Smart Energy

The New York Times recently ran a piece asking Eric Corey Freed for simple tips to make a home greener. Not all of his tips are sensible, though.

1. Track down all the “vampire” energy sources in your home — and stab them with a wooden stake. Vampire sources are things like DVD players, etc. — anything with a ready light. Plug ‘em into a power strip, he says — and then turn the strip off when not in use.
2. Get a low-flow shower head to reduce water consumption.
3. Install a gray-water system that diverts soapy water to the toilet.
4. Install programmable thermostats.

But one of his main tips won’t work, says Smart Energy Advisor contributor Karen Adams. Freed advises folks to

Take an empty two-liter soda bottle, wash it out, fill it with water, screw the lid on tightly and set it into your toilet tank, as far away from the flapper valve as possible. This prevents two liters of water from being used every time you flush.

“It’s fine to cut back the volume some for many old high volume flush toilets,” Adams said.But it’s not clear from the Times article that Freed is talking about old, seven-gallon flushers; indeed, it’s pretty clear he’s talking about reducing low-flow toilets even further, as he adds that “you can always flush twice for those rare occasions when it’s truly needed.”

The new toilets do have to use 1.6 gallons or less. Some of them do not work very well, so cutting their flush volume by putting something in the tank is not a great idea. The other catch is that aside from flushing the toilet, you need enough water to transport chunky waste down your sewer line to the main line. The house line is built at an angle for moving waste with a certain range of water volume. As you can imagine, if the angle is too steep, the water runs too fast and leaves the chunkies behind. If the angle is too low, the chunkies are not transported quickly enough and settle out. What is too low or too steep depends partly on what the water volume is.

Indeed, friends of ours have said that their experiences with American-made low-flow toilets has been, well, stinky. We recently talked with a couple who use a dual-flush toilet imported from Australia, and they’re very happy with it. It’s perhaps not surprising that the Aussies would get it right: they live in a water-scarce environment and, unlike Yanks, aren’t by nature wasteful.