A Great Shower For Less

OK, I am abandoning my attempt to recount my consumption reduction chronologically, which appealed to my obsessive compulsive side, but is really blocking me from writing consistently.

Hot water is a major portion of our electricity consumption. I can easily see this because our hot water heater is on a separately metered dedicated circuit. Looking back at my electric bills for 2004-2006, I find that in the winter hot water accounts for over thirty percent of our electricity. That drops to under ten percent in the summer, the combined effect of using less electricity for hot water (about sixty percent as much as in the winter) and adding air conditioning and pool pumps to the total electrical load.

Because of having a pool, our seasonal electricity usage is skewed, but as a percentage of overall energy usage, our hot water consumption was already a little lower than normal. I have seen many statistics, but a chart I am looking at now (in Pennsylvania Home Power Boosters A Guide to Home Energy Savings, a great on-line resource) shows water heating as fifteen percent of home energy expenditures.

There are a number of things I could do to reduce water heating expenses: install a newer, more efficient (possibly natural gas) heater; insulate the heater; or buy an Energy Star dishwasher or clothes washer. Buying new appliances was not in my budget, so I went to Home Depot (or was it Lowe’s?) to get an insulated wrap for my water heater. The wraps they sell are for 60 gallon units. Mine is 80 gallons. I looked at other insulation options and was not excited about any. Walking through the store, however, the shower heads caught my eye.

Our family shares one shower. The head in that shower was probably from the 1950s when the house was built. It looked horrible, but we all liked the high pressure, high flow showers it provided. However, I remembered reading that low-flow heads were a way to reduce water consumption and also reduce water heating requirements. I checked out the various models and found one I liked for around twenty dollars.

The package says it is 2.5 gallons-per-minute (the current standard, I guess), but also makes a claim like “feels like 33 percent more water”. I am normally doubtful of such claims, but I was willing to believe this one.

Anyway, I cannot say whether it is true (I have not compared it side-by-side with another 2.5 gpm head, nor do I think I know what 33 percent more water feels like), but the whole family loves the shower head. We still get enough pressure and flow to feel like we are washing, and the new head looks so much better than the old one that it inspired me to replace the other exposed hardware in the shower.

I have not checked the water bill to see whether I see any consumption difference there, but I have looked over the electric bills. Unfortunately, consumption varies enough month-to-month that it is not possible to tell exactly how much the new head saves. We no longer come anywhere near our old highest monthly usage, but we have not dropped below our old lowest monthly usage, either. Isolating the exact effect of the shower head is made especially hard because within two months after, our clothes washer broke and we did replace it with a front loader, which lowered our consumption even more.