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Comment by throwaway2016a | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2016a

My guess is that the average is very different than the median here. In general there are a few considerations:

- Green lawns are considered a status symbol in the US and in many higher end neighborhoods houses run irrigation multiple times a day.

- Same goes for pools.

- Baths are common (especially for kids) and use a fair amount of water.

- Our toilets and showers are not efficient.

- We tend to do laundry and dishes with machines (though I'm not sure if that would really use more or less water).

I also suspect that number may include industrial and commercial. Since even considering the above it still seems high.

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Washing dishes with the machine actually tends to save quite a lot of water, as long as you actually fill the machine.

> as long as you actually fill the machine

That's more or less what I suspected. Though... and I'm not sure if this is an American thing, an international thing, or just a weird quirk of the specific people I know... I know several people who run their machines every day even if they aren't even close to full.

A dishwasher is so much more efficient than handwashing dishes that it's going to save water even without being anywhere close to full.

I'm not a fan of letting dirty dishes sit. Dried on food doesn't come off as easily.

> - Our toilets and showers are not efficient.

You can't make blanket claims about the US as a whole for things that are driven by the states - many states have highly restrictive shower/toilet efficiency requirements.

You are right, I cannot generalize. In fact our main flush function in newer toilets is the same flow as almost all countries (Australia and Japan being the exceptions) but we also have far fewer "Duel Flush" toilets (apparently, I'm just learning this myself) and the low flow on duel flush toilets uses much less water.

Whenever I’m in the states and see the urinal “American Standard” 1 gpf (gallon per flush) I cry in Australian.

American Standard sells urinals with water use as low as 1/8 (0.125) gallons per flush.

https://www.americanstandard-us.com/urinals-list

(I only thought of this because the urinals at the companies I've worked at over the past decade proudly displayed these 1/8-gallon numbers.

.. and plenty of urinals are completely water free...

And they uniformly stink...

How much is the gpf or lpf in Australia?

In Australia, they're measured in pints

> - We tend to do laundry and dishes with machines (though I'm not sure if that would really use more or less water).

Dish washers save water, also those are machines that Germans also use.

Fair enough, that was the one that seemed most questionable even as I wrote it.

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