Water Solutions Webinar: How Low Can We Go?

00:00:01:15 - 00:00:23:01
Mike Collignon: All right. Welcome to August, everyone. And yes, I know we're already halfway through the month, but did you know that one of the observations this month is that it's National Water Quality Month? Now, we're not going to get into water quality so much today as we will water quantity. I mean, if you've seen the Drought Monitor map recently yikes.

00:00:23:02 - 00:00:56:18
Mike Collignon: But it's pretty scary, especially if you look west of the Mississippi. Reservoirs of freshwater have sunk to record low levels. Homeowners seem kind of unconcerned. But is there confidence in plentiful water misplaced? It seems that we need some solutions. Are there new technologies that could enable homeowners to ride out the drought with minimal personal sacrifices? Well, good news is we've got Matt Power here to discuss things like leak detection, ultra low flow faucets and fixtures, greywater, rainwater harvesting, and smart irrigation.

00:00:56:19 - 00:01:23:27
Mike Collignon: Now we're also going to troubleshoot hidden water wasters such as reverse osmosis, purification, long run hot water lines, swimming pools and non-native lawns. Now, in case you don't know, Matt Power is the editor in chief of Greenville The Media. And it's largely because of Matt that Green Builder magazine has been named residential a Best Residential Trade magazine near eight consecutive years from the National Association of Real Estate Editors.

00:01:23:28 - 00:01:59:00
Mike Collignon: Matt has an award winning nearly three decade career reporting on innovation and sustainability in housing. He's a long history of asking hard questions and adding depth and context as he unfolds complex issues. Now, before we dive in water puns, I want to let you know today's webinar sponsors are up. North America is the partner plumbing and HVAC professionals rely on for Smart Water and Energy Solutions, an award winning manufacturer of PEX piping and the exclusive marketer and distributor of PPE, RCT in North America.

00:01:59:02 - 00:02:26:26
Mike Collignon: The company offers plumbing, fire safety, radiant heating and cooling, hydronic piping and pre insulated piping system solutions for new construction for retrofits, remodels in the residential and commercial markets. Now, Power Shift by NV energy is a program that helps residential and business customers conserve energy and save money on their power bills. Power shift is a one stop resource to find energy efficient products and services.

00:02:26:26 - 00:02:32:25
Mike Collignon: For more information, please visit their website, which is now V.

00:02:32:27 - 00:03:00:02
Mike Collignon: Shift. Beco exists to empower new generations of homeowners to live healthier lives on a healthier planet. They created the industry's first Healthy Kitchen Council to help guide product innovations, and they are one of the most sustainable brands in the world. Now, why would I say that? Well, because three years ago, Becca's parent company became carbon neutral in global production operations and are the only home appliances brand to receive Energy Star designation.

00:03:00:02 - 00:03:21:17
Mike Collignon: Every year they've operated in the United States. That's six years in a row and counting. Now, you are welcome to submit questions for our guest. Now just use the questions box on the right side of your screen. Most likely it's the control panel over there. I'm going to review those questions and pose them to Matt during the Q&A time that we've set aside after his presentation.

00:03:21:20 - 00:03:24:25
Mike Collignon: Speaking of Matt. Matt, it's always good to see you, sir.

00:03:24:27 - 00:03:49:20
Matt Power: You too Mike. Great to see you and thank you for that introduction. Hi, everybody. Good afternoon. I'm on eastern time. I'm not sure where you are. Probably all over the world. So today this is a topic that is something that I write about quite on a regular basis in different ways. This is going to be a little different than probably other webinars that you've gotten into.

00:03:49:21 - 00:04:09:16
Matt Power: I tend to be as a journalist. I tend to sometimes sort of shoot from the hip, and I'm going to give you some sort of radical ideas in this about, you know, water usage and behavior and stuff that maybe I hope you haven't heard anyplace else. Also, keep in mind that Green Builder is a magazine that goes out to both trade professionals.

00:04:09:16 - 00:04:34:06
Matt Power: But also I don't use the word consumers, but homeowners, home buyers and just people. Right. So I'm going to try to make this conversation suitable for both. So you so everybody gets walks away I hope with some some good ideas that you can actually, you know, put into either how you're conserving water at your house or how you're building homes or designing projects or even communities.

00:04:34:07 - 00:04:56:16
Matt Power: So let's let's get started. How low can we go? That's the question. So let me start off. I'm just going to briefly touch on where we are and why this is. I don't want to get too much into the weeds about the the level of drought and the crisis. But I do think we need to touch on it at the beginning to show the urgency of water conservation.

00:04:56:19 - 00:05:23:13
Matt Power: So everybody's seen these these pictures of Lake Mead. You know, that picture pretty much says everything that I need to say. I thought this was interesting. The US Government Accountability Office has made some predictions about where things are going as this long term drought continues, with no sign of it letting up. There's also signs that, for example, the snowpack had a lot less snow this year.

00:05:23:13 - 00:05:53:27
Matt Power: So there's not relief in the pipeline for this this extreme drought situation you're already seeing. You know, a lot of tension in certain areas. Like we have a house, a project house being built in Scottsdale, Arizona, and there's some actually some very strict water rationing going on. It's got stale. It's actually affecting somewhat our project. So it's these types of sort of draconian measures are going to be more and more common.

00:05:53:28 - 00:06:17:21
Matt Power: I also thought one interesting of these bullet points was the fact that the fresh water water shortage can be related to climate change in other ways than just drought. If you look at this comment about Maryland, that sea levels would contaminate fresh water. So a lot of fresh water is in rather shallow aquifers near the surface or storage reservoirs.

00:06:17:22 - 00:06:42:10
Matt Power: And if if those become brackish with salt water again you lose significant stores. So you may think you're doing great and you've got plenty of fresh water. And all of a sudden the lake where your city is supplied is no longer potable. So fracking, I also think, deserves a call out. You know, people mistakenly, I think, believe that natural gas is sort of a renewable.

00:06:42:15 - 00:07:08:18
Matt Power: I'm often hear it referred to, weirdly enough, as a renewable resource, but it's not. It's still a fossil fuel and fracking. Increasingly, the evidence shows that it's polluting wells and aquifers across the country. It's one of the main reasons, honestly, that I'm opposed to, you know, continuation of natural gas harvesting is fracking. We don't have a good solution for fracking in terms of water contamination.

00:07:08:20 - 00:07:28:00
Matt Power: This is just a quick look at this is where the this is from August 11th. So just a few days ago, this is where we stand with the drought situation. It's not just the West in Texas obviously, even the northeast. You're seeing some extreme drought up in the northeast. And these are very some that northeast patterns very unusual.

00:07:28:03 - 00:07:48:02
Matt Power: So I think something that we all need to be aware of as we as we go into this presentation, these are some other restrictions. My my opinion on these restrictions is this is minor stuff. You know, like the no watering any day between 11 a.m. and seven. I think that that and I'm going to get into this a little bit.

00:07:48:03 - 00:08:16:10
Matt Power: The level of restrictions have been extremely, I'd say cautious and conservative at this point. The level of restriction that we may be facing could be a lot more dramatic, and it also could happen quite rapidly. That's the other thing. This is not a gradual process, and that's part of the reason that we have trouble behaviorally and psychologically doing a lot on our own with conservation.

00:08:16:10 - 00:08:45:22
Matt Power: It's the way that water conservation manifests. So I did want to also point out that in this seminar or this webinar, we're only really talking about this public supply and domestic use sectors of water use. If you look at where most water is used, and maybe most people know this, but I wasn't aware that thermoelectric for example, energy generation requires vast amounts of water.

00:08:45:23 - 00:09:17:07
Matt Power: Now, it's a little bit unfair to say that it uses it a lot of like coal plants and other types of, you know, energy generators. The water is used for cooling and then it passes through and it's it's redistributed at a safe temperature, you know, into the local river. So whatever. So it's not it's not like it's gone or turned into wastewater necessarily, but it is a lot of water that does get siphoned off and pulled off out of, you know, the same water supply, fresh water.

00:09:17:09 - 00:09:36:29
Matt Power: Just for example. And different energy sources are not equal. One of the main reasons that that I've got a couple of reasons that I'm opposed to nuclear, and it's not just the waste. I get quite a lot of pushback from people saying, well, nuclear is clean. And in some respect, yes. Other than but it's not just the waste.

00:09:36:29 - 00:10:02:17
Matt Power: It's it's the constant maintenance, security and the idea that a government is going to be around 500 years from now to maintain the facility. But here's another reason, maybe, that that nuclear is not such a great idea and that some of these fossil fuel sources need to be phased out. I mean, look how much water is required to cool coal plants and and nuclear plants.

00:10:02:17 - 00:10:27:18
Matt Power: And, you know, now even natural gas to a lesser degree, now geothermal down at the bottom is very low water requirement, you know, per megawatt of electricity produced. So if you don't know about geothermal, that's just a quick graphic to explain. You know, extracting that heat from the ground and using it, it requires very little. But there's another technology that requires very little water and that's solar.

00:10:27:19 - 00:10:50:28
Matt Power: Now you could say, well, in the manufacturer solar panels, yes, there's going to be more water use. But in terms of the, you know, maintenance and on an annual basis, there's estimate is that it's about 20 gallons per megawatt hour, which covers basically cleaning the things and, you know, making sure that they stay at their optimal use. So it's all of these things.

00:10:50:29 - 00:11:18:14
Matt Power: The reason I'm bringing this up is everything sort of goes hand in hand with the direction that we're heading with, with climate crisis and our reaction to the climate crisis. And water conservation is just one big piece of it. Right. But water conservation is tied directly in with energy. I wanted to call out a city that is doing a great job, which is, weirdly enough, Las Vegas.

00:11:18:14 - 00:11:41:10
Matt Power: So that's I don't know if anybody has been to Las Vegas, but that's one of the casinos, the Mandalay Bay. Those are solar panels on the roof of the Mandalay Bay. Now, Las Vegas, I believe, is just crossed over maybe a couple of years ago to be 100% renewable for the whole city, meaning they run basically everything in the city, all the buildings.

00:11:41:10 - 00:12:06:22
Matt Power: ET cetera. Now, a lot of these casinos are net zero as well too. So this thing with the support of one of our sponsors, by the way, and B energy Las Vegas is becoming sort of a showcase city of the fact that, you know, it is possible to generate, generate your own power in a clean way. Now, the other reason I brought them up is think about how dry Las Vegas is, right?

00:12:06:23 - 00:12:36:03
Matt Power: You got a city in a desert, but because they're solar, they're not contributing to that water demand for energy plant, right. So in a way, they're one of the most water conserving cities as well as being, you know, in one of the driest regions, because they've gone full renewable energy, they've they've saved untold thousands of gallons of water a year to.

00:12:36:06 - 00:13:01:19
Matt Power: Okay, so let's get into the nitty gritty of this and look at, you know, water usage in the household. And, you know, everybody probably seen a pie chart like this. It's, you know, you see it, you see it everywhere on the internet. And I actually I'm going to call in a question a couple things on here, like I notice and Mike, you know, maybe at the end we could talk about this because Mike, I don't know if anybody knows this is also somewhat of a water expert.

00:13:01:19 - 00:13:25:19
Matt Power: But when they show this home use, I'm not sure where irrigation fits into that pie chart or whether it's sort of considered an outlier, because irrigation is often 30% of your overall household water use. But most of these charts do not include irrigation. So the way to approach this, the most obvious way, is to start with the big chunks of the pie, right?

00:13:25:20 - 00:14:08:15
Matt Power: And to and to try to address those first and whittle our way down to the, you know, the dishwasher, which is only using 1.6% of your water supply. Now, here's here's a headline that I see quite a lot, right, that that Americans are conserving water and Americans are getting better and better about water use. I actually challenge that, I think, for the most part, and I would say that with with exception, there's certainly people we know that that use water more frugally, that, perception that people are using less water is them getting the benefit of technology and regulation that has improved that.

00:14:08:15 - 00:14:31:00
Matt Power: It makes them look good. But basically, and I'm going to make this argument in this is basically behavior hasn't changed much at all since about the 1960s. It's the tech and the and the fixtures and the other stuff. So the reason I bring that up is if that's the case and behavior is not shifting, why do we have a fantasy?

00:14:31:00 - 00:14:59:12
Matt Power: That behavior is going to change in the future. There's no evidence to support the idea that people are going to get more and more conservative with their water. So we're left with, what can we do with tech, with, you know, where's the white space in terms of water savings and hidden water users that we can take advantage of now and work on the behavior over the long term.

00:14:59:15 - 00:15:23:10
Matt Power: So here to to sort of illustrate my point from 2011 to 2020. You can see that this is us or actually this is Saint Johns River area water use. It varies very little. It's like 2 or 3 or 4% at most. OP and down, up and down. So minimal changes in fresh water use. However, and I threw this quote in here before 2011.

00:15:23:10 - 00:15:44:16
Matt Power: So so since 2001 that was this quote gross gross water decreased blah blah blah from 155 down to 100. So that was a big drop, 40 gallons per person per day. So why did that happen? Like, you don't even see that in this chart. Why did that happen before this in like right at the end of the 90s?

00:15:44:18 - 00:16:09:04
Matt Power: Well, I attribute a lot of it to toilets. Okay. So look at before 1992 you had toilets that used 5 to 7 gallons per flush. Now they were a little slow as they as they ramped them up in about 1992, I think, was when it actually some mandates went into place. It took a while for the, you know, the, the replacement of those take place.

00:16:09:04 - 00:16:40:09
Matt Power: So in that that quote that I mentioned in 2001 where the numbers dropped, like the water conservation dropped, I think it took a few years to ramp up to from to these 1.6 gallon per flush toilets. So we dropped our toilet. Usage is one of those big pieces of the pie by about 60 or 70% high efficiency bits today are they're considered, I think, 1.8 to 1.28.

00:16:40:09 - 00:17:01:19
Matt Power: I noticed at the I went to the Lowe's the other day and I was looking at toilets because what you know, that's what building editors do. And I noticed almost every toilet there was what I consider high efficiency at 1.28 gallons per flush. And, you know, part of the thing is they solved the problem of low flow toilets clogging the good ones like American Standard.

00:17:01:19 - 00:17:21:16
Matt Power: And, you know, some some of the good brands never had a problem with them. And I've talked to many plumbers and they said those things. They used to have problems, but they're they've really mastered the technology and improved them. Now there's a couple of outliers like this. Niagara stealth toilets, a fairly new one. This is a point eight gallons per flush.

00:17:21:16 - 00:17:40:11
Matt Power: I don't I can't attest to you know that that it what the power of it is but does get a lot of good reviews. It's it's you know again though, I don't want to get too much into, sort of the tiny increments of trying to save water. What I want to look at is some of the bigger stuff that we might have missed, right.

00:17:40:12 - 00:18:05:29
Matt Power: And that technology hasn't addressed or yet and has the capability to address dishwashers. Look at the 1965 dishwashers. Right. So you were talking 16 gallons of load. Now we're up to what, gallon and a half, two gallons. So it really is it really is true that, you know, dishwashers compete and probably beat hand washing at this point.

00:18:06:01 - 00:18:31:17
Matt Power: You know, that's the that's the age old debate. Clothes washers. Same thing. Look at the so so the federal standard where I said regulatory baseline I think that's still the basically that's that's what you have to build to. Right. There are a lot there are a lot of models that are better than that. But again, think about the vast amounts of water that are being saved by this technology.

00:18:31:17 - 00:18:54:01
Matt Power: This is not people conserving. This is not people doing fewer loads of laundry. It's not people going to the bathroom less and flushing the toilets less that this is the same use of equipment. But when the equipment drops from 12 gallons down to four gallons, yeah, you're saving a huge amounts of water without actually having to do anything.

00:18:54:04 - 00:19:15:28
Matt Power: I wanted to give a call out. This is a beco, you know, super efficient front loading clothes washer. Another thing that happened is the front loading technology combined with, you know, better motors and so on, really dropped both the water costs and the energy cost. I mean, look how little it costs to operate this unit for a year.

00:19:16:00 - 00:19:38:25
Matt Power: I mean, that's that's pretty honestly almost insignificant in terms of your annual budget of, you know, so so again, close these companies. I think, you know, they deserve some kudos because they've really solved a whole bunch of technical problems. And they've, they've they've tweaked their design and their technology so much there's not honestly a lot lower they can go.

00:19:38:25 - 00:20:20:18
Matt Power: And it's in my view, it's not really their responsibility to go lower. We have to look elsewhere to other technology that hasn't caught up and to behavior. So on top of the this again is the clothes washers. There's a whole bunch of variables that you throw in right, with a closed washer that are somewhat behavior related. So look at for example, if you use a washing machine, a closed washing machine at the coal, a front loading washer at the cold cold setting bottom right corner, you're going to spend about, you know, 47 bucks a year on a on a typical model, right?

00:20:20:19 - 00:20:42:25
Matt Power: So if you're not, you know, if you're using all hot water, the hot water is going to triple your energy costs. Right. So I think again these are these are variables. And many of these variables are controlled by what consumer or you know I don't like that word but homeowner expectations are.

00:20:42:27 - 00:21:12:09
Matt Power: Showers I want to talk about showers. Students showers are another big chunk of that pie. So again showers that were mandated down the I think it's now 2.5 gallons per minute volume. There's a lot of psychology around showers. And one of the problems is if you ask someone would you like to have a shower that only gives you, you know, 5.5 gallons per minute or 15, they're going to go for the 15 gallon per minute.

00:21:12:09 - 00:21:35:19
Matt Power: So the the one on the right, I it's sort of like one of those, those guns that's been illegally modified. And I don't know if this is illegal, but this, this water blaster, I happen to stumble on this online where you can buy a modified shower head that shoots out 12 gallons per minute. And unfortunately, you know, in my experience, that's the direction that a lot of homeowners go.

00:21:35:19 - 00:21:54:20
Matt Power: And when a homeowner talks to a builder, they say, I want to shower. I want to feel drenched in my shower. Now, manufacturers have tried really hard to to to come up with some technologies, and some of them are really effective where they, for example, they blast air into the water and it makes the shower feel more full.

00:21:54:20 - 00:22:26:08
Matt Power: And I've tried these and they really are quite effective. But I've also been a landlord and I've had tenants go through and take my low flow showerheads out and put, you know, gigantic sunflower showerheads on them because they don't like the restriction. So again, a consumer behavior issue. This is you know, they they asked people there was a bunch of research done on how people use showers and whether or not they, you know, whether men or women take longer showers and so forth.

00:22:26:10 - 00:22:51:16
Matt Power: I think this this again tells you people estimate their personal water usage much in a much more positive light than they actually conserve. So that's part of what came out of it. There is not a giant difference between men and women in the shower. That's another sort of myth. There is, however, a big difference between your sort of teenagers and young adults.

00:22:51:18 - 00:23:17:19
Matt Power: They do actually take a long time in the shower, and it's not your imagination that you've been sitting there for, you know, 15 minutes waiting for the bathroom. So, Americans do tend to shower frequently, a little more frequently than, than than much of the world. I did read that in some of the tropics, they actually shower more frequently than us, because it's probably because it's so hot and humid.

00:23:17:21 - 00:24:04:28
Matt Power: Again, just some psychological stuff related to showers. This again, is another aspect of behavior and and why people conserve. I just wanted to call out this is some pretty dense research. I want to call out a couple things in here. So over on the left you see the things that affect people negatively, right? So where if a person believes that that that farmers are wasting water, they're less likely to conserve or especially or if they believe that their neighbors are wasting water there again, less so, they really do sort of look to the Joneses to whether or not they're going to conserve.

00:24:05:01 - 00:24:32:27
Matt Power: They if you look up at the top, see the numbers, if they're positive, it means it has sort of a positive effect on conservation. So money does count, pay less for consumption definitely has an effect. He they see the neighbors saving water down and then down below. If there's water for where it says there's water for a few hours a day, what that is, is that's restriction, right.

00:24:32:27 - 00:24:57:18
Matt Power: So say there's restriction on water on your availability to get water. That is a positive motivator for making people conserve more, which kind of makes sense on the far right where it says annual consumption. That is if you tell somebody, hey, you used this much water this year and this much water the year before, use a lot more water this year than you did the year before.

00:24:57:19 - 00:25:21:03
Matt Power: They don't care right now. There is a caveat to that, which is if you give them heads up display of their water use, they actually have been shown to adjust their behavior. But if you give it to them after the fact and compare year to year, they don't make any changes. Its insignificant to them. Now here's another part of my thesis about why there's not more conservation of water.

00:25:21:03 - 00:25:48:00
Matt Power: Because think about it. You're you're you hear about, you know, Lake Mead is low and there's a terrible drought. And the, you know, cats and dogs are falling from the air. But until the tap actually runs dry, it's an abstraction, right? So it's a hard thing, I think, as humans, for us to get our heads around because we're told that water is getting low, but the water coming out of the tap doesn't look any different.

00:25:48:01 - 00:26:13:09
Matt Power: The water we're spraying our lawn looks just as clear and beautiful as it did last week. So this can create a real problem, because we can get in a situation where suddenly the tap runs dry, at which point behavior will change dramatically because it'll be forced to. But without that, it's very difficult to get this change. So we again, we come back to technology and regulation.

00:26:13:11 - 00:26:40:09
Matt Power: And now just to follow up on that, these are some some other research that was done where they tried to get people to take up sustainable water conservation, and they said people would rather pay on a path of degradation and despair rather than choose an unfamiliar pattern. I mean, that's that's pretty depressing. But, again, people want they like the idea of water conservation, but they really want someone else to do it.

00:26:40:11 - 00:27:07:25
Matt Power: Okay. So leak detection. So 17% of that pie are from leaks right. So it may actually be quite a lot higher than that if you include in all of the, you know, irrigation leaks. And irrigation leaks also can go on to unlike house leaks or most big house leaks can go undiscovered and you can have tens of thousands of gallons going out into your lawn and not be aware for some time until you get the bill.

00:27:07:27 - 00:27:29:11
Matt Power: Fortunately, there is new technology. So there's the old way of looking for leaks is, you know, there's a bunch of different things. You can watch your meter and see if it's moving. You can look for green grass areas on top of your your irrigated. You can add dye to the toilet. You can bring in an expert. In the last few years these leak detection technology has come out.

00:27:29:11 - 00:27:55:26
Matt Power: And if you're not familiar with it, what it does is it connects, right. It sort of where the the service entrance of your water to your home. And then there's like an algorithm. So they create an algorithm of every device, every toilet, every sink, every faucet in your home. So it's a smart device and it senses and I don't claim to know, understand this exactly, but it senses that every device is working as it should have.

00:27:55:27 - 00:28:18:07
Matt Power: So say you're away or you're at work and a pipe burst, you know, in your upstairs bathroom. This also has like this fin plus is one model has a and I believe that's a that's an opener model. Another one of our sponsors too. But there are other brands out there to you can look at several brands. It will shut off.

00:28:18:07 - 00:28:40:00
Matt Power: This one has a shut off valve so it instantly shuts that water off. Now this is a big thing. We have a friend. He asked me not to name him because he's still in sort of debating with the insurance company about this, but he he had a leak in his house a couple years ago, and it was on the upstairs floor.

00:28:40:01 - 00:29:02:29
Matt Power: He and his wife had to move out of the house for a year because it did so much damage. It was in California. The mold got in almost immediately. You know, none of the air conditioning or dehumidifier systems work because the water, the the panel was flooded. So it was a huge disaster for him. And I think most of it ultimately will be covered by the insurance.

00:29:02:29 - 00:29:22:27
Matt Power: But a lot of people don't have that level of insurance too. So the other thing I wanted to point out is the insurance companies are saying that more and more of these water damage claims are happening. Now, why is that? And that's going to tie in with some of these conservation things. I will bring those two ends together in a couple of minutes.

00:29:22:28 - 00:29:43:10
Matt Power: Let me keep moving. All right. So first we're going to we're going to look at some of these hidden water wasters. And this is stuff that's you know it's a delay in right there. And it's something that we could address now and and again notch down some of that water usage without a lot, honestly, of personal sacrifice, which it's really hard to get people to do.

00:29:43:10 - 00:30:02:25
Matt Power: So let's get the tech stuff done first and save the personal sacrifice for for the end game. Hope that we don't have to use it. Long run hot water. So what I mean by this is a lot of houses, you know, you have like a like a home run hot water tank where it's located, like in the basement on the other side of the house.

00:30:02:27 - 00:30:27:17
Matt Power: I know I had a house like this where it took 3 or 4 minutes for the hot water to reach the shower. This is pretty common a lot of times. Like for example, the pipes are not insulated or they're running through partially conditioned space. So you can see the stats on there like huge millions and millions of gallons wasted every day as people run their hot water waiting for it to show up.

00:30:27:19 - 00:31:03:00
Matt Power: Now think about this. So you've got a closed washer and you want to wash some white clothes, but you know, you might be able to run it on warm cold, right? Normally you because maybe your nurse and you need to have some kind of sanitary washing conditions. So you, you do hot cold or warm cold now because you have a three minute hot water delay because that long distance throw, you have to run your washer on the hot setting, right, so that enough hot water will reach it within the after that 3 or 4 minutes to to do the clothes.

00:31:03:00 - 00:31:29:29
Matt Power: So again, these are it's a sort of side effect of the long run. Hot water wastes not only water but energy. Right. Because it's now wasting electricity as well as the person tries to to compensate for it. Now here's a simple solution. These tanks. So this is a four gallon electric. Both both of these are 120 volt models.

00:31:30:06 - 00:31:54:20
Matt Power: I've hooked them up myself. You just you literally you put them in line, you plug them in, and you put them somewhere near your, like, your kitchen or your bath. When I put mine in, it not only allowed me to have instant hot showers, it solved all of my dishwasher, you know, cleaning problems. It gave me instant hot water in the laundry as well, because it was sort of situated close to all of those.

00:31:54:21 - 00:32:20:10
Matt Power: I think it was, you know, it was it was under 3400. I think the one I put in was actually the eco smart. Now, I had a caveat about that because after I think it was five years, the bottom simply dropped out of it. So here's one of the things about electric water tanks. Like if they're not made out of stainless, don't have stainless steel tanks, they generally have a fairly short lifespan.

00:32:20:10 - 00:32:41:26
Matt Power: So this thing literally, I think it had said it was a 5 or 6, you know, year warranty on it, if that, and it only lived up to its warranty, it did not live a day beyond it. So fortunately it was not a major disaster. It did a little bit of damage, but I was able to, you know, shut the water off before it could basically destroy the whole house.

00:32:41:26 - 00:33:02:07
Matt Power: So again, if you're going to put one of these in, you might want to think about how having a water sensor system like, you know, even an inexpensive one of the battery powered goby systems or something. Leave it under that tank in that little closet or whatever, so you get an early alert if that thing starts to leak.

00:33:02:10 - 00:33:20:28
Matt Power: Here's another one. I'm sure if you don't have an arrow, you may want to get one when you hear what what I have to say about water quality. Reverse osmosis is the only thing that I know of that removes the PFAS that we're finding out are in everybody's water. Now, one of the biggest, you know, health risks out there.

00:33:20:28 - 00:33:42:11
Matt Power: So but these water Ro systems waste a lot of water. They waste, you know, between four times or three times and 20 times what you actually drink. So you draw a gallon of water out of that. You could be wasting 20 gallons of fresh water down the drain. Now in places like Maine where I live. That's not such a big deal.

00:33:42:12 - 00:34:07:21
Matt Power: You know, we have ample water for now, but in a place like Las Vegas or Phoenix, that's that's a pretty big chunk of water. You know, most people use around 100 gallons or somewhere in that range a day, you know, personal use. So that's, you know, one fifth of your personal use, you know, in waste water just to produce that water.

00:34:07:23 - 00:34:32:06
Matt Power: There is a solution, however, for this. So one thing I and I was not aware of this, but I put in a couple of these things. So the pressure of your system makes a big difference in how much water the arrow waste. So if you have, for example, a well that's that, that has a, you know, relatively weak pump on it, it's only, you know, 30 psi or something, you may not be getting enough pressure.

00:34:32:06 - 00:34:56:25
Matt Power: I think actually some, some reverse osmosis membranes won't work if the pressure is below 45 psi. So you want to find out specific to the reverse osmosis system you get what pressure does it need from the water in order to effectively work. Typically a higher pressure is better. So in cities you might you typically get, you know, 5060 psi.

00:34:56:28 - 00:35:30:21
Matt Power: And here's another interesting thing. Sometimes the location in the city makes a difference. Like if you're at the bottom of a hill, you might get 100 psi. So that so your actual elevation can affect the the pressure in your pipes, which can affect a whole bunch of stuff. So this little gadget you could mount if you have bad water pressure or not enough water pressure, you can mount this with your reverse osmosis, and it jacks up your psi so that all of a sudden you're only 1 to 1 ratio of fresh water.

00:35:30:26 - 00:35:54:16
Matt Power: I thought, I think that's a pretty neat little technical solution. Pools. You know, people don't talk enough about water waste and pools. So look at this. I believe this was in Florida, this chart. So it's, you know, it's a fairly warm place where you're going to have some extreme, you know, extreme evaporation. No. I'm sorry, this is California.

00:35:54:18 - 00:36:22:18
Matt Power: I just remembered where I got. That's a California pool. So it's 400 square foot pool. Over the year, you're losing almost 20,000 gallons to evaporation now. And this is another one maybe for you at the end. Mike, I wasn't sure whether this is pools, for example, or even accounted in household use. In that pie chart there's a little section called other which shows, you know, 5.2% and maybe they throw it in there, but that's a pretty big chunk.

00:36:22:19 - 00:36:44:14
Matt Power: You know, that's that's like having an extra person using water, I think like, you know, in your household. So again, it's it's it's something that could be easily addressed. However pool covers. So water senses just come out with a new standard for pool covers. Or at least they will work on it. Last I heard these things, you know they're not that expensive.

00:36:44:15 - 00:37:01:19
Matt Power: They cut the evaporation down by up to 95%. And if you live any place you know but the Deep South, you may want to extend your swimming season anyway. They actually will warm the pool at the same time. So you get more usage out of the pool. So you notice, I'm not saying everybody's got to get rid of their pools.

00:37:01:19 - 00:37:22:28
Matt Power: I think these are this is the first step is that we can adjust some things with technology. Before we get to the measures where you say, okay, you shot the pool down because there's not enough water. Let's try to avoid that. Okay. Dom. Irrigation. Another water waster. So these are sprinklers I don't know if you can tell that are on during a rainstorm.

00:37:23:01 - 00:37:44:17
Matt Power: Part of the reason home sprinklers waste so much water is misuse. So people use them like in the in the heat of the day. And they you lose like up to 60% of the water they're shooting out is evaporated if you use them at the heat of the day. The wind actually, oddly enough, is pretty significant if it's if little breezy carries all the water away.

00:37:44:17 - 00:38:08:29
Matt Power: And also people water wrong. They water like, you know, twice a day for ten minutes or every day. Instead they may want, depending on the grass species, they might want a water for, you know, 40 minutes every other day. And that actually ends up being a more frugal way to use water. So and also these dumb systems don't have any awareness.

00:38:08:29 - 00:38:28:06
Matt Power: So when it does start raining they don't shut off. Right. If you even if you put them on a regular timer, they just keep going. Pretty easy fix here. There's there's companies like this is ratios. There's a couple different I think rain bird makes one now smart sprinkler systems. Right. So they had their linked up to a GPS.

00:38:28:06 - 00:38:51:15
Matt Power: And you tie them in with your irrigation and they shut the sprinklers off. If it's going to rain you can also tie them in with soil sensors. So they will actually tell you, you know, if the if the soil is getting dangerously dry, it will, you know, again supply the necessary water for it. Drip irrigation. I'm a big fan of of it as a technology.

00:38:51:21 - 00:39:13:26
Matt Power: Executing it is kind of a a mixed bag though. I mean, I'm I would advocate for it, but at the same time, what I've run into is unless it's done with sort of professional gear, you can run into a lot of problems with. For example, rodents and mice will eat through the lines and you can get a leak, have it.

00:39:13:26 - 00:39:53:18
Matt Power: Rather than try to DIY this, I would say, you know, pay somebody to come in and do this irrigation drip irrigation for you. And especially it's not drip irrigation isn't really for lawns. It's for trees, shrubs, plants. You know, it's a great solution for those. And if it's used for that, I think it's an excellent solution. Uses far less water than than sprinklers, however, and I wanted to get into this a little bit because because there are some negatives to all of this, all this good spirited effort to, you know, cut back on water use has had some unwanted and unpleasant side effects.

00:39:53:18 - 00:40:21:14
Matt Power: That is a copper pipe you're looking at and that is chlorine damage. So what's happened is because water sits longer in the pipes. So think about it. You know, you used to be you were flushing at 5.6 gallons per minute and water was just ripping through there every time somebody flushed. Now there's so little water moving through the house fixtures that it sits inside the copper pipes in your building.

00:40:21:16 - 00:40:45:25
Matt Power: The other thing that's happened is they have added other chemicals. Let me see if I have a oh no, that's not the one. Well, I will catch up with it in a minute. I think it's called chloramine. It's a it's a mix of chlorine and ammonia and it's a cleaner. Right. So it's used to clean the pipes out but it's a stronger it has a stronger chemical effect on copper.

00:40:45:25 - 00:41:08:25
Matt Power: It actually eats at the inside of the pipes, not just the joints. So there's a lot of negative sort of health aspects with this, but also the potential for catastrophic failure. So I'm going to get into a little bit, you know, there fortunately the plastic type pipes like the PACs, plumbing and CPC seem to be much more resistant to this.

00:41:08:26 - 00:41:37:18
Matt Power: They're there, specially the PACs I know, especially treated to resist chlorine and the CPC. I think just because of the way it's made has chlorine in it, so it tends to be naturally resistant. So these seem to hold up better than than the copper. So it's all is not lost. Except you may have to replace your plumbing if you've got a house with with super low flow fixtures on it and all plumb old plumber pipe old copper pipes rather.

00:41:37:21 - 00:42:03:21
Matt Power: Here's another sort of backlash effect. This actually happened to me. So I bought an older home while ago and and the had a bad leak spring. This was in the upstairs bathroom down in the kitchen. I ripped the ceiling out of the kitchen and and thought maybe the drain pipe had let go. What it turned out to be was the previous owner had put a low flow faucet head on the on to this old tub.

00:42:03:22 - 00:42:27:19
Matt Power: Now, what happens with these old plumbing joints? It's not that they can't handle the pressure necessarily, but there's a there's a hammer effect because they're used to just not having a lot of resistance. And they go right out. The water goes right out that shower head. But you cut that shower flow in half. And the water, when you pull up that little lever on your on your spout, it hammers into those pipes.

00:42:27:19 - 00:42:54:25
Matt Power: And you can see in the illustration the water actually shoots out the handles now. Right. So actually had to not only pull that spout out and, you know, re attach it with some Teflon, but also replace the low flow showerhead for now with faster flow because the old plumbing just just couldn't handle it. So, you know, sometimes you run into unexpected problems like this when you're when you're trying to do the right thing.

00:42:54:28 - 00:43:17:20
Matt Power: There's another aspect of this, some of the changes in the way that that we're managing water, that there's a lot of chemicals. And they think part of it might be because they're using more chlorine and stuff in the water, right. It's the municipal pipes as well as our home pipes are actually degrading and we have a lot more stuff in them.

00:43:17:20 - 00:43:53:19
Matt Power: So what this then leads you back to is reverse osmosis, right? So honestly, my recommendation would be until they really get a handle on this, there is no, you know, or unless you have the document right in front of you, I would not I wouldn't feel safe with the drinking water in many parts of the country. I would put a row filter on just for safety's sake, especially if you have young kids, because frankly, the data is has not been testing for PFAS, for example, not every place has been fully tested for lead homes.

00:43:53:21 - 00:44:14:17
Matt Power: Another aspect of homes in your home, you have different quality water in different rooms. So, you know the water might be perfectly fine in your kitchen after you turn the tap on for 10s, but you go take a drink of water out of your bathroom tap at night before you go to bed. You might be chugging a mouthful of lead from from the lead joints and your copper pipes.

00:44:14:17 - 00:44:31:29
Matt Power: It's been sitting all day long so not to terrorize you, but you know, it's just just good stuff to know. So what do we what else can we do? This is Las Vegas again. They pulled out all the green strips of their meridians, and they put art in there instead, which I thought was a kind of a cool solution.

00:44:32:00 - 00:44:52:22
Matt Power: I mean, not everyone likes the escaping look, but, you know, when in Rome you live like a Roman and and they're, they're doing Las Vegas is really showcasing how to make the most of small amounts of water. Let's talk a little bit, you know, Las Vegas. I remember when I used to go there used to be lawns everywhere, and I really don't see them much.

00:44:52:22 - 00:45:25:25
Matt Power: But I want to talk about lawns because once most people really, really don't want to give up their lawns. So I did some research just recently, a couple weeks ago about what lawns can serve, like how long can a lawn survive in extreme drought. And it really comes down to a couple of things. So, if you look at this chart, which comes from an old it's like the Bible of a lot of sort of landscape, you know, landscape architects and that sort of thing by James Beard, science and culture.

00:45:25:25 - 00:45:46:08
Matt Power: He's one of the only ones that sort of did an analysis of different kinds of grass. So if you look at this chart up at the top, those those four species are the most drought resistant. Now, you know. So so what that probably means if you get into this, some of the stuff down closer to the bottom, you're not going to last long.

00:45:46:10 - 00:46:07:22
Matt Power: You know, when when the city says, you know, you can only water once a week, you may be looking at, you know, a rapidly dying lawn. And what happens is, lawns reach a permanent or like all plants, reach a permanent wilting point. And when they reach that permanent wilting point, that's when the roots die. Now they can die back a bit, or they can.

00:46:07:23 - 00:46:25:12
Matt Power: They can brown up and go dormant. I shouldn't say die because they haven't died yet. But if that water gets to a certain level and it might not even be like, you know, 100% dry, that's called the permanent wilting point. And those plants will not recover, and they won't come back no matter what amount of water. And at that point, you really have no option.

00:46:25:12 - 00:46:47:12
Matt Power: You can't you simply can't have a lawn there. But here's the thing. Everybody still wants lawns, right? So the we it's funny, we we did a project with millennials last night last year. And I was really surprised to find that millennials want lawns even more than their parents. Okay. So millennials is a pretty big group now. I think they go all the way up to age 40.

00:46:47:14 - 00:47:09:06
Matt Power: So they're kind of the home buying group now. But they they'll give up everything else. But they don't want to give up a lawn. So you know, how do we how do we compromise. How do we find something some way around this so that they can still enjoy their yard and feel like they didn't have to make all sacrifices, and they don't hate us for being, you know, their parents.

00:47:09:08 - 00:47:27:20
Matt Power: Here's one idea. And I know some people will blanch at this is these, you know, sort of what they call they used to call astroturf right now. I was sort of had always been pretty negative about this stuff, and partly because the industry that makes all the astroturf for the football fields has done a good job with recycling them.

00:47:27:21 - 00:47:51:24
Matt Power: They've instead they've they've created, you know, millions of yards of this stuff and they don't have a good system for recycling them. This company I like, it's called Forever Lawn. I think it's DuPont owns at this point. But they use recycled materials in their backing layers. And the the top layer is the only one that's not recycled, I believe, although it's technically recyclable.

00:47:52:01 - 00:48:22:19
Matt Power: Now, I've played around with these a little bit, and this stuff looks and feels a lot more like real grass too. So my thought is, why can't you have a sort of a treat lawns instead of treating them as this vast carpet that covers your whole lot, your whole landscape? Why not treat them as sort of special boutique areas on your property, where you have a little area where you can get your feet in the grass, you can sit down, you can play with your kid or your grandkid.

00:48:22:22 - 00:48:43:13
Matt Power: And this synthetic grass has a lot going for it. I mean, it doesn't require, you know, water, it doesn't require pesticides or not require you don't use or be tempted to use pesticides, herbicides. I actually have a little piece at my house and it's about ten by ten. And what I do is every season I take, I pick it up and I bang it off.

00:48:43:13 - 00:49:00:17
Matt Power: I've used it for 3 or 4 years, it's still holding up, and I put it back down on some on some rubber pads and it's soft. Feels just like grass. It's great. So they're they're not one sponsors of this. I just like this company and I like this idea. You know, this is just some some thinking out of the box ideas for you.

00:49:00:17 - 00:49:29:18
Matt Power: This is another thing. I remembered this study. You know, some people will say, well, it's not real, I want real. Well, you know what? I have this expression I used to use, which is reality sex, because I was a filmmaker for quite a while, because they did this study of prisoners where they put paintings up of trees and forests and landscapes, and they found that the paintings and the pictures had the same impact as are almost the same impact as the real thing in terms of positive mental health.

00:49:29:20 - 00:50:00:02
Matt Power: Now, not I'm not advocating that we, you know, that we give up nature or anything like that. I'm just saying we could compromise a little bit, have some green space in our yards, use a lot less water and get sort of get what we want. Without necessarily, you know, sacrificing our future. Here's another thing I did. I think of this as sort of a positive thing is we don't need a lot of water in terms of potable water to drink.

00:50:00:03 - 00:50:20:19
Matt Power: Right? So a human being, some people say it's less. It's like, you know, eight cups. I see a whole bunch of different estimates we can live on, you know, certainly less than a gallon, maybe as little as eight cups of water a day. So there's a lot of angst about, you know, what we do about water now. Water affects so many other things.

00:50:20:19 - 00:50:44:29
Matt Power: Right. So you're saying that's an ultra simplification, right? It affects, you know, our food supply, our you know, everything. But we're not generally what's going to kill us is probably not dying of thirst okay. So that's an anxiety. You can take off the table. It's going to be all the ancillary things of, of, you know, lack of water for other things, right.

00:50:45:01 - 00:51:06:06
Matt Power: Can make life for example. That's the Great Salt Lake. And I don't know if you've heard, but it's, you know, the water's going down and down. And even though this isn't a little bit off, off topic with the fresh water, when that water goes, you know, one of the predictions is windstorms are going to sweep over that thing and lift all the arsenic dust and throw it all over Salt Lake City.

00:51:06:06 - 00:51:34:11
Matt Power: So again, it's the unexpected consequences that we conservation is is still worthwhile because we don't honestly know what's going to happen if if we essentially we may be fighting change by continuing business as usual. But change is going to come for us at that point. So I want to review some. So here's some just just basic strategies. Let's let's make sure everybody sort of got your the the notes on these.

00:51:34:13 - 00:51:59:00
Matt Power: And some things that we could do now or that we're already doing that we can crank down our water use even more. So the appliance upgrades. That's that's an obvious one. The reverse osmosis pressure system. Let's pressurize those I would upgrade if you if you're not many people have the old toilets, but you need to upgrade to a high efficiency one.

00:51:59:06 - 00:52:32:05
Matt Power: The shower is a more complicated one. But here's the thing. Showers get get what it called renovated on average every seven years. They're the most renovated part of a home. So if your shower, if you're looking at a shower and you get some mold in the grout, maybe it's time to do the overhaul. And while you're at it, put some new, you know, PEX plumbing in there or CPC and you get rid of that copper, make sure that plumbing is is up to snuff so that you can put a low flow showerhead in there.

00:52:32:05 - 00:52:59:13
Matt Power: So you'll end up with a with a net win in terms of water saving use, you know, get some of these new tools to detect leaks. The hot water one is is easy the upgrade plumbing supply. I realize this is a difficult because you know what? If you got a house and you got copper lines running all through it, and that is one of the things I like about packs is, you know, I use it a lot and I use it, I use that and you know, other I use CPC as well.

00:52:59:13 - 00:53:17:25
Matt Power: But PEX will wind through things. You can you can bend it quite a lot and it's fairly DIY friendly. And you can replace copper pipes actually a lot easier than you think. I mean, certainly you can get a plumber into do it, but some of the easy stuff you may be able to do yourself. And lastly, this is base stuff.

00:53:17:25 - 00:53:45:23
Matt Power: Cover the pool. Some other stuff though, behavior wise, if you only get your water bill every four months, which a lot of places do, apparently, people tend not to conserve unless they can see it like right in front of them. So I would say go even further and get some kind of a heads up metering system that tells you exactly how much water you even have it inside the house.

00:53:45:26 - 00:54:13:06
Matt Power: So on a daily basis, you can check it and see if you're hitting. Make it a game where you're hitting conservation targets. That's the heads up display that I was talking about. Rethink the lawn. You know, you can go zero zero escape, which is, you know, with native plants and you get rid of all the grass. I think you're going to get a lot of pushback from, especially from young people who are, you know, have dreams of the, the picket fence and the, you know, house in the suburbs.

00:54:13:09 - 00:54:33:03
Matt Power: But maybe we can mitigate that with some, you know, convincing them that, that some synthetics are the way to go. Although I do think we should keep the pressure on the synthetic grass companies, I think they can do better to I think they can recycle more and use more recycled content. So I think that's that should be a push pull.

00:54:33:06 - 00:54:52:21
Matt Power: Here's another more more to Cronin thing. You know, if you're you have teenagers at home or whatever. One thing I did on my house, I went from a 66 or 60 or 90 gallon hot water tank to a hybrid heat pump. Hot water, that's 40 gallons. I had a special order it from Rheem. So by doing that, I.

00:54:52:23 - 00:55:13:13
Matt Power: I reduced the tendency to take, you know, 30 minute showers because at some point you run out. I don't know, maybe some people think that's too extreme. But again, I told you I was going to have some radical ideas for you. Also, I really like this company, and there's not honestly, a lot of companies out there I would trust to do gray water.

00:55:13:13 - 00:55:34:18
Matt Power: These are they're not a sponsor of this, but we have work with them. In the past, a company called greater, they have a really cool the guy who runs it. So you know, it's a pretty small company, but they've really worked on the tech. So this thing has all kinds of systems for cleaning gray water. You know, one of the problems with gray water has been, you know, you don't want it to stink and you want to make sure it's safe.

00:55:34:19 - 00:55:53:20
Matt Power: Well, this thing, the water goes through it and it comes out, certainly, you know, at a at a high quality near they say near potable. So you could certainly use it even for, you know, plants and landscaping and toilets and other stuff. You know, they say, I don't know if they go as far as showers yet, but but yeah.

00:55:53:21 - 00:56:13:13
Matt Power: Anyway, it's it's probably the best gray water system I've seen. And I and I will I know I'll get some people yelling at me if I don't mention rainwater. I'm a fan of rainwater collection. And I haven't got into it a lot because I honestly, I think it's sort of obvious. And if you do it, you're already sort of a believer.

00:56:13:13 - 00:56:37:18
Matt Power: But one thing they have found that when people do have their own rainwater systems at home, it does help mitigate, like gives them a lot more resilience in drought times because they can sort of capture a reserve even if it sits there. It can be, you know, cleaned after the fact or chlorinated to, to make it safer, you know, for at least for most household uses, probably not.

00:56:37:19 - 00:56:59:01
Matt Power: Not to the point of portability, perhaps, but definitely it's worth looking. And you can collect a vast amount of rainwater in even in a drought period where there's maybe there's one rainstorm every three months. Depending on your roof size, you might pick up 1500 gallons of water. That's pretty substantial. I'll keep you going for a while, and I'm going to wrap it up there.

00:56:59:01 - 00:57:21:13
Matt Power: I think I'm blabbed on enough and hopefully give you some ideas and open it up for questions. And also, I'd invite if it's something that that I can't, that I don't know. Mike, like I said, is very involved with the code and water sense issues. So Mike, feel free if it's something I don't know. Maybe you can grab the question to.

00:57:21:15 - 00:57:34:24
Mike Collignon: Sure. I echo Matt's comment there about sending your questions now. Wanted to, I guess add a couple of things if I could. Matt.

00:57:34:27 - 00:58:08:04
Mike Collignon: I think you talked a little bit about the the small instant hot water system that you put in the eco smart. You know, there's a couple other technologies. If you've got an issue where you've got an existing house and long runs of plumbing, you don't want to redesign the plumbing system. One would be you could do a research system where it kind of just circulates hot water kind of around, and it shortens that structural waste time.

00:58:08:05 - 00:58:44:11
Mike Collignon: It reduces loss. That'd be more expensive than your eco smart. But then your instant hot water tanks like what you did. But it is an option. Then the other thing that came to mind was something called a TSV, which stands for a thermostatic shut off valve. So this is something that can be applied to a shower head. And all it does is just once the water reaches temperature, meaning warm or hot, it slows the flow of water down greatly.

00:58:44:13 - 00:59:07:25
Mike Collignon: And it's a fairly simple device that you can you can get integrated to a shower head. And what this does is at least what studies have found is that people who have showers where it's maybe the furthest fixture from the hot water heater, and it may take a minute or two for them to get hot water. They'll turn that water on.

00:59:07:25 - 00:59:27:29
Mike Collignon: And then instead of standing there and waiting for as soon as it gets hot, they will go do something else. Then maybe pick out their clothes for the day. They'll go make a cup of coffee. They'll go catch a segment on a morning TV show or who knows what, check their phone, and then all of a sudden, instead of, you know, being there when that hot water is ready at the 1 to 2 minute mark.

00:59:28:00 - 00:59:49:01
Mike Collignon: Now they're walking in at the five minute mark, right? So now I just move 3 to 4 minutes of water just going right out of that faucet. Whereas the TSV would slow that rate of flow way down. And it's also kind of this audio signal. Hey, wait a minute. I don't hear the water flowing as much. That's because it's ready.

00:59:49:03 - 01:00:11:28
Mike Collignon: So that's a really inexpensive device that you can you can go for. I wanted to get to also your question, Matt, about the pie chart you showed earlier. Yeah. In my opinion, it seemed that that pie chart was merely representing indoor water use, that there really wasn't an exterior water use component to that pie chart.

01:00:12:03 - 01:00:30:06
Matt Power: Yeah, that's that's probably right. That was but I, I wasn't sure why they because there's no pie chart specifically for home exterior. You know a dedicated strictly to home exterior sort of it sort of left out of the conversation.

01:00:30:08 - 01:00:49:20
Mike Collignon: Right. Yeah. And and it depends on where you are in the country as the percentage of what your water use. So if you're in a place that gets copious amounts of rain, like where I live here in the Midwest, well, I don't have an irrigation system at all, so I don't irrigate my lawn. Mother nature does it for me now.

01:00:49:24 - 01:01:25:09
Mike Collignon: My neighbor right next to me does have an irrigation system. I'm not really sure why, but they do, and I'm not sure what their percent water use would be versus indoor, but I'm guessing it's going to be south of 50%. However, if you live in a very arid place like the southwest, you may see a great a very high percentage of your water use going to exterior just to have whatever plant life you're going to have out there, whereas your interior use is going to be relatively minimal, especially with some of the newer technology that you hit on.

01:01:25:11 - 01:01:48:09
Mike Collignon: Right. And then I wanted to make a comment to on pools. So you talked about pool covers. So I had a very smart, smart guy that I know in the industry who said to me, he goes, you know, we did a study once of pool covers. And what we found is that if it's a manual pool cover, people don't use them.

01:01:48:17 - 01:01:50:21
Matt Power: I know.

01:01:50:24 - 01:02:09:14
Mike Collignon: They won't put them on. It's too much work or whatever it is. They don't take it on and off, on and off all the time. So they'll do it typically twice. They'll put it on at the end of the season, and then they'll take it off at the beginning of the season. Automated pool covers, though we're all going to do is push a button are used way more.

01:02:09:16 - 01:02:25:06
Mike Collignon: That's good. So those water utilities, after seeing that study, we're like, okay, if you get an automated pool cover, then we do think there's actually some, you know, conservation facet to that because you're reducing the amount of evaporation.

01:02:25:08 - 01:02:43:25
Matt Power: Right. And I think what you're going to run into, and this is always the problem with those, you know, behavior issues, is there's going to be a bottom dollar cost, right. There's going to be their where they're going to go. How much is this costing me and how much is my water bill. And unfortunately water bills don't reflect the scarcity of water sometimes.

01:02:43:25 - 01:03:04:21
Matt Power: Right. So the water bills are still pretty low. And they're like, well, I'll just I'll live with it. Right. And this is the what we're up against is if water is priced at a low rate, putting in an automatic pool cover is not going to essentially not going to happen except for people who are really, you know, devoted to water conservation, which is the small minority.

01:03:04:22 - 01:03:24:22
Matt Power: So, yes, I hear you. And that's, again, those behavioral things. Those are the hardest nuts to crack. I did want to mention one thing about your recirculating pump that you mentioned, with both the point of use tank and the recirculating pump, so you can have a little bit of extra electrical cost, right? Because both are going to run on electricity.

01:03:24:22 - 01:03:42:02
Matt Power: I think that the point of view thing is about 30, maybe like 30 bucks a year extra, right? So there is a cost to it. I suspect the recirculating pump might be a little less than that. Right. So but but again you I'd have to do I haven't done the research on that. But it's something for our audience.

01:03:42:05 - 01:03:49:17
Matt Power: I'd compare the cost to those because you're going to pay extra either way. For that little bit of electricity. So.

01:03:49:19 - 01:04:06:05
Mike Collignon: Correct. Correct. And one of the things to mention to Matt is that you mentioned rainwater, and that's an interesting topic because it depends on where you are as to how much you can collect. Right.

01:04:06:08 - 01:04:07:04
Matt Power: There's rural.

01:04:07:06 - 01:04:15:00
Mike Collignon: Was famous example. You get two rain barrels you know.

01:04:15:03 - 01:04:45:10
Mike Collignon: It's a water rights issue out west, but other places don't have quite that that kind of small restriction. Right. But the other thing to keep in mind is always pay attention to your local codes, because as appears as a resident of Illinois, I don't believe they've changed the plumbing state plumbing code yet to where you cannot bring water inside the house.

01:04:45:13 - 01:05:06:19
Mike Collignon: Doesn't matter how it's filtered or whatever water can I come into the house? So if you're collecting rainwater, that's fine. You got to use it out there. You got to keep it out there because it for car washing. Use it for whatever you want outside the envelope of the building. So yeah, always pay attention to those local codes.

01:05:06:26 - 01:05:17:01
Matt Power: Good to know. Good to know any other. Did you get any questions from anybody in the audience? Got anything you were thinking about during the talk or.

01:05:17:03 - 01:05:40:00
Mike Collignon: I don't have any questions from the audience. I think they're enjoying listening to us kind of chat about this stuff, and I think you hit on a lot of things that would certainly come to mind, and some additional things that people wouldn't have thought about. And that's the key, is that where is this going? Right. So we've seen and I think you've seen this too, Matt.

01:05:40:00 - 01:06:07:22
Mike Collignon: And some of the things that you read that we have some places where they had to put in brief, but still they had to put in moratoriums and say, hey, wait a minute. We're we're not sure about the water situation. We don't want to start your start. Continue to permit until we understand where we're at with water. And so that's that's the thing that you really want to try and avoid if you're in the building industry is a complete shutdown of building altogether.

01:06:07:22 - 01:06:35:26
Mike Collignon: So we talk about incentives. We talk about codes and regulations even further on. That spectrum is just shutting it down altogether. So right. Whether it's financial incentives or some kind of code of regulation, to me, those are the two paths that that our industry needs to get familiar with and start to embrace. Because I think if you if you just say, it's not a problem, it'll be fine.

01:06:35:28 - 01:06:45:10
Mike Collignon: You eventually get to the point where some bigger measure has to take place. And I think that's where you get really negative effects on all of us, right?

01:06:45:10 - 01:07:03:18
Matt Power: At the point when you're literally you open the tap and the waters off, there's no water. I think that's a panic. That's a panic moment. Right? That's when you get in your car with your water bottles and flee. And hopefully we never get there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:03:19 - 01:07:27:23
Mike Collignon: And the other thing I was going to say to Matt, you know, and this is again, we're talking way down the road. And I'm fortunate that I'm able to be one of the co-founders and co-producers of the Next Generation Water Summit. And that event, we look really ahead into the future to see, okay, what's what's coming down the road in a little while.

01:07:27:26 - 01:07:40:11
Mike Collignon: And one of the things that I think we're going to be talking about next year's event is this idea of Blackwater. I shouldn't say the idea of Blackwater. Blackwater exists.

01:07:40:13 - 01:07:47:09
Matt Power: But separating water, right. Separating. Were you going to say separating? Yeah. Yeah.

01:07:47:12 - 01:08:16:16
Mike Collignon: Right. Conjunctive water. So the separation of and I hope nobody's eating right now but the water in the urine. So you can separate that out and reuse the water. What else is interesting though about this is from what I'm learning already. And I will learn more in the year ahead. Then they take the nitrates in the nitrogen of it and use it as fertilizer.

01:08:16:17 - 01:08:41:01
Matt Power: Fertilizer. Yep, yep. That's a medieval. I mean, the medieval farmers used urine in many different ways for dying and for fertilizer. And so, I mean, another thing I did not touch on because I again, I found most people are not ready for that conversation, or composting toilets, for example, which very minimal, you know, water usage. And I know people who very happy with them.

01:08:41:01 - 01:09:09:11
Matt Power: I think they're very viable. But again, I don't think that the one thing I would like to see more use of, for example, is bidets. Bidets, not for direct usage, but, you know, every sheet of toilet paper requires two gallons of water to produce every little square. So, you know, by using a bidet, you cut actually cut overall water consumption, not so much in your home, right?

01:09:09:12 - 01:09:25:10
Matt Power: But on the big picture, you save vast amounts of water. So there's so many different directions like that. We could go, you know, and I that we could talk all day about stuff like that, but no one wants to hang out that long.

01:09:25:13 - 01:09:41:18
Mike Collignon: No, but I am glad you brought the topic of the day. I know you've talked about it before. You didn't today, but I knew you have in the past, and so it was good to drop that mention in their real quick, because it is an important and interesting stat, especially when you're looking at it from the larger macro level.

01:09:41:20 - 01:09:42:22
Matt Power: Yeah.

01:09:42:24 - 01:10:15:03
Mike Collignon: So here is one question that did come in here Matt. It's from Phil. He wanted to know if if we are working directly with water districts to implement some of these things. He's out in Colorado and and he's trying to figure out what is our recommendation on approaching water districts with some of these ideas. He's in the energy rating industry, and there seems to be more interest for some of these kind of solutions out in the West.

01:10:15:04 - 01:10:20:29
Mike Collignon: He's saying, so how do you go about approaching your local water utility or water district?

01:10:21:02 - 01:10:43:19
Matt Power: And, you know, I mean, honestly, you may have more expertise and we do deal. We work with utilities, for example, envy energy is, you know, one of the sponsors today. So we work quite frequently with utilities, utilities generally. You'd be surprised how on board they are, you know, if you come to them with a good idea and it's often it's just a phone call.

01:10:43:21 - 01:11:02:00
Matt Power: They're kind of I think they're literally sitting around going, what else can we do a lot? I won't say I, I'd say in the South that may not be true. I've dealt with Duke Energy and they're not they're sort of the opposite. But I'd say in the West you're going to people are going to be open to any ideas you have about water conservation.

01:11:02:00 - 01:11:27:00
Matt Power: There's, you know, a lot of rebate programs already in existence for everything from heat pumps to, you know, on the energy side, there's all this this gentleman's a energy raider. So he knows there's all these rebates. I think that the the water side water management districts should get involved in the rebate business more, for example, I don't think they're they've gotten as much as the energy side.

01:11:27:02 - 01:11:53:02
Matt Power: If you offered rebates on certain pieces of equipment, like, you know, maybe those little pumps that burst you anytime you buy an Ro filter, they, you know, they throw in one of those little pressure boosters, right? Or maybe they have a rebate program connected with, you know, swimming pool. They could know sort of the sky's the limit. They could come up with connections that would I think rebates talk because it's money.

01:11:53:03 - 01:12:12:00
Matt Power: Right. So so if the utility or the water management people were willing to get involved at that level, I think they'd find a willing audience. So I'd start there and talk about some ideas and say, hey, what do you guys think about, you know, this idea for a rebate or a, you know, a connection?

01:12:12:03 - 01:12:32:17
Mike Collignon: Yeah, it's Phil, it's a good question to ask because there are certainly some water utilities out there that are doing exemplary work. A couple that come to mind are San Antonio, San Antonio water system down in Texas, Denver Water, Southern Nevada Water authority.

01:12:32:18 - 01:12:38:14
Matt Power: Yeah. Yep. Water. Yep, yep.

01:12:38:16 - 01:12:59:18
Mike Collignon: There are also, though unfortunately a couple out there that what they do is they look at it and they say, hey, if I sell more water I make more revenues. And I want to I want to make more revenues, which is counter to conservation. And so it's getting it kind of depends on the water utility that you're talking to.

01:12:59:21 - 01:13:33:15
Mike Collignon: Sometimes it's more of a handholding effort than others, because if they have that mindset of all, I need to sell more water to make more revenues, it's a it's a bit of a challenge to, to make them kind of see that that's kind of counter to what's going on. And, and there are messaging ideas out there. I'm fortunate enough that I go to Water smart Innovations that the conference every year, and they've addressed this very topic multiple times because they recognize not everybody's on the same level as a Denver water, a Phoenix source.

01:13:33:17 - 01:13:34:16
Mike Collignon: And.

01:13:34:18 - 01:13:49:07
Matt Power: Mike, could people get access to like, recordings of that water conference? I bet that would be there might be some good stuff. There is. There is there a website or a place where they could get watch videos from that conference, that sort of thing?

01:13:49:09 - 01:14:12:15
Mike Collignon: Yeah. So Water Smart Innovations is the name of the conference. They have a wonderful website. The pandemic made them record and post webinars online. And during the pandemic, I think it was two years in a row, 2020, 2021. That was the only way you could see the sessions were online. It was free of charge. Anybody could check it out.

01:14:12:16 - 01:14:39:00
Mike Collignon: What's interesting about Water Smart Innovations is prior to the pandemic, it wasn't that they recorded it, but I'm a former presenter. At that event, your slides were available to download off their website, and they have an archive running archive of their entire conference, their entire history of their conference. So you can see at least the slides. You don't get the person talking, but you can see the slides.

01:14:39:01 - 01:14:57:09
Mike Collignon: But like I said, you do have some recordings from the past couple of years now. They have started resuming in person, and I don't think they're recording the ones in person and posting those anymore. But there is a body of work on their website that you can go back and look at and get some help with messaging, depending upon the water utility you're dealing with.

01:14:57:15 - 01:15:13:02
Matt Power: Yeah. That's great. I mean, it seems like some of those would be good stuff to say, hey, somebody else has done this in another city. Here's how they did it. You know, take that case study, present it to your water district and say, this was successful, you know, and throw your own ideas into. Yep.

01:15:13:05 - 01:15:23:05
Mike Collignon: That's right, that's right. So I don't see any other questions, Matt. So any final thoughts from you?

01:15:23:08 - 01:15:46:00
Matt Power: No, I thank everybody and thanks for hanging, those of you who hung in there with us. And I'm always accessible. Just if you something comes up and you a question you wish you asked, just email me Matt at Greenville Media com and check us out on the web. We, you know, do regular blogs and articles and videos and conferences and you name it.

01:15:46:04 - 01:15:51:14
Matt Power: So anyway, thanks everybody. Thank you Mike, and I'll see you next time.

01:15:51:17 - 01:16:14:27
Mike Collignon: Yep. And I want to make sure to say thank you to to our audience as well. And also to open and to Power Shift by NV energy and Beco as well for their generous sponsorships. Now, have you heard about the housing 2.0 program? If not, it's an educational program that empowers building professionals to design and construct higher performance, healthier, more sustainable homes at a fraction of the cost.

01:16:14:28 - 01:16:42:01
Mike Collignon: Now, if you have heard of it or you're intrigued by what I just said, you can register for the third workshop series. That's six part series will begin on Thursday, November the 3rd at 12 p.m. Eastern Time, and it will run for just about six weeks in a row. We'll skip over Thanksgiving, of course, but if you want to find out all the information on the program, simply go to Green Builder Media.

01:16:42:03 - 01:16:46:11
Mike Collignon: Dash two.

01:16:46:14 - 01:16:51:06
Mike Collignon: All right. Until next time, stay safe out there and take care, everyone. So long.