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Comment by ryantgtg | Hacker News Reader

I checked our water bill yesterday (Los Angeles), and found we average well over 82 gallons a day. I'm trying to figure out why. Household of 3, no lawns, lots of succulents (a couple fruit trees but we're not crazy about watering). So our water use is largely: daily shower, dishwasher, toilet, sink, washing machine, and reverse osmosis water faucet. We had a crappy tankless water heater for a few years, so I actually removed the water saving shower faucets and sink aerators. I got a new tankless, so now I want to put back on the water saving faucets and see how that impacts results.

But... I was surprised. I could definitely shorten my showers.

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Reverse osmosis throws a lot of water down the drain to keep the filters from clogging. I'm just an hour or so south of you and get the water doesn't taste incredible out of the sink, but I got a Pur countertop water filter which gets the chalky taste out without wasting any water, might be worth a try? Reverse osmosis is pretty intense if your water coming out of the pipe is treated, it's better suited for people with totally untreated water IMO

My guess would be that the RO filter is dumping a bunch. They seem to use 4 gallons for every 1 gallon of filtered water [1]. I personally do't like RO water, it tastes off to me and I appreciate having a. little fluoride in my water to fight off tooth decay.

[1]https://americanhomewater.com/the-truth-about-reverse-osmosi...

I lived overseas for a bit somewhere where you have to have an RO filter to drink from the tap. Nearly every filter on the market has mineral restoration packs which I think help with that bland water RO taste. One of the servicemen who changed our filters once warned us that the calcium in our purifier was so low that our bones would lose calcium. While I don’t know if I believe it, it was interesting to learn that minerals in drinking water can benefit health

I kind of miss making coffee with water out of that purifier though, it tasted noticeably better

Like I said, my main concern would be the fluoride. I actually really like the water here in NYC tastes great and seems good for baking, brewing beer, and coffee. Though I've never tried RO coffee.

You could try reading the meter and going without one thing each day - but maybe the reverse osmosis filter flushes itself too often?

How old are your toilets? Old toilets could use as much as 7 gallons per flush 30+ years ago. Modern toilets use 1.6 gpf or less. Swapping out a 3gpf toilet that came with the house for a modern one made a helluva difference in my usage.

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