FREE WATER-LEAK AUDITS

"It's a no-brainer," says Steve Greenbaum, director of property management for Mark Greenberg Real Estate, managing agent for the 1,200-unit Clinton Hill complex. The program, sponsored by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is the eight-year-old Residential Water Survey.

Uriel "Rick" Gunthorpe, project manager at the DEP, explains how it works: You contact the department to arrange a water-leak survey, which the DEP schedules generally within two weeks. Technicians from Honeywell, the company the city hires to conduct them, arrives at your building, where they're met by superintendent and/or someone from your management company. The techs evaluate common-area water usage (laundry, gym, boiler) and water use by commercial tenants. When it comes to individual units, the techs must be able to access at least 70 percent of the apartments, where they examine toilets, shower heads and faucets.

Between 50 and 70 percent of water use in a household comes from the bathroom. The number-water water hog: the toilet. Old toilets can use between 3.5 and 7 gallons of water per flush, whereas new toilets, Gunthorpe says, are required to use only 1.6 gallons. But the big problem comes from leaks, which can exist even if you don't hear the toilet running constantly. Leaking toilets can waste a stunning amount, from 10 to 2,000 gallons per day.

To see if a toilet is leaking, technicians drop a pellet of food-grade dye into the tank and let it dissolve. If any of the colored water leaks into the bowl before the toilet is flushed, there's a leak.

"Bowl-ing" for Dollars

Often, the culprit is a part called the "flapper," which seals the hole between the tank and the bowl and, if faulty, lets water seep into the bowl. As the tank gets lower, more water is added, leading to extra water being used, even though the toilet has not been flushed.

If you have a flushometer, which is essentially a tank-less toilet with a handled pipe connected to the building's plumbing, technicians use a gel inside the bowl. If the gel streaks, they know the toilet has a leak.

Shower and faucet heads are also often inefficient, Gunthorpe says. A wasteful shower head can use about 2.5 gallons per minute; a bad faucet can use 2 to 3 gallons per minute.

Liquid Accounts

After the water audit, the building gets a detailed report of how much water is being wasted, and which units have the problems. In the case of Clinton Hill, it turned out that only a small number of units had problems that were causing the leaks. In some cases, a leaky toilet in just one unit cost the complex about 401,000 gallons of water annually (or $2,100). A substandard faucet in another unit caused 3,650 gallons of wasted water, for a yearly price tag of $3,650.

In addition to the money that could be saved, many buildings would also see savings from fuel wasted to unnecessarily heat water. At Clinton Hill, the fuel savings came to an estimated $5,158.

"I was shocked when I got the report," says Mark Schwartz, president of New York Water Management, a company that works with co-ops and condos to lower water bills. More shocking than how much water is wasted is how little it takes to fix the problem, he says. "The scariest part is that a leak that costs $2,000 can take seconds to fix and it can cost only pennies."

 Next: Free DIY kits for individual residents >>