Low Impact

One of the quicker and cheaper ways to make a difference to your water consumption is by purchasing a water-efficient shower head. These are shower heads that reduce the amount of water coming out of your shower per minute, either by reducing the “hole” that the water flows through or by putting air-bubbles within the water droplets.

At the end of the day, your average water-efficient shower head will be putting out around 9 litres of water every minute. An old style shower head will be around 20 litres of water a minute.

So, lets see what that means. Lets say you’re already pretty good with your water usage – you’ve given up on the 15 minute shower, and now just spend 5 minutes in the shower. With an old-style shower head, thats 36,500 litres of water a year. Putting in a water-efficient shower head will bring that down to 16,425 litres per year – a saving of more than 20,000 litres!

Now that assumes a household of 1. If you’re part of a family of 4, then you multiply those figures accordingly. It adds up pretty quickly!

And it doesn’t only result in water savings. If you’re focus is on $$$ rather than the feel-good aspect of doing the right thing, water-efficient shower heads pay for themselves pretty quickly in terms of power saving; with less water flowing through, your hot water system doesn’t need to work so hard. Using those figures above, and assuming you have a shower thats 50% hot water and 50% cold, you’ve saved 10,000 litres of hot water! For people with electric hot water systems in particular, this can be a substantial amount.

There’s a huge array of AAA rated shower heads out there now – things have changed from the days when there was only one model of shower head that fit the bill, and it felt like someone had turned the water pressure right off! Now you can go down to your local hardware store and be confronted with simple models, models with 15 different flow patterns (from “gentle rain” to “massage”!), plastic finish, chrome finish and everything in between. Prices seem to range from around $25 to $100 for most models.

Fitting them is usually straightforward for most houses – you don’t need anything more than a spanner, some steel wool, and some teflon tape…and a lot of the shower heads come with the steel wool and teflon tape! Its worthwhile checking out the situation with your local state government or council. Many offer a rebate on the purchase (which can result in the shower head being effectively free!), and some even offer a discounted installation service.

If you’ve been trying to work out how to make a difference to the environment without spending big dollars, this is an ideal way to go about it. The initial outlay is low (or even free if your local government body is doing the right thing), and you’ll end up both saving on your power bill and using significantly less water.

Categories: efficiency, environment, green, water

Tags: reduce, shower, water