Our main job as plumbers and gasfitters in Auckland is getting water and gas into your property, and ensuring that supply remains constant and reliable. We are also interested in how well these resources are used. Some appliances use water and gas more efficiently than others, and it’s now relatively easy for you to identify them.

Let’s take water for a start. Water efficiency labels make it easy to see how efficient a particular appliance might be e.g. a washing machine or a dishwasher, but many people only have eyes for something else. The price tag! That’s a shame because water efficiency labels display two important pieces of information that could help save a lot of water down the track:

• The star rating indicates how the appliance stacks up against others in terms of efficiency; the more stars, the more water-efficient the appliance.
• The water consumption or water flow figure shows how much water the product uses. All water-efficient labels have a water consumption or flow figure in:
• litres per minute (for showers or taps)
• litres per wash (for clothes washing machines and dishwashers)
• litres per flush (for lavatories or urinals).

There are also water efficiency labels on new taps and showers and they show the water pressure system they’re intended for. This is because the water efficiency rating of these things depends on whether they’ve been designed for use in mains pressure systems or in areas where there might be low or unequal pressure.

Paying close attention to water efficiency information can pay great dividends in the future. Let’s use an 8-kilogram washing machine as an example. If you were to switch from a 3-star machine to a 4.5-star machine, you could potentially save around 49 litres of water per wash. So, if you do 5 loads of laundry per week you could save around 14,000 litres of water every year. That’s equal to 140 bathtubs!

Here’s another one for you. If you were to switch from a 3-star shower head to a 4-star shower head then you could save up to 4.5 litres of water per minute. If you take an 8-minute shower every day, that’s a saving of more than 13,000 litres of water per person over the course of a year – equal to 130 bathtubs.

There’s a lot to be gained by finding out as much as you can about appliance efficiency. For example, gas is widely regarded as being more efficient than electricity when it comes to cooking. However, some appliances use a fraction of that energy to cook food, while most of it heats the air around the food being cooked! So, when buying an oven this is something that you should check out.

When it’s time for water and gas to be plumbed into your property, contact us. Once we’ve done that, make sure the appliances you use are as efficient as we were!