Residential water use in the U.S. and Canada
Open-knowledge reference entry
Residential water use (also called domestic 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. Some of these end uses are detectable (and measurable) while others are more difficult to gauge.
Water use measurement
The approximate average quantities of water applied toward specific purposes have to be estimated because only total use of residential customers is metered and recorded for time periods of one month or longer (although the AMR and advance metering infrastructure (AMI) technologies allow for more frequent readings). In the United States, a nationwide compilation of these metered quantities by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) shows average domestic water deliveries (for both indoor and outdoor purposes) by public water suppliers to single-family and multifamily dwellings were about 89 U.S. gallons (340 liters) per person per day in 2010 and 83 U.S. gallons (310 liters) in 2015. Since early 1980s, the increasing public interest in water conservation prompted questions about consumers’ water-using behaviors and measurement of average quantities of water applied to each domestic purpose. In mid-1990s, the first national study of residential end uses of water was conducted in the U.S. acquiring high resolution data directly from the customer's water meter and analyzing flow traces to assign each measured water-using event to a specific end use. Several detailed studies of domestic end uses of water in North America and elsewhere followed. In 2016, an update study of residential end uses of water, sponsored by the Water Research Foundation (WRF) was completed and is the most current source of data on the various purposes of residential water use described here.
Indoor use and end uses
Indoor water use includes water flows through fixtures and appliances inside the house.
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