Energy Efficient Shower Heads Work!

Taking showers day in and day out are obviously a necessity—but so much energy, water and money literally (and figuratively) go down the drain; many people are looking for ways to conserve.  Thanks to the new generation of energy efficient shower heads, it is still possible to get clean without worrying about using too many resources.

One excellent product is called The Shower Manager, and it comes with some really amazing features.  It operates in two phases:  First, it has a regular flow for a preset time that you select (5, 8, or 11 minutes).  Then, after the time has expired, the water flow automatically cuts down to 2/3 of the flow making it possible to finish rinsing if you need to—but not enough that you want to stay in the shower!  The average family can save around $400 a year using this handy device which retails for $124.

If that doesn’t sound attainable, consider this simple low-flow shower head from Real Goods.  Priced perfectly at just $10, it reduces water use by up to 70% (2.25 gallons per minute) at 80 PSI.  The average family can use it to save up to $250 a year!

But you can save water even if you don’t want to replace your shower head, or if you’re traveling.  Consider the simple shower timer.  A small hourglass attaches to your shower wall and reminds you how long you’ve been in there.  
Consider these statistics about shower use:
 
Daily indoor per capita water use in the typical single family home is 69.3 gallons. Of that, showers use 11.6 gallons (or 16.8%) per day.  Average household water use annually: 127,400 gallons.

By installing more efficient water fixtures and regularly checking for leaks, households can reduce daily per capita water use by about 35% to about 45.2 gallons per day.  If all U.S. households installed water-saving features, water use would decrease by 30 percent, saving an estimated 5.4 billion gallons per day. This would result in dollar-volume savings of $11.3 million per day or more than $4 billion per year. Water-conserving fixtures installed in U.S. households in 1998 alone saved 44 million gallons of water every day, resulting in total dollar-value savings of more than $33.6 million per year.  (Source)