With the cost of water and electricity going up, our household has been making modest efforts to cut back on the use of both.
Cutting water consumption has been fairly painless and hasn’t required changes to our routines. It was as simple as installing new toilets and a new shower head.
Our two old toilets used 13 litres of water per flush. The new ones are 4.8 litres per flush. Since 2011, the B.C. building code has mandated low-water-use toilets, so we didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway. We had the new ones installed partly because the old ones weren’t working properly and partly to save water.
We’ve also switched to a showerhead that flows at 5.7 litres a minute. Our old one was around 9.5 litres.
Comparing a March 2014 water bill to one from March 2010, our water use has dropped nearly 35 per cent.
But our electricity use hasn’t changed much, despite switching to LED light bulbs that are more energy efficient, and a flat-panel TV that consumes less power than our old tube set.
While we’ve trimmed power use for lighting and TV, we’ve added electric gadgets, including another computer, another hard drive, a couple of cellphone chargers, a second Wi-Fi router, a Blu-Ray player, a digital video recorder, and a more powerful hood fan over the stove.
We’re also a little sloppy about our electric use. We leave lights on when no one is in the room, we leave the TV on when no one is watching.
It’s too easy to waste electricity.
With water, you tend to know when you’re using it. Electricity use is more passive.
B.C. Hydro has told us to expect further rate increases. We’ll see if that’s enough incentive for us to be more vigilant about electricity use.
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B.C. Hydro’s residential rate went up by 9% on April 1. More increases are scheduled for each of the next four years.
Saanich’s water rate increased from $1.342 per cubic metre in 2013 to $1.456 per cubic metre this year. Water rates are different in each of the Greater Victoria municipalities.
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