of water bottle, the tank actually has less water.
If you look at the picture above, you’ll notice I made two pen marks inside the water tank. The mark at the top is where the original level of the water is without the bottle. The lower pen mark is the new water level after the water filled bottle has been placed in the tank. But because of the volume of the bottle in the tank, the water level raises to the top pen mark. That difference between the two pen marks in this particular water tank is equivalent to 1.2-liters (40.57 US oz).
Exactly how much is 1.2-liters of water? Well, the picture below is one liter of water. There are 3.78 liters of water in a US gallon. To round things off, I’m basically saving a gallon of water for every three flushes. I don’t keep track of how many times I use the washroom per day but I think three flushes per day sounds fair. Now multiply that by the number of people in your home. Over the course of the year, that’s a lot of water! And if your city charges you for water, there’s some savings in there as well for you!
This setup is a little on the ghetto side but everything seems to be working well so far. You can always use a smaller bottle as well. It would be great if even a few people reading this would try the same thing at home and comment below with their results.
