New Toilet Installation

Toilets account for approximately 30% of residential indoor water consumption—by far the main source of water use in the home. Replacing a pre 1994 toilet with a new high-efficiency model can reduce water used for toilets by at least 60% and save about 16% of total indoor water use. Savings for a typical household would be more than 10,000 gallons per year. Below is information on purchasing toilets and recycling old toilets.

Toilet Performance and Efficiency
Greeley's Water Conservation Program recommends that you purchase a toilet with a Maximum Performance (MaP) score of 500 or above to ensure you receive a high quality model. MaP testing provides performance information on more than 700 toilet models. MaP testing provides a quantitative assessment of real toilet performance. Visit the MaP toilet testing website with a listing of toilets, performance ratings and more information on testing procedures.

Some low flow toilets manufactured in the early 1990s often had problems and a reputation of not working well. Since then, manufacturers have invested in research and development to design low volume toilets that work as well as or better than the ones they replace. Customer satisfaction surveys confirm that owners of low-flow toilets rate them very highly about 90% of the time.

Under federal law, toilets must not exceed 1.6 gallons per flush (gpf). High-efficiency models also called ultra-low-flow toilets go beyond the standard and use 1.28 gpf. Recent advancements have allowed toilets to use 20% less water than the current federal standard, while still providing equal or superior performance.

WaterSense, a program sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is helping consumers identify high-performance water-efficient toilets, to reduce water use in the home and preserve water resources. The WaterSense label is used on toilets that are certified by independent laboratory testing to meet rigorous criteria for both performance and efficiency. Only high-efficiency toilets that complete the third-party certification process can earn the WaterSense label.

Toilet Recycling
Greeley's GROW recycling center is temporarily closed, as the contract with the service provider expired. It is expected that a new contractor will be in place by March 1, 2012. One of the requirements of the toilet rebate program is to take the old toilet out to the GROW recycling center to be presented with a voucher to receive more rebate money.

Until a new recycling contractor is identified, customers may bring toilets to the City Hall Annex at 1100 10 th Street. The customer must first go to the Water and Sewer Department on the third floor to get their voucher and apply for the rebate. The customer will then be shown to the drop-off location in the parking lot. The Water Department will then send the toilets to the Streets Department to be ground-up and recycled into road base. Customers are required to remove all non-ceramic part and unload the toilet themselves.

Recycling toilets gives applicants an additional $25 dollar rebate, for a total of $75. Additional money is given to assure that the toilet is not re-installed in another location. The purpose of the rebate program is to remove old fixtures that use more water. No rebate is provided for recycling only.