Watch the Video on Ed's Water Saving Tips (Kohler)
HOST: One of my favorite things about International Builders' Show is -- (ED: Seeing me!?) Kohler booth. (LAUGHS) And if it's the Kohler booth, it means I get to see my old buddy Ed Del Grande.
ED: Oh, so it was seeing me. I thought I'd slip one in, but you had a compliment already lined up.
HOST: The green shirt. (ED: Yep.) It's green day. (ED: Yep.) Kohler has great green initiatives, water-saving, and all that stuff. Give us all your green tips.
ED: Well, the green shirt -- Now, this is Valentine's Day, but it's also Green Day from the National Association of Homebuilders. (HOST: Right.) And Kohler is a big sponsor of that, so that's pretty cool.
HOST: Right. I mean one day I'll get one of those shirts, too.
ED: Well, I could give you this one, but I need it. (LAUGHS)
HOST: Can you give me some tips for helping save water?
ED: Well, saving water is as easy as one, two, and three. (HOST: Okay.) Okay, let's look at the first fixture: the shower. You want to get down to a showerhead that's gonna use only about two-and-a-half-gallons a minute. (HOST: Right.) That's the new regulations. Get rid of that big old water-guzzler.
HOST: Even though I like the water-guzzler.
ED: I know even though you do, but we gotta do our part. You know, if everybody saves a little bit -- Even cutting your shower time down by one minute can save like fifty, sixty gallons a person. So, that's not a big sacrifice, but changing the head is an easy job. (HOST: Right.) Because the valve right there is shut off so no water is coming out of the showerhead. (HOST: Most do-it-yourselfers can do it.) Can do it. Yeah. And then just back the head off to support the pipes so you don't break anything in the wall or else that will keep the plumber busy. (BOTH: [LAUGH])
HOST: Okay, he'll be coming into the house and fixing some very expensive plumbing which you get behind the shower.
ED: Well, I mean it's an easy job, and chances are--and I'm a master plumber, you know that--the chances are very remote that the pipe will break in the wall --
HOST: Well, I'm not a master plumber, and I can change the showerhead. So I feel pretty good about it.
ED: That's it. So change the showerhead. Do that when you get home, and start saving water. (HOST: okay.) Now the other thing even easier, you know with faucets --
HOST: And this is number two.
ED: This is number two. (HOST: Okay.) So shower's number one. Number two is the faucet aerators. (HOST: Uh-huh.) The end of the faucet spout is the aerator. (HOST: Right.) Just unscrew that. (HOST: When you fix it the -- ) The air makes it bubbly, you know, and it mixes the air in there and that's what makes it soft. So now if you unscrew that, you can put the low-flow aerators, and see this. This is the inside of one of those. Instead of having bigger holes or just a screen, see how it's really tiny? (HOST: Uh-huh.) And what that does, it still aerates the water, but the tiny little openings will slow it down by about a gallon.
HOST: So you're -- The aerator -- You can put a volume-reducer -- (ED: Right.) I didn't even know that.
ED: Basically, you know what it's doing? (HOST: I didn't even know that.) It's like opening up the faucet maybe a halfway. Now, no one wants to go and just try to get it halfway, but if you put the aerator on, it's slowing it down enough that you can use the faucet as normal -- (HOST: Right.) -- Again, you won't change your lifestyle, but you will save about a gallon a minute. Easy. Easy. Easy.
HOST: Very, very easy. Okay, now get me to number three.
ED: Number three. Lucky this wasn't number two cause it's the toilets. (BOTH: LAUGHS.) Okay. (HOST: Okay. Once again, you're in the toilet.) Once again, we're in the toilet. Now I'm going to show you the new insides of the toilet, but I'm going to tell you how they came about. Right over here's a flapper. You're familiar with that. Everyone knows how they work. (HOST: Right.) They open up, and they close. (HOST: Right.)
Guess what the engineers at Kohler found out? As this lever is opening, two-tenths of a gallon dribble down that hole -- that hole there, that opening, and it's wasted until it gets in the full-open position, then flushes. (HOST: I can see that. Uh-huh.) So, they said, how can we stop that two-tenths from going down the drain? (HOST: Right.) Well, here's what we have. It's the EST Flushing Tower. It's got -- This is a vertical flapper. Now, watch this. It's so cool -- (HOST: So, we're basically taking all of the other guts out of it.) We took all -- We redesigned -- (HOST: Chains and stuff out of it.) We reinvented the mousetrap. (HOST: Great.)
So, look at this right over here. (HOST: I'm glad somebody did. Cause it needed a change.) Yeah. Sure. Now watch how it opens. It comes straight up, so instantly, everything floods down every side. (HOST: Right.) So the two-tenths now is wasted. We can take that out of the -- take that right out of the equation. (HOST: Right.) And now what we're doing is flushing from one-point-six gallons all the way down to one-point-two-eight. We saved the two-tenths of a gallon and still kept the power.
HOST: And it looks like a much simpler process. (ED: It is simpler. Well, look at this.) It doesn't have to be complicated, right.
ED: That's how easy it comes off if you want to change the flapper. Right now, this is what we've done. We've gotten rid of all this rubber there and put it into this little seal. So really, what maintenance, it's a lot easier, a lot simpler--and it saves thousands of gallons of water.
HOST: That's one thing I love about Kohler -- (ED: Uh-huh.) you Ed, you're always saving money, but I know Kohler, great brand, and they're always a little bit ahead of everybody else (ED: Yeah.) in saving the homeowner money and helping in saving our environment.
ED: That's why we're here. Thank you, Scott.
HOST: Thanks, Eddie.
Watch the Video on Ed's Water Saving Tips (Kohler)
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