How Much Water Does a Tiny House Actually Use?

For this post we are going to take a deeper look into our Tiny House Water Usage. When we moved into our Tiny House In December 2014 we brought our old habits with us. Not to say these habits were bad but we were already adapting to living in a smaller space. we realized then we needed to make this drastic downsizing something sustainable so we can live in comfort and go about our daily lives as we would in a larger house.  One thing we noticed was even though our habits are still the same our energy and utility usage has dropped drastically. We are now more aware of what we are using and by using more efficient appliances and fixtures our energy usage and dependence has dropped significantly.

Appliances And How They Affect Our Tiny House Water Usage

Let us take a look at what we have on our tiny house that uses water. First we have our Kitchen Sink with Double Basins. We use this the most for cooking, washing dishes, filling up our Brita water filter etc

Kitchen Sink

Next we our smaller Bathroom Sink from IKEA. During the design phase we knew we needed to have a separate sink in the bathroom and we are glad we stuck with that. It makes it so much more convenient to have a separate sink with two people living in the tiny house for bathroom duties.

Bathroom Sink

Adjacent to our Bathroom sink we have our shower. With a On Demand Water Heater we can take as long of showers as we want with unlimited hot water (especially awesome in the winter).

Corner Shower

Across from the shower and sink we have our Lg Ventless Washer Dryer Combo Which we use often. Every big house has a washer dryer combo so why not a Tiny House? During the warmer summer months we will line dry our clothes outside, but now that the temperatures have dropped into the 30’s and 40’s it is way too cold.  So use the condensation drying function on our LG Unit. The average water usage per cycle is about 20 gals.

Washer Dryer Combo

How Do We Track Our Water Usage in Our Tiny House?

To further understand and track our Tiny House Water Usage we installed a Garden Hose Water Meter to monitor our usage going forward. I routed the water meter before the split tee that runs into the house so it will include water usage for the garden and washing the cars.

Water Meter

From the Water Meter it runs through our On The Go Portable Water Softener. (Enter “tinyhousebasics” to Save 40% off Any System) For more info on our water softener please visit How To Determine If You Have Hard Water from the water softener it runs through our rv filter the into the Tiny House

Tiny House Water Usage – Water Softener

After closely monitoring our water usage for the past 3 months and without changing our habits at all, we use an average of only 35 Gallons Per Day! That sure is a far cry from the average household use.

According to the United States EPA :

“The average American family of four uses 400 gallons of water per day. On average, about 70 percent of that water is used indoors, with the bathroom being the largest consumer (a toilet alone can use 27 percent!)” according to the United States EPA

Since we are a family of two our daily average of water usage in a larger house would be approx 200 gallons a day so our actual usage of only 35 Gallons a Day. Which is Only 17.5% of what the average household of our size would use and in a Drought Stricken state like california, every bit helps!