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Domestic and Commercial Use of Water
Domestic and Commercial Use of Water
Domestic and Commercial Use of Water
purposes— all the things you do at home: drinking, preparing food, bathing,
washing clothes and dishes, brushing your teeth, watering the garden, and
even washing the dog.
Domestic water use (also called residential use, household use, or tap water
use) includes all indoor and outdoor uses of drinking quality water at single-
family and multifamily dwellings. These uses include a number of
defined purposes (or water end uses) such as flushing toilets,
washing clothes and dishes, showering and bathing, drinking, food
preparation, watering lawns and gardens, and maintaining
swimming pools.
Indoor water use includes water flows through fixtures and appliances inside the
house. The average daily indoor water use per household (averaging 2.65 people in
the North American sample) ranged from zero to 644 gphd (gallons per household
per day) and averaged 138 gphd, with standard deviation of about 80 gphd (or 521
liters per day and standard deviation of 300 liters).
Because the distribution of indoor use in the sample of homes is positively skewed, a
more appropriate measure of central tendency is the median, which is about 125
gphd (or 472 lphd)
Toilet flushing is the largest indoor use of water, followed by flows through kitchen
and bathroom faucets, showers, clothes washers, leaks, bathtubs,
other/miscellaneous uses, and dishwashers.
Here are some of the example od
indoor use and end uses of water:
Toilet Flushing
Showering
Baths
Clothes Washing
Indor Leaks
Dish Wasing
Commercial water use is also defined as water for motels, hotels, restaurants, office
buildings, other commercial facilities, military and nonmilitary institutions, and off stream
fish hatcheries. Water may be obtained from a public-supply system or may be self-
supplied.
Office Buildings
Approximately nine percent of the total water use in commercial and institutional
facilities in the U.S. takes place in office buildings. The three largest uses of water in office
buildings are restrooms, heating and cooling, and landscaping.
To save water in your office building, you can:
Develop a water management plan.
Assess your water use to identify opportunities
for savings and track results.
Check regularly for leaks and, when found,
repair them promptly.
Replace bathroom fixtures with more efficient
models and check automatic sensors to ensure
they are operating properly to avoid
unnecessary water use.
Use water smart landscaping and irrigation
practices.
Optimize your cooling systems and determine if
they can provide or use alternative onsite
sources of water.
Hospitals
Approximately seven percent of the total water use in commercial and institutional
facilities in the U.S. takes place in hospitals and other health care facilities. The largest uses
of water in hospitals are cooling equipment, plumbing fixtures, landscaping, and medical
process rinses.
To save water in your hospital, you can:
Develop a water management plan.