So I moved into a new apt and the misses asked me to replace the shower head with a hand held shower hose (Classic II Massage, by InterBath).
After installing it, I noticed that the water pressured sucked. It was nowhere near as enjoyably strong as the old one. I checked the packaging and, sure enough, discovered that it has some darn water conservation rating on it. D’oh!
Here’s what it says:
“Maxx Flow guaranteed the highest performance at 2.5 GPM, 9.5L/min.”
I checked the net and found that 2.5 GPM seems to be some kind of standard now. Do stores sell non-2.5 GPM shower heads nowadays?
We got lots of water in Canada. I pay my taxes. My landlord pays my water bill. I want a powerful shower!
It seems the US enacted water savings regulation a while back limiting showers to 2.5gpm. I have no idea if Canada did the same or if you guys just have to live with the low-flow shower heads made in the US (my guess is you have a law also otherwise someone would be selling high-flow shower heads up there).
The shower head linked above comes out of the box as a 2.5gpm unit but you can remove the restrictor which will increase flow to 4.0gpm.
Since the friggin’ EPA shoved restrictive shower heads down our throats, manufacturers have taken several approaches to meeting the 2.5 gpm standard, all of which can be defeated with more or less difficulty.
In my experience, the most common approach has been the incorporation of a restrictive orifice in the shower head. This is basically a dinky hole that allows roughly 2.5 gpm to pass at normal household pressure, which can range widely from, say, 25 to 55 psi. In rare cases, the restrictive orifice can be cast or machined into the female-threaded neck of the shower head; some careful work with a drill can usually fix things. Most often, however, the orifice is molded into a plastic (usually nylon) disc located somewhere in the shower head – not hard to find! Removing or, again, drilling that disc will set things right; if you have to drill, I recommend a 3/8" diameter hole.
A recent example is a shower head I just installed in our new bathroom here. It’s an American Standard model, and the threaded neck contained a threaded nylon insert with a very tiny hole molded into it. But also molded into it was a Philips-type recess! It took me only a few seconds with a #2 Philips screwdriver to back the disc out and remove it, and now our showers are the invigorating experiences they should be!
Sheer horse-pucky. 2.5 gpm is perfectly adequate for a good shower, provided that you have a decent shower head. Most shower heads (including that pansy-ass massage thing) are so poorly designed that the velocity of the water is drastically less than it could be. A well-designed head with a direct spray of a few narrow jets gives me an invigorating (even stinging, if I want it) shower, and I can even leave the bathroom window open and not get cold.
A good shower head is the SaverShower, made by Whedon. I got mine at Ace Hardware. Avoid anything large, or made of plastic.
sorry Nametag but I think your fooling yourself. While it’s true you can get an almost decent shower at 2.5 gpm if you have your showerhead designed by teams of fluid engineers and get lucky but:
1 - your el cheapo $0.99 store one will work just as good once the flow restrictor is removed.
2 - you are really missing out on a great shower by not removing that flow restrictor on your top of the line showerhead.
3 - Hi Opal (I bet her flow restrictor is removed)
Actually I have one that is ‘almost’ decent at 2.5 and I can tune it to painful at 2.5 but it’s heaven at 4.
So I disconnect the handheld showhead from the showhead cord to see if I could find the restrictor. I think I found it. My guess is that it’s the pink thing in the picture here: http://www.geocities.com/wagar91/bath.html
What do you think? Should I drilled a hole through this?
My apartment got a low-flow shower head during the drought in the 1980s. At first I didn’t like it because it’s non-adjustable. But I like the spray it delivers. There is a restrictor plate inside that has tiny holes around the perimeter. (Before they fixed the plumping, little bits of rust would clog them. It works fine now.)
I’ve had occasion to shower at friends’ houses in Washington (state). Both of them have those adjustable, pulsating shower heads. The trouble is that the water pressure sucks. If they had a low-flow shower head, the restrictor would make the water come out more forcefully like it does with my low-flow head.
Does restricting water flow really cut down on the amount of water Americans use during a shower?
I have very thick hair, and when taking a shower in a less-than-strong water flow, it takes at least twice as long if not longer to wet, wash and rinse my hair.
So if the water is coming down at 2.5 gmp and it takes me 5 minutes to do something that it would take 2 minutes to do at 4 gpm…that’s more water wasted, right?
Then again, I don’t know how hard 2.5 gpm is so maybe that is ok for my hair.