Toilets (made before 1993) waste water, due to their overlarge cisterns that empty every flush. Install a Hippo or Save-a-Flush to reduce the amount of water they hold. You can even place a brick inside and Eureka! as famous water-saver Archimedes would say, you use less water to flush the loo.
I've never heard of a Hippo here in the U.S., but I did put in a dual-flush toilet. 0.8 gallons per flush or 1.6 gallons per flush. The light flush handles all but the most robust and portly turds.
My dad handed me an envelope with 4 hippos in it a few months back. Since then we've bought a new house with 4 toilets no less. So I'll be installing them soon.
Don't use a brick! They break down over time and can really damage your plumbing. A filled water bottle works great!
Went with the bottle filled with water, haven't had any problems :)
We bought two Hippos before realising our cisterns are relatively new (post 1993) and too small for hippos!!
We dont have a hippo but we do have the yellow mellow, brown, flush down theory in our house. We also have a hot water tap in our kitchen so far away from the boiler that we run a considerable amount of water before we get anything near warm, so we always have a bucket and/or watering can and fill it to top the water butt up. We have reduced our water bill from £69 a month (statutory) to £13.90 (metered) We have dishwasher and washing machine but no outside tap and we all take showers. I'm very chuffed with this saving financially and the fact that we are reducing the water we use.
I don't think many water companies in the US offer Hippo's. In fact, this is the first I've ever heard of them. However there is a big sort of movement going on in the village where we live (and elsewhere in the US) to replace your old toilets with low flow or double flush toilets.
Thames Water give Hippos away for free to Thames Water customers.
Call 0845 9200 800 for a free Hippo!
Ours is on it's way!
We (me and my two housies) live by the adage "if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down". Harder to do if you live with other people, you need to make more of an effort to stop the porcelein throne getting into a bit of a state, but this policy will seriously save on water.
another system that works very good!
http://ecoshop.ie/proddetail.asp?prod=0505312018
check it out!
I haven't got around to picking one up yet...but I will very soon...I'm having a terrible problem where the toilets keep leaking water...had it fixed a few times but it's recurring again and again! hate to waste water!!!!
I've got a Hippo at home -- works really well for me. I've shot a short video of it here:
http://www.smartplanet.com/news/household/10001276/video-how-to-save-water-in-your-toilet.htm
I also tried what busybee suggested but the problem was the water bottle kept rolling under the regulator flap so the toilet kept running and running....
Think i need a real hippo.
I've adjusted my toilet flush to a level of water which is enough to do it's job (i.e. rule out re-flushing) while using the minimum amount of water. All toilets have some kind of mechanism to allow you to adjust the amount of water they use, you just have to workout how it works.
All a hippo would do for me is reduce the water flow and increase the re-flush rate!
i couldn't afford so i've done what busybee said works get for me
Installed a urine separating dual flush low consumption toiled three years ago. Works fine. I use the urine for the garden.
Living in NYC in a pre-war building, most toilets use flushometers, that is, there's no tank into which you can add a hippo.
Each year, about a month into our humid summers, I would give up on my alternate-flush pattern due to the stink.
During recent renovation on my bathroom I selected a Sterling Dual Force Low Consumption toilet and am very happy with it. Both my contractor and plumber have since purchased the same unit for their homes.
Looks like a regular toilet, but for the double button flush (see attached photo).
The drainage in our old flat was really really old and, lets say not particularly good at its job. Of course, we didn't find this out until we installed a hippo, when the decreased flow of water down the U-bend started to cause problems further along the pipe as it wasn't flushing through enough. Lovely!
Anyway - a word of caution here. Hippos aren't for everyone.
A cheap and cheerful alternative to this is to fill a liter plastic bottle with sand or water and pop it in.
