How much water does a leaky faucet REALLY waste?

Yesterday was one of those fix-up-the-house days in my basement. It started with the kitty litter, and ended up with the hot-water-heater. I live in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, and here we get our water from a well. Well water is very hard (full of sediments, especially iron), so I decided to purge the hot water tank, as recommended annually by the sticker.

I turned off the gas, and opened up the hot water tap in the laundry sink beside, for 15 minutes. WOW! So much sediment. I actually left it running and went to do some other things. When I was done, I also used the built in purge valve at the side of the tank, and got the last remaining “brown-water” out. Finally, done!

I shut off the hot water tap in the laundry sink, and that’s when I noticed it. A drip. A slow, seemingly innocuos drip. This had actually stained my laundry sink. I guess the tap needs fixing. I never noticed it before, probably rationailising it by my use of the sink. I mean, who passes by and notices that kind of a thing in an unfinished basement?

This got me thinking… how many drips? I watched it. I watched it for 1 minute. 50 drips in 1 minute. Ordinarily, not concerned, but because it’s hot water, I’m probably wasting energy to heat it. Obviously, a case for real world numbers.

According to various sites, a leaky faucet can waste anywhere from 38 gallons per year to a volume greater than the Pacific Ocean. Here’s what various sites say about it:

http://www.chnep.org/MoreInfo/water_conservation_facts.htm

Leaky faucet (fast drip): 20–30 gallons per day
Leaky faucet (slow drip): 5–10 gallons per day

What? 75 – 115 litres per day for a fast drip, and 20 – 40 litres per day for a slow one? This I’ve gotta check out.

The US Government has a website with a built in calculator.

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/sc4.html

It estimates that 86,400 drops is 28 litres. This means, 1 drop is equal to 0.32407 mL. Problem is, I also found these web sites:

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070830165114AAEDkwC

http://forum.onlineconversion.com/showthread.php?t=618

Apparently, one drop of water is called a “minum”. Never mind viscosity, pressure, temperature, it turns out that 20 “minums” equals 1 mL.

So, for my situation we are left with
50 drops/minute
= 72,000 drops/day
= 3600 mL/day
= 3.6L/day
= 108 L / month

My current rate for water at home is $5.027 per 100 cubic feet. In workable terms this is $5 bucks for 2 831 litres. This means that my leak is costing me 19 cents per month.

19 cents per month.
= $2.28 per year.

So, yah! It is totally worth it to fix that tap. I’ll do it in the next few days and feel good. After purchasing a $0.30 cent rubber o-ring, the savings should start rolling in!