When you are buying an old home, or you already live in one, there are some upgrades that should be made to your water systems for better sustainability. Old systems are inefficient and will cost you a lot of money in the long run aside from simply being unsustainable.
Calling in a plumber to do some upgrades is a good way to lower your environmental footprint and also help your wallet out a bit. The idea is that better plumbing will save on water and a new heating system can save on energy. Over time these savings will eventually pay for the upgrade.
In this article, we will go over several areas for improvement that you can make right away.
1 – Boilers
One area of the plumbing system that will make an immediate impact on your bills is to upgrade your hot water heater. Old boilers are so inefficient that you could be paying up to 30% more than you should to heat your home and domestic hot water.
You’ll need a professional like Lacey Plumbing to come out and do an audit of your system to see which one is going to best suit you. However, for reference, the types you are likely to need are tankless combi boilers, hybrid heaters, and possibly a heat pump combined with a tankless water heater.
A combi boiler will give you instant hot water for your domestic needs and will also heat water for a hydronic heating system. A hybrid is a combination boiler that will use both a small tank and tankless system to heat your home and provide hot water.
A heat pump is the most efficient way to heat a home but not all of them provide hot domestic water and need to be combined with a boiler.
2 – Get a bidet
After the toilet paper shortage of 2020, many people started thinking about getting a bidet to avoid a repeat of that scenario. This is a great reason to get a bidet, but there are many more.
Environmentally, a bidet is better than toilet paper on all fronts as it uses a fraction of the amount of water that is used to produce toilet paper. It also reduces the need to cut down trees to make toilet paper which preserves forests.
You’ll also save money since toilet paper is an ongoing cost. It costs hundreds of dollars per year for a family to buy toilet paper, whereas a bidet only costs a few extra dollars on your water bill.
3 – Low flow fixtures
If your shower head is from the 90s or your sink has the original faucet from when the house was built decades ago then you are putting money right down the drain. These days there are water fixtures that save a lot of water by going low flow. They are designed to still give you plenty of water pressure while using a fraction of the water the previous versions do.
