You should buy one of these and put it in the toilet

HydroRight Dual-Flush Converter

At my grandmother's house in the bathroom they used to have an old sign bought from some hokey backwoods store where the locals surely all had septic systems 'If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down'. 



Crude but direct--I was typically there during some kind of large gathering and they only had one toilet on an artisian well.  It was a necessity.

Today, water conversation may not be a direct necessity for all of us, but hopefully you've at least thought about simple little ways to conserve water.  Maybe at some point you bought some incandescent light bulbs to replace old power hogging bulbs?  Well, this is the same thing, but for your toilets.

You spend $20 or less at Home Depot (there are several manufacturers and styles of this thing, I'm just going with the one I bought), and bring home the HydroRight Dual-Flush Convertor for $19.98 at Home Depot.

It takes about 5 minutes to install.  No tools or anything.

1. empty the tank up top
2. remove the old flapper and the handle
3. seat this thing where the flapper went and use a provided zip-tie to attach it to your existing tank pipe
4. install the cool-looking button where you used to have a stone-age handle.


VIOLA!  You are saving money every time you take a leak.  I saw a review where someone was saying unless you have an old 3 gallon flush toilet don't bother getting this, but that is idiotic as the lighter flush does a great job of clearing your bowl with much less than even the normal 1.6 gals you are probably getting now each time you press the handle.  (Ok so you probably wouldn't want to take a drink out of the bowl after the light flush?...as opposed to after a full 1.6 gallon flush??)

To get the lighter flush you simply press the upper button with the single dot on it (I imagine this dot must be braille for a '#1') which engages a strong but very efficient outflow--it is brief and I think it is less than a gallon per flush with that button.  When you press the lower button, it gives you the flush you normally would expect, with a normal 1.6 gallon flush.  Although you can use a dial on the HydroRight to raise or lower even those settings--it depends on how complicated you want to get with it and how much of a water-saver you are!

I took the below related tips from a top 1000 contributor on the Home Depot website (thanks Wilson79!) [consequently, I looked at the list of reviews to see what it took to get his 'top 1000' contributor logo on the Home Depot website and I see he only did 4 reviews overall..so if you're looking to get some logo-age near your name as a commenter somewhere out on the web, might be nice bang-for-your-buck to review a few things on their website, ha]

Make sure your toilet meets the following requirements and you will be fine:
1) Newer style fill valve (not the old ball system where there is a ball floating on the water in your tank). If you do need a newer style fill valve, we suggest the HydroClean Toilet Fill Valve, Model 660. You must have a round overflow tube.
2) The overflow tube must have a minimum height of 6” from base to top.
3) Your flush valve opening must be 2 – 2 ½”. If you have a 3” flush valve opening, this product will not work with your current system.
4) You must have a 10” clearance in your tank from bottom to top.

Also this site points out that the toilet is over 26% of the average home's water consumption so think about it. 
http://www.toiletabcs.com/toilet-water-conservation.html

15 minutes could save you 15% or more on your...water bill.