Wednesday, August 11, 2010

H is for Home Improvements

Of course I mean green home improvements!  Over the last few months we've been doing some green home improvement projects that are helping us reduce our carbon footprint and save money in the process. One of our favorites comes in the form of a fluuuuuuusshhhh :) 

As Ed Begley, Jr. likes to say, we've been "picking the low lying fruit" and doing simple things that don't cost a lot of money, but in the end are better for the planet and our pocketbook.  Since we began our green journey, we've taken the following home improvement babysteps.  We started with:

Our most recent home improvement project that hubby embraced, researched, and installed (I'm soooo lucky to have such a wonderful, handy, guy who is supportive of the green babysteps we've been taking), is a dual-flush system for the toilet!  When he first tried to find it locally he couldn't and when we were on the road recently he found it at Home Depot in NJ (they told him they'd just started carrying it).  It's called HydroRight Smarter Flush Technology by MJSI, Inc.  This system replaces the regular flusher mechanism inside the tank and the outside flusher as well.  The upper button is to "flush liquids and paper with less water", errr or #1, and the lower button is to "flush with more power", err or for #2.  The HydroRight claims it will saves up to 15,000 gallons after one year ("the equivalent of stacking water bottles 45 miles high"....yikes they used disposable water bottles as their example...heaven forbid!) and result in savings of about $100 in water/sewer costs each year.   At $24.98 per dual-flusher, we plan to install two more for even more savings, because with a family of 6 our septic gets a workout and we'd love to trim our water bill even more.   http://www.gomjsi.com/dual-flush-hydroright/?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=us&utm_term=hydroright%2Bdual%20flush%20converter&utm_campaign=hydrorightdualflush&gclid=CIvU4rXOsaMCFRafnAodkDLuVA

Stay tuned to find out what our next green home improvement project will be! 

2 comments:

  1. I have installed a HydroRight dual flush kit and it works great. It's neat to see and hear only a half flush. I looked on the MJSI website and found this article: http://www.gomjsi.com/news/article/new_study_shows_a_simple_solution_pays_big_for_water_conservation
    This is a great reason to covert to dual flush! Thanks MJSI!

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  2. Thanks for your comment Andy. I wanted to give a quick update. We've now installed HydroRight dual flushes on all 3 toilets, and we are very happy with them. The kids and their friends have had no issues with using them, and we're hoping to start a new trend of water conservation. I'm excited to see how it will impact our water bill in conjunction with the low flow shower heads, and the rain barrel (I is for irrigation)

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