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Hi everyone! I am Eric Rochow and this is real world green. The other day I got a phone call from my father-in-law. I mean actually, I get a phone call from him every weekend and you know it is a nice phone call. It is the father-in-law, son-in-law phone call and we talk about polite things, like the weather and his golf game and veritably it comes around to Gardenfork and real world green and he usually has what I call a constructive comment to make about something. And you know I take all and strive.

So the last phone call he says, you know, Eric, I get an idea for your real world green show. And I am like, okay, you know, well let us hear then, I am like being polite. And he says, I got my water bill the other day. And my water bill was really high. And so he says, you know, he is wondering what it was that make this water bill so high. So he goes walking around the house and he finally figures out that one of the toilets in their bathroom was leaking. And so the water is leaking, it just runs and runs and it jacks up your water bill. He said I thought that be a good idea for a show for real world green. And believe it or not he is right.

Toilets do leak and you may not even know that your toilet is leaking. You can raise hundreds maybe even thousands of gallons in a day or a week or a month because your toilet just slowly leaking water through down into the drain you are just wasting all this water. So your next question is how do I find out if my toilet is leaking and it is really quite simple to do. You go to the grocery store and you buy yourself with some food coloring. Buy yourself some food coloring.

You take your food coloring; I would like to use green because it is real world green. You take your food coloring and go to the toilet and lift the top of the tank of the toilet. The tank is the part of the toilet just kind of tall and stands up and it is against the wall of the bathroom. You lift up the tank of the toilet instead of the side and then take your food coloring and drip some drops of food coloring into the tank of the toilet.

Then, you just walk away for a while. You can walk away for a couple of minutes and it might take a couple a couple of hours. After you have left the toilet alone for a while, lift up the lid of the toilet bowl and look in. If you see some of the food coloring in the bowl of the toilet, you have a leak. If your toilet is leaking, it is more than likely the flapper valve that is the culprit.

Know what brand of toilet you have. Go to your local hardware store and buy one of this. This is a flapper valve replacement. This one is universal flapper, it fits most toilets made. This is really simple to replace, you can do it. Just turn off the valve that is at the bottom of tank so no water does not come in, flash the toilet once so all the water drains out. Take the old flapper off, note where it is, put the new flapper on, turn the water valve back on and you have more than likely fix the problem.

The flapper valve is one of the easiest things in the world to replace. If I can do it, you can do it. If it is not your flapper valve that is leaking and you notice that the water in the toilet tank is full and it is like over flowing into the overflow pipe which in the tank their, it is more than likely your fill valve that has to replace. So again, note what brand of the toilet you have, go down to the hardware store and buy one of these. This is a replacement filler valve.

And again, turn off the valve of the bottom of the tank, follow these really simple instructions here and replace this. You probably need a pair of pliers to do these but again it is really simple, you can do this and you are saving water.

If you are leaving in older home, you can replace your older toilets with these new low flow toilets. Low flow toilets usually use 1.6 gallons of water per flush. This older toilets some of them use 6 or 7 gallons, I have seen some really big old ones that use like 12 or 13 gallons and that is a significant difference. When low flow toilets first came out they have kind of a bad wrapped. Years ago, the first one they did not work very well the new ones, they work just fine. We just bought one for our house here and you would not know it is a low flow it just flushes, flushes and it works. It cannot get any simple than that.

All right so, that is a little bit about how to save water around the house. Go buy some food coloring and if you have a leak replace the flapper valve if it need to be, replace the fill valve. It is really simple you can do it, you might need a pair of pliers but that is about it, just make sure you turn off the water before you do it.

David, thank you very much for the idea for the show, I look forward to our constructive phone call. Visit our website, realworldgreen.com. Send us emails, tell what you think, tell us about some show ideas you might have and please tell your friends about the show, all right? I will see you later. Thank you very much.

Hi everyone! I am Eric Rochow and this is real world green. The other day I got a phone call from my father-in-law. I mean actually, I get a phone call from him every weekend and you know it is a nice phone call. It is the father-in-law, son-in-law phone... click to read more