I’ve been told that here in our hotel, if we replace all our shower heads with these “energy saving” ones that we’ll save on water and on energy. These are the ones that work by aerating the water. I would have thought that less water per second = longer time in the shower to compensate, and any savings would be marginal at best.
But the salesman says no, the savings will be significant. Is he right?
You would be surprised how little water is actually needed to wet yourself and rinse off the suds. You will not notice the lower water volume and so will shower in the same amount of time.
I think the salesman is probably right.
It’s a little like Scott’s toilet paper. They’re thinner sheets, so people tend to use more sheets than they would of other brands. However, they don’t fully overcompensate and still use 30% less toilet paper (if I remember that number correctly).
Low-flow toilets are the same. Even if you have to flush it twice every time, you’re still using less water than one flush of a normal toilet. And if flushing once works every now and then, the savings are big.
So… let’s say a water-saving shower head cuts water to 50% of the normal gpm. Even if people extend showers from 10 to 16 minutes on average, you’re still seeing energy/water savings of 20%.
I don’t know about energy savings, although I guess they would scale with water savings. My guess (really my actual experience) is that when I at home where the water is hard, I do save a lot by having low a flow shower head. But when I am in NYC where the water is quite soft, I have to rinse endlessly to get rid of the soapy feeling.
Most water in the shower is wasted - it never hits the body or bounces immediately off.
Aerated water will be under higher pressure - meaning to the skin it feels like more water because in our minds we equate force to volume.
So no, we won’t spend more time trying to get wet/rinse off.
try rinsing something off with an adjustable nozzle on the garden hose. you might find a fine mist more effective than a a spray. what mobilizes a soap molecule is a small amount of water, put these small amounts of water together on a surface and there is good sheeting action to rinse.
Low-flow shower heads really do work to save water (and therefore the energy needed to heat it) but there are tradeoffs. I installed one at home (this one from Oxygenics which was sold by and branded as Sharper Image) and found that although the lower flow really does the job just as well without extending time in the shower, it was not quite as comfortable (hard spray), plus it was very noisy. So I removed it after a couple of months. But a hotel guest doesn’t have that choice :mad:
So as a business owner it is probably a good economic move.
I think you have your soft water and hard water reversed. Hard water leaves a soapy feeling.
I wouldn’t sink a lot of $$ into low-flow shower heads without trying one out myself. My folks installed a low-flow shower head in their bathroom… it turned the water into fine droplets of mist which seemed to cool off appreciably as they passed through the air, and felt chilly on the skin. If I stayed in a hotel with a shower like that, I’d be that much less likely to return.
I agree, try them out first. Don’t just go with whatever the salesman is selling. I tried many different (and expensive) low-flow showerheads before I found one I liked. It turned out to be the cheapest, smallest, most ordinary-looking one at the store - under $10, takes about 30 seconds to screw it in. I have extremely poor water pressure on the hill where I live, and this showerhead gives me a nice hard spray. It’s similar to (or maybe even the same exact one as) the one on this page: High ROI – Low Flow Showerheads & Programmable Thermostats | Island Energy In fact, I like it because it feels like a hotel shower compared to my old showerhead.
You’ll save a lot of water and the energy used to heat said water.
I’ve used low-flow shower heads since California mandated them – what? 20 years ago? When I bought this house one of the first things I did was to get one. I don’t like the regular shower heads, especially not the ‘massaging’ ones. For me, the spray from a low-flow head is perfect. And it saves money and ensures that there’s plenty of hot water after my shower.
I agree with needscoffee (reading the username, there’s another point of agreement) that a $10 low-flow head from the hardware store is fine. It had been years since I’d bought one, so I decided to get the cheapest one for the house first. If I didn’t like it, then I’m not out much. (I’m sure my apartment in L.A. had the cheapest available too.) I just looked for one with a lever (actually a wire bale) that lets me stop the flow at the head in case I needed to stop the flow but didn’t want to turn off the faucets.
If this is a hotel, perhaps the local water district will give you free low-flow showerheads. (I live in an apartment building with about 100 units, and all of the toilets were replaced with ones provided for free by the utility.)
with the low flow or adjustable jets/pulsing/low flow heads and hard water (or at least not the softest) you may need to clean the holes on occasion. a pin will work some, removing and soaking in diluted vinegar works well.
No, it is soft water that is usually associated with a soapy feeling after rinsing. Hard water is more likely to leave soap scum behind.
I have used a couple different low flow showerheads and they have worked fine for me without need for any appreciable increase in shower time. I could see how with some of them a person with long or thick hair might have to spend a little more time rinsing.
I decided to switch to a low flow showerhead a few years ago because I have a slow drain and by the time I’d finish showering, the tub would have 6 inches of water in it.
I got the low flow showerhead and installed it, and now, there’s never any water in the bottom of the tub.
The one I got has 4 settings that go from a sprinkle to a massage jet. I set it in the middle and it feels like a lot of water is coming out, so I have no problem wetting my hair or rinsing soap off.
On top of that, because the tub doesn’t fill up every time I shower, I don’t get near as much soapy scum all over the inside of the tub, so it requires a lot less cleaning.
And lastly, I used to run out of hot water about 10 minutes into a shower. So I learned to shower in 10 minutes. I still get out of there in 10 minutes, but I’m not cranking the cold down to warm up the water, and if I’m being particularly lazy, I can stand under the hot water for almost 30 minutes before I run out of hot water now.
That’s interesting, because it doesn’t square with my experience. However, is the sopy feeling from water that started out hard and went through a softening process, or even water that was never hard to begin with?
Perhaps more the former than the latter. My parents got a water softener after many years and I definitely noticed the difference. I can rinse and rinse during a shower but my hair and skin still feel “soapy”. Prior to the getting the water softener, there was no problem rinsing but there was definitely less lathering action. At my own house, the water is reportedly “very soft” (25-30 ppm) according to the treatment plant report, but I don’t have any problem rinsing. I don’t know if it is something with the softening process or if it is just that it leaves the water very, very soft.
I find that hotels typically have well-flowing showers. No doubt because the 25 cents that the shower costs the hotel is paid off by the immense pleasure the patron receives frolicking in hot water.