Inspecting the Kitchen for Water Efficiency

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Cathi Pare with the City of Santa Barbara Water Resources speaking to you today for expertvillage.com. We were checking for leaks and we determined that it wasn't in the supply line outside so we are now starting in the kitchen. We are looking around and the first thing we want to do is get underneath your sinks, these have child locks on them so, keeping me out of it and one of the things that I am noticing here is that all the way in the back everything is dry. There is nothing leaking under here and the on/off fixtures work fine but this house has what's called an RO Unit or Reverse Osmosis Unit that work really well for getting nice drinking water but they are very inefficient as water goes. It takes about a gallon of water to push through the filters in an RO Unit to give you a gallon of good drinking water, so it's not a good option for a whole house water system but it does work fine in your kitchen sink. One of the other features we are gong to look at here for efficiency here in the kitchen is a dishwasher. The dishwasher work very well if you load them completely first. Don't use them to rinse your dishes, don't use them as a storage place and only turn it on when there is 5 or 6 glasses in it. Same as when you are doing your dishes in the sink itself, you don't want the water just run the whole time you are washing and rinsing. So think about it, be efficient. Even if you are not leaking, you can save water just in your every day living. "