Paul Consalvo; Amy Carmellini; Nikki Quinney; Travis Whitfield; Caleb Buahin, Utah State University
As urban populations throughout the world continue to grow, a deeper understanding of water use behavior and the performance of water- saving fixtures is needed to plan for future water demand and ensure adequate provision of safe and clean water. Many residential water use studies have been conducted, but fewer studies have focused on identifying patterns of water use for specific socio-demographic groups or for specific water end uses (e.g., toilets, showers, etc.). Our current understanding of the water saving potential of fixtures that require voluntary action to decrease water usage such as dual-flush toilets is limited. Most current methods of metering water usage are focused on providing information for billing purposes and typically involve infrequent measurements (e.g., monthly) that cannot support inference of the timing of water usage patterns, identification of specific end uses, and potential opportunities for water conservation. It is also difficult to identify demographically and structurally homogeneous study areas for which data can be collected to characterize the water use of specific groups given that most residential areas or multi-family residential buildings house diverse populations within and may contain similar water-saving mechanisms between buildings. In this study, we quantified differences in toilet usage and its associated water consumption between men and women and between buildings both equipped and unequipped with dual-flush toilets by collecting high frequency water use data. Data were collected within two residential buildings segregated by gender and in two buildings similar in structure and appliances but differing in possessing dual-flush toilets versus single-volume, flushometer toilets. We used simple disaggregation methods to determine differences in the volume and timing of toilet usage by gender, volume of water consumed by both normal toilets and dual-flush toilets, and the proportion of low-flushes to high flushes before and after the residents of the buildings were exposed to an informational campaign tailored to conserving water. These results provide a greater understanding of water demand through toilet usage by gender, identified structural changes that could be made to conserve water, and may assist water managers in more accurately projecting future water needs.