Colorado’s snowpack is sitting at 38% to 55% of normal right now. The South Platte and Colorado Headwaters basins are at record lows for this time of year. Spring showed up more than a month early, and a lot of that snowpack melted or evaporated before it ever had a chance to do what it’s supposed to do — carry us through summer.
Arvada officially declared a drought on March 25 and moved to Stage 1 mandatory restrictions with Denver Water. Here’s what that means right now for your home:
Watering outside your assigned days or hours is a violation. First offense is a warning. Second is $250. Third is $500. — Denver Water
The full details are at arvadaco.gov/1499/Water-Restrictions and denverwater.org.
We’ve been doing service calls in this neighborhood for over a decade. This is one of the drier starts to a year we can remember. And what I keep thinking about is how much water is quietly leaving homes every single day — not from sprinklers, not from washing cars, but from the plumbing inside. Little things. Things that are easy to fix and easy to overlook.
Here are five of them. Plus one that almost nobody catches until we show up and point it out.
The answer depends on how far your water heater is from your bathroom. In a lot of Arvada homes — especially the ranches and two-stories where the utility room is on the opposite end of the house from the master bath — you’re waiting a minute or more. During that entire wait, cold water is running straight down the drain. Every morning. Every shower. Every time someone washes their hands at the far sink.
A hot water recirculation pump keeps warm water circulating through your pipes so it’s ready the moment you turn the handle.
Homes that install a recirculation pump save somewhere between 3,000 and 12,000 gallons a year.
Worth knowing: the pump does cause your water heater to cycle a little more often to keep that loop warm, which can bump your energy bill slightly. On-demand models — which only run when triggered by a sensor or a timer — are the most efficient version of this and worth asking about. If you’re also thinking about a tankless water heater, the two work especially well together — a tankless heats water on demand and a recirculation pump makes sure it arrives instantly. Some of the most common tankless water heaters even have built in recirculating capabilities. We wrote about the full tank vs. tankless decision in Tank vs. Tankless: The Boiling Point of Your Water Heater Dilemma if you want to dig into it.
We install recirculation pumps regularly. Most homeowners say the same thing after: can’t believe I waited this long.
Read more: Why Do I Wait So Long for Hot Water?
Showerheads from the 1980s and early 90s flow at 3.5 to 5.0 gallons per minute. The federal standard eventually came down to 2.5 GPM. Today’s WaterSense-certified showerheads run at 1.8 GPM or lower — and they feel completely normal. Good pressure, good flow, just less waste.
Here’s how that math plays out for a typical Arvada household:
One of the cheapest upgrades in the house. One of the highest-impact. We handle showerhead and fixture upgrades regularly — you can see the full list of what we replace at our fixture replacements page.
A toilet from 1962 uses somewhere between 3 and 4 gallons per flush. Federal law didn’t mandate anything lower than 1.6 GPF until 1994 — so if your home was built in the 50s, 60s, 70s, or even the 80s and the toilets haven’t been replaced, you might be flushing five times the water you need to every single time.
Today’s high-efficiency toilets use 1.28 gallons per flush — up to 75% less than a toilet installed before 1994.
They’re engineered to outperform those old high-volume models. And the math on the savings is not small — multiply 2 or 3 gallons against every flush across every bathroom in the house, every day of the year, and you’re talking thousands of gallons of clean water going down the drain for no reason.
Toilet replacement is about a two-hour job. If you’ve got an older home and you haven’t thought about this, now’s the time. Take a look at our fixture replacement services to see what’s involved.
That quiet refill you hear every hour or so — sometimes in the middle of the night — is called a phantom flush. What’s happening is that water is slowly leaking out of the tank through a worn flapper, the rubber seal at the bottom of the tank that controls flow into the bowl. When enough water escapes, the fill valve kicks on to top the tank back off. You hear it for a few seconds. Then it stops. And it happens again an hour later.
This is the number one cause of unexplained high water bills. The loss is quiet enough that you never see the water moving, and yet it’s running around the clock.
Here’s how to check right now without calling anyone:
Do this in every bathroom. A new flapper costs a few dollars and takes about 15 minutes to replace. It’s worth checking tonight.
One drip per second. That’s all it takes to lose more than 3,000 gallons a year — enough water for over 180 showers. And that’s not a dramatic leak. That’s the faucet you’ve walked past so many times you stopped hearing it.
One drip per second wastes more than 3,000 gallons a year. That’s enough water for 180 showers. — EPA WaterSense
Outdoor hose bibbs are the ones that go the longest without anyone noticing. A slow drip on the side of the house can run through an entire summer while the yard gets watered and the car gets washed and nobody thinks to check the spigot.
Walk through your home this weekend:
If something is dripping, it’s worth getting it looked at. We handle everything from a simple faucet drip to hidden pipe leaks — our leak repair and repipe page covers what we look for and how we fix it. And if you want to know more about what a hidden pipe leak actually looks like inside a wall or ceiling, this post walks through it in plain language.
It’s called an aerator. It’s the small mesh insert that threads onto the tip of your faucet spout, and it controls exactly how much water comes out every time you turn the handle. Most older faucets flow at 2.2 gallons per minute or more. A new aerator brings that down to 1.0 or 1.5 GPM — and you won’t feel the difference at the sink.
They cost a few dollars each at any hardware store and take about five minutes to swap out yourself. If you’ve got four or five faucets in the house running at 2.2 GPM and you swap them all to 1.0 GPM, you’re cutting that flow in half at every sink, every time someone washes their hands or rinses a dish — all day, every day, all summer.
It’s probably the most overlooked water-saving upgrade in any home. We replace them as part of our fixture service calls all the time, and most homeowners had no idea they were even replaceable.
This summer is going to be a real test for Colorado water. None of what’s on this list is expensive or complicated. Most of it pays for itself fast. If you’ve got questions or want someone to take a look, give us a call — doesn’t cost anything, and we’re always glad to help a neighbor.
Pipecraft Plumbing — Arvada | Master Plumber MP.00600362
📞 (303) 478-3829 | PipecraftPlumbingHelp.com
