How To Calculate Water Usage In Your Home

According to YourHome, Australians are the greatest per capita consumers of water. Each person uses an average of 100,000 litres of water per year, which works out to 274 litres per day. If you take this information and apply it to an average Australian family household of two adults and two children, that works out to more than 30,000 litres each month.

If you are interested in calculating your own domestic water usage, Tank Shop provides a helpful online water usage calculator that you can use. While you can also look over your water utilities bills to find out how much water your household consumes, calculating how much water is used by appliances and comes out your taps will help you become more water wise.

Indoor Water Usage

Main areas water is consumed inside your home is in the shower/bath, dishwashing, laundry and toilet flushing. Our online calculator uses the following water usage estimates:

• Shower: 10L per minute (1 person = 80 litres per shower)
• Bath: 150L per tub fill
• Dishwasher: 30L per load
• Front Load Washing Machine: 80L per load
• Top Load Washing Machine: 100L per load
• Brushing Teeth (tap running): 5L per minute (1 person = 10 litres)
• Drinking/Cleaning/Cooking: 10L per day per person
• Hand Basin: 5L per use (approximately 1 minute)
• Toilet Flush (single): 6L per flush
• Toilet Flush (half): 3L per flush

Outside Water Usage

Water is used outside to keep gardens flourishing, topping up swimming pools, watering hard surfaces and car washing. Outdoor water use differs home to home based, however you can calculate your outdoor water usage with the following estimates.

• Garden watering (hose): 15L per minute
• Drip System: 6L/hour
• Car Wash: 200L per wash
• Hosing Hard Surfaces: 15L per minute
• Swimming Pool Water Loss: Surface Area * .125 * 100 (assumes 12.5cm water loss per day)

I hope this article has assisted you to better understand where water in your home is used and how much. With such knowledge you will be able to decide where you could be more water efficient, as well as knowing which rainwater tank size best suits your needs if installing one.