Understanding Your Water Use

Begin by understanding how much water you use by looking at your water bill and the water use calculator.

Understanding your bill

Find information about understanding your water bill on the Find My Water Retailer page.

Water use calculator

Use the Alliance for Water Efficiency’s Home Water Works Calculator to quickly estimate how much water your household uses and compare it to a similar average and a highly-efficient home. It also shows you where to begin your home water conservation efforts.

Throughout the Home Water Works website, you’ll find useful tips and resources for saving water and money without sacrificing comfort or convenience. 

Complete our Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Water Wise Indoor Survey Kit and identify where to look for potential leaks. It includes a step-by-step guide to teach you how to check for:

• Sink/Shower flow rates
• Meter leaks
• Toilet leaks
• General indoor leaks

After completing a physical or digital survey kit, you are eligible to receive free water conservation gear, such as a toilet flapper or low-flow sink aerators.

Get an indoor survey kit

The DIY Water Wise Indoor Survey Kit includes a step-by-step guide to performing your own indoor survey, a worksheet to request free water conservation items, toilet dye tablets, and a simple device to help you measure the flow rates of your sinks and showers. 

You can complete the DIY Water Wise Indoor Survey Kit either:

1. Online: Use the kit’s online guide for immediate help. This does not include toilet dye tablets or the device to measure flow rates. 

2. By mail: To get dye tablets and a simple flow-rate device along with a physical copy of the step-by-step guide, visit our online shopping cart!

Videos: Indoor survey demonstrations

Watch our how-to videos to learn how to perform several tests to check for leaks and flow rates. 

• Meter leak test: Reading your water meter is one of the best ways to identify a leak. Your water retailer can help you find your meter box, and how to open it if you can’t find it near the sidewalk in front of your home.
   
• House line test: Find if leaks are indoors or out. 
   
• Measure sink and shower flow rates: Figure which appliances are ready for an upgrade.
   
• Toilet leak test: Check your toilets for leaks with leak detection dye, available with the DIY Water Wise Indoor Survey.

After completing the Indoor Survey Kit's step-by-step guide, you can request your free water conservation gear by visiting our online shopping cart. 

Learn more about the free water saving devices available from Valley Water.

Conserving water happens both inside and outside your home.

Irrigation surveys

Valley Water offers free outdoor irrigation surveys to qualifying single-family and small multi-family sites (under ½-acre) in Santa Clara County. During a Water-Wise Irrigation Survey, a trained irrigation professional will complete a comprehensive evaluation of your irrigation system. See if you qualify.

Other tips and resources

Save Our Water offers several conservation resources, including:

• A virtual tour of a water-efficient home or this interactive version
   
• Quick tips conserve water around the house and the yard

Valley Water provides several services to help commercial businesses, industrial sites, and multi-family complexes save water. These include:

• Learning about water saving devices and equipment
   
• Receiving free services and equipment
   
• Applying for commercial and facility rebates
   
• Requesting free large landscape surveys 

Whether you manage an office building, school, hotel, hospital, restaurant, or another type of facility, it’s important to ask:

• What Water Savings Strategies should you pursue and prioritize? The best place to start in familiarizing yourself with options for your business to save water and money while conserving our natural resources.

• What are the Best Management Practices for your business to be implementing already? Provides an overview of tips for operating, maintaining, retrofitting options, and calculating savings potential and Return-On-Investment of technologies and behaviors to implement.

• What free tools and resources are available to identify where you can save? Offers water assessment checklists that range from simple and easy to use, to targeted for specific facilities like hotels and multi-family properties. 

• How can you better measure your water use so you can manage it? This free online Portfolio Manager tool from Energy Star will help. Join the 40% of commercial buildings in the US that already use this free tool for managing your energy and water use today.

Multi-family properties

• Find free resource guides and tools to help you understand, manage, and improve water use efficiency cost-effectively.

Hotels

• Learn how to assess, upgrade, and track water savings by joining more than 860 hotels in the US in the H2Otel Challenge. You’ll find case studies, webinars, and easy to use tools to save water and money while maintaining the level of service your guests expect.