As of January 1, all California home owners will need to install water-conserving plumbing fixtures if their property was built before 1994. Yes, this means you.
The law is NOT a point-of-sale requirement when you sell a home, it is simply required by virture of owning a home.
The law calls for installation of water-conserving plumbing fixtures when the existing plumbing fixtures use more than the following amounts of water:
- any toliet manufactured to use more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush
- any urinal manufactured to use more than one gallon of water per flush
- any showerhead manufactured to have a flow capacity of more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute
- any interior faucet that emits more than 2.2 gallons of water per minute
Is anyone enforcing this? Not that I know of but it is something that will come up if you do sell your home. Since it isn't a point-of-sale requirement it will only be a disclosure issue which will lead to a negotiation between buyer and seller to determine who will install the appropriate fixtures. Take care of it now and it will reduce your water bill as well as take an item off the list of things a potential buyer may want to have addressed in a sale.
