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Re: GBlist: residential water usage



Chris Koehn asked:

>Anyone know the average per household water usage per day in the U.S.?
>

The following data comes from a water and wastewater engineering course I
took back in 1992; I don't know if the numbers have changed much since then,
and I don't know what the professor's published source was.

        USA average: 60-100 gpcd for residential use, 
            total of 166 gpcd (gallons per capita per day) including
commercial, 
            industrial, public use, and system losses (i.e., leaks)

        Other municipal averages, total consumption:
        Dallas          161 gpcd
        Houston         250 gpcd
        LA              181
        Tulsa           157


        Other countries:
        U.K.            71 gpcd
        Japan (Tokyo)   77
        W. Germany      46
        Switzerland    107
        Egypt           26
        Pakistan        19
        India           14
        Spain           44

Makes you think we could be using a *lot* less, doesn't it? The minimum
required to support life is 1-1.5 gpcd.

In the U.S., residential use breaks down like this:
        toilets         41%                        
        washing         37%
        kitchen         11%
        laundry         4%
        cleaning        3%
        lawns           3%
        car washing     1%

Those figures are national averages. I promise, in the fancy suburb nearest
us (Plano, Texas), summertime water use is much more than 3% -- probably a
lot more%. The average water use there is 15,000 gallons per month per
household (annualized). That's about 125 gpcd, assuming a four-person family
and a 30-day month.

At our house, with low-flow fixtures (but 1.6 gpf toilets) and 1600-gallon
cistern for landscape water, we use an average of 33.3 gpcd. And we don't
even have a very efficient washing machine, sorry to say! 

Hope this helps!

---Elena Westbrook, ELS
WordWright Communications
EWestbrook@topher.net

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