For those of you who haven’t heard, people in the Boston area have been told to boil their tap water for a minute before drinking or cooking with it, because of a burst pipe leading from the reservoir. It’s certainly a bizarre situation for an urban area like this to be without potable water for [...]

Ironically, we converted our toilet to dual-flush before we switched to a low-flow showerhead. Changing showerheads is one of the easiest things people can do to save water and energy. According to the EPA, showers represent 17% of indoor water use. And it’s heated water, too.

We finally washed our car this weekend. After three trips to Maine in a month, it really needed it. I’m happy to report that, much like with dishes, the most environmentally friendly way to wash is also the laziest.

No, we didn’t get a new toilet. We converted our old one with a One2flush kit. Turning the handle one way makes a half flush and turning it the other makes a full flush. And it’s easy to increase or decrease the water levels of both of them if necessary by adjusting the settings on the flapper.

The results are in: our water’s fine. And since it tastes fine, too, no filter’s necessary. Lead: Negative Bacteria: Negative Pesticides: Negative Nitrates: .5 ppm (very low) Nitrites: 0 ppm pH: 10 (very high) Hardness: 120 ppm (very high) Chlorine: 2 ppm (low) We used a Watersafe kit to test it. In addition to the [...]