Outta my shower head, that is.
The shower head in our en suite master bathroom was a “gentle rain” type of shower head. It was nice and wide and distributed lots of water everywhere. It was luxurious and showers felt great.
But it was also expensive.
Why? Well, a flow of 3 gallons per minute means a 5 minute shower would 15 gallons. And a 5-minute shower is not very long. I know people who take 15 to 20 minutes showers. A 15-minute shower would use 45 gallons, a 20-minute one would use 60 gallons.
In my previous post on navy showers, I indicated that we got our water usage for a shower down to about 10 gallons or so, down from 20 to 30, by turning off the water while lathering up and only running the water while getting wet or rinsing. That saved us about 7100 gallons a year, which is 949 cubic feet = 9.49 water units, which costs just under $39 in our area. Multiply by 2 adults, that is $77.
Just recently, I bought and installed a low-flow shower head from our local home megastore. This new shower head has a flow rate of 1.5 gallons per minute as opposed to the 2.5 gallons per minute for the regular shower heads, and 3 gallons per minute for the high-flow “gentle rain” type that we have. That is a savings of 40% over regular shower heads, and 50% over the one we had before. There is also an even lower-flow setting on the head for soaking rather than bulk rinsing (~0.75 gallons per minute?). This setting is good for things like rinsing the soap out of your eyes where you don’t need the full blast of water.
My concerns with the low-flow shower head were that the water pressure would not be enough and that I would have to take longer showers to rinse properly, and that would negate the savings from the lower-flow version.
The pressure issue was dealt with nicely. The manufacturer made a big deal that the design of the shower head made for a reasonable amount of pressure. After installing the head, it seems they were right. While it is not as nice as the previous shower head, it is at least acceptable.
As for the rinse length, it turns out that I do not have to turn on the water any longer than I did previously to rinse off. I am guessing that much of the water that the old head sprayed at me was not being used to rinse the soap away. It was just running off without collecting soap/shampoo, or it was spraying onto the walls and tubs without hitting me. With the lower-flow shower head, the flow is slower, so more of the water gets more time to dissolve and rinse the soap/shampoo. Or at least that’s my theory.
To see if this head actually saved any water, I did an informal test. First, I took my regular navy shower with the old “gentle rain” shower head. I closed the bathtub drain at the beginning of the shower to collect it all. When I was done with the shower, I marked the final water level with a piece of tape. That night, I replaced the shower head with the low-flow model. The next morning, I also showered with the drain closed. I didn’t measure exactly how much water was saved, but I could see that the final water level was well below the previous day’s mark. In fact, it looked like it was approximately 50% or so, but that is a just an estimate. If I were less lazy, I would have measured it exactly.
Assuming it was actually 50% that I saved over the previous 10 gallons, that means:
water savings per shower: about 5 gallons
water savings per year: 1775 gallons = 226 cubic feet = 2.26 water units
cost of 2.26 water units: $9.24
cost for two adults: $18.48
cost of the new showerhead: about $50 (taxes and everything included)
pay-back time: 2 years 8 months
That calculation doesn’t even factor in the savings in the amount of natural gas used to heat that amount of water. I’m not sure how I can calculate that, but I would suspect that is significant compared to the cost of the water itself.
On a side note, regular readers probably noticed there have not been a lot of posts recently. The twins have kept us very, very busy, so I haven’t done a lot of green improvements to the house recently that I could blog about. I hope now that they are getting to be a little older (10 months and counting!), I will get more time to do that.
All other parents of twins we have met have told us the same thing, “Don’t worry, it gets easier after the first year.” I hope they are right!
