Tri-State Green Report - Shower Time

You could be saving water, and not even know it. Its all about a little piece of plastic called a low-flow shower head. With it, youre saving money and water. Without it, youre letting more than cash go down the drain. "Normally I take about a 40-minute to an hour shower, because its my only time to relax and chill out." Valerie washes away a hundred gallons of water every day. Most of us spend half that amount of time in the shower. Do the math and and average American shower equals about 50-gallons of water. Thats 18-thousand gallons a year, or enough to fill a couple of backyard pools. You could save half that water for about ten bucks. Low flow shower heads are an industry standard, but many of us dont even know if we have one. Chances are if youve changed our shower head in the last five years, youre using a low flow model.Theres an easy way to tell. "Well theres an adapter in the majority of them that you can tell whether its low flow or not. Like this, its a little insert put in there, and if its in there itd obviously be the low flow. If its not then its gonna be pretty well the standard." We decided to do a little experiment. Our goal was to test water consumption and pressure. We started on a shower with a full flow head. We ran water full blast for two minutes into a five gallon bucket. When time was up, we marked the water line with red tape. Next we installed an inexpensive low flow head. Two minutes later we marked the water line again, this time with blue tape. Obviously, water was saved. Our next test was for water pressure. Thats a common complaint with low flow shower heads. We put shaving cream on a mirror under the full flow head. 15-seconds later the mirror was clean. We repeated the process under the low flow head. 15-seconds later the mirror was just as clean. "Youre not cutting down on your pressure, youre cutting down on your flow" Youll also be cutting down your next water bill.