With an especially hot and dry Spring up until the past week, and Summer fast approaching, people are thinking about water.

Now is the time to start thinking seriously about how to make your home as water-efficient as possible – and save money at the same time.

Water restrictions are in place in most Australian cities, towns and villages. In some places there are even complete bans on outdoor water use.

As populations continue to grow, and water reserves are increasingly affected by climate change, we must change the way in which we use water. Even by reducing water use by 50 litres per person per day, we can make a huge difference to the availability of water, leading to an easing of water restrictions and a less likely need for things like new dams and desalination plants.

The other benefit of reduced water consumption of course is the cost saving and in these times of economic recession, every cent counts in a tight household budget.

CHOICE magazine offers a few great tips to help you save on water consumption.

In the bathroom

• cut your shower time to four minutes or less;
• get a water-saving showerhead (see CHOICE’s report for the preferred models);

If you don’t want to change your showerhead, you can install a flow restrictor. Even getting a shower timer can help reduce the amount of time spent showering by making you more aware of how long you’re taking: the average shower is about seven minutes, but it doesn’t have to take that long to soap up and rinse off.

• install an easy on/off switch.

The Every Drop Shower Saver is an example of an on/off switch. It's a lever that you can install at the base of your shower stem, allowing you to stop and start the flow of water quickly and easily. The idea is that you can stop the shower running while you’re soaping up, shampooing or shaving, and then turn the water back on to rinse when you’re ready. The manufacturer’s reason that since soaping up takes more time than rinsing, you could save about half your normal shower water with the paddle-shaped device.
It can be purchased from the company’s website (www.showersaver.com.au). It doesn’t suit all showers, so check yours is compatible before you buy.

Top tips for showers

While waiting for the shower water to warm up, save the cold water in a bucket and use it for the garden, pot plants, laundry soaking, washing your hands or even flushing the toilet. The Ripple bucket (www.rippleproducts.com) is handy because it folds up for you to store out of the way. You can also use it to scoop water out of the bath and onto the garden.

Shaving your legs in the shower adds about four minutes to your shower — that’s 36L with a water-efficient shower head. Consider waterless hair removal, such as waxing or an epilator. See CHOICE’s test of hair-removal products to pick the best option for you.

Take the ‘No Shampoo Challenge’. ABC radio personality and newspaper columnist Richard Glover set out to discover whether he could live without shampoo, thereby allowing the natural oils in his hair to regain their balance and give him lovely fluffy hair. Hundreds of listeners joined him in the challenge, using only warm water to vigorously rinse their hair as necessary. At the end of the six-week trial, 86% decided their hair was great.

How long do you spend shampooing your hair, rinsing it out, then putting conditioner in and rinsing that out? Two minutes? Three minutes? Five minutes? By taking the ‘No Shampoo Challenge’ you could save time, water and the money you’d spend on shampoo.

Top tips for taps

Install water-efficient taps, known as aerators, which give the feel of a high flowrate with only half the water. They're simply screwed onto the end of a tap and reduce the flowrate while aerating the water.

Turn off the tap when brushing your teeth. It seems so obvious, but many people still leave the water running, wasting at least 5L per minute. That’s around 11,000L per person per year.

The toilet

Replacing your whole toilet may not be worthwhile unless you’re renovating the bathroom. But if you are going to install a new toilet, make sure you get a modern 6/3L (or 4.5/3L) dual-flush cistern and pan.

If you have an old-style single-flush toilet, you can fit it with a 9/4.5L dual-flush cistern. Cisterns for 6/3L flushes can't be fitted to an existing 12L pan — they require one that's specifically designed for lower flush volumes.

If replacing your cistern isn’t an option, you could install a device to stop the toilet flushing when you take your finger off the button. This means you hold it down only for as long as it takes to flush the contents of the bowl away, saving any unnecessary flush water. They cost as little as $10 and can be installed by the home handyperson.

If you’re not very handy or you’re renting, you could just use the old ‘brick in the cistern’ trick: put a brick (or a plastic bottle full of water) in the cistern and you’ll use less water for each flush.

The Caroma Profile toilet has an integrated handbasin. Water flows from the tap when you flush the toilet, giving you enough time to wash your hands, and then drains into the cistern ready for the next flush. It saves not only water but space — great for when the toilet is separate from the main bathroom. However, as the tap’s only activated when you flush, it doesn’t fully replace a bathroom vanity.

This might be a good option for people who have difficulty turning taps on and off. Visit www.caroma.com.au for more details.

Oz Aquasaver has a retrofit cistern basin, comprising a basin, tap and plumbing hardware. You simply set it on top of your existing cistern, and (unlike the Caroma Profile) you can turn the tap on when needed — the excess will go out the cistern’s overflow. See www.ozaquasaver.com for more details.

In the laundry

Washing machines

Front loaders typically use a lot less water than top loaders. They can be more expensive, but you may be entitled to water retailer rebates. See CHOICE’s washing machines test for information on water efficiency of all models.

Some washing machines rate well for water efficiency at the expense of rinsing well. If you chose a washing machine for its water efficiency according to the WELS label, you might be disappointed when you used it.

Luckily CHOICE comes to your rescue by testing the machines for rinse performance too. The models in their ‘What to buy’ list scored well for both water efficiency and rinse performance.

Reusing washing machine water

CHOICE commissioned a chemical analysis of laundry detergents to determine their suitability for use on the lawn or garden as greywater from your washing machine.

The ones that got clothes cleanest were generally too high in sodium, salinity and pH (alkalinity) to be much good for your garden, especially over the long term. And unfortunately most of those safest for the garden didn’t wash clothes very clean.

So don’t use the wash water on your garden, just the rinse water, as the worst of it will have gone down the drain. And spread the water over a wide area, keeping it off your herbs and vegies, and your garden should be fine. See the CHOICE report on Laundry detergents for more information.

Washer/dryers

Combined washer/dryers may seem a great idea, especially if you’re pushed for space, but they use a lot of water for drying, thanks to their condenser technology. Instead of turning the water in the clothes into hot, damp air, they condense the steam back to water and send the lot down the drain — using a lot of water to do so.

The LG Combined Steam Washer and Dryer CHOICE tested in August 2007 used 107L to wash 9kg, and 74L to dry 5 kg (it can’t dry a full wash load in one hit).

A front loader with a normal dryer on top is just as space-saving, almost certainly more water-efficient and probably cheaper, but you need to be able to vent the hot, damp air from the dryer out of your laundry.

In the kitchen

Washing the dishes

Dishwashers these days generally use a lot less water than they used to — even less than washing dishes by hand in the sink. The average water consumption for the 10 machines CHOICE tested recently was 17.6L. Conservative estimates of hand washing show at least 20L is used. Less conservative scenarios go as high as 90L (presumably involving lots of running water being wasted).

If you’re in the market for a new dishwasher, check out the water efficiency of models in their most recent test.

Top tips for dishwashers

You can save water by not rinsing plates before putting them in the dishwasher. CHOICE tests each dishwasher’s washing performance by getting it to wash a load of dishes and cutlery coated with food that’s been left to dry on overnight.

As most machines now effectively get these clean on a ‘normal’ program, there’s no need to waste water by rinsing plates before you stack — just scrape the food scraps off first.

If you do pre-rinse (because you don’t run the machine every day), try using the dishwasher on its ‘fast’ program, which uses less water. You’re likely to find it washes just as well.

Top tips for hand-washing dishes

Rinsing dishes under a running tap isn’t necessary and wastes a lot of water. To rinse drinking glasses, wash them first while the sink is still filling and rinse them under the hot running water. When you’ve finished washing up, tip a pot of rinse water over the plates and cutlery as they stand in the dish drainer.

Hot water recirculation

If you have taps a long way from the hot water system, chances are you waste a lot of water letting the cold water run through before it warms up.

A hot water recirculation system intercepts the cold water before it goes out the tap and pumps it through the cold water inlet into the hot water tank. So when you want hot water, you activate the system (by pushing a button), and once the thermostat detects that the water is warm enough, the pump switches off, you turn the tap on and hot water comes out. The pump uses very little energy, as it’s only on for those few seconds when you need it.

CHOICE came across models ranging from around $450 to $900 (plus installation). They’re more elegant (though a lot more expensive!) than using a bucket.