Shower Tidbits

• What does it cost to take a shower? A quick and easy way is to visit our shower savings calculator: Here you can plug in your own water and energy rates and vary the shower times to see how much water, energy and money you can save in a year.


• It takes 2 gallons of water to brush your teeth, 2 to 7 gallons to flush a toilet, and 25 to 75 gallons of water to shower. Showerheads purchased prior to 1992, commonly delivered 5 - 7 gallons of water per minute. Since 1992, government guidelines mandated manufactures to make showerheads that deliver no more than 2.5 gpm at 80 psi. These are considered low flow showerheads.


• Studies generally conclude that showers use more water than baths. A typical bath uses 30 to 50 gallons of water. A typical shower of 10 minutes uses 50 gallons of water. A good way to find out is to mark the water level in your bathtub when you are finished with a bath. Next time take a shower and insert the plug in the drain. When finished compare the level of the shower water used with the previous mark.


• Cleaning your shower head of lime deposits. Put 1 cup of vinegar, either white or yellow, to the pot and add enough water to cover the shower head. Obviously, if your shower head is one of the giant rainfall shower heads you will need a much larger pot, and a lot more vinegar! With the shower head submerged in water and vinegar, put the pot on the stove and heat. If your fixture is stainless steel or metal, you can turn the heat setting on your stove to high. Should yours be plastic, just heat to medium high heat.


• After some time, which will vary depending on the material of your shower head and the amount of lime present, you will begin to see small white particles floating in the water which is the result of the vinegar loosening the lime deposits inside the shower head. When new deposits stop appearing, you are done 'cooking' your shower head.


• Is drinking shower water bad? It turns out that mothers the world over are right: Don't drink the shower water. Lynn Kirby, a water quality engineer for Seattle Public Utilities, recommends "not using hot water for drinking or cooking" for two primary reasons: the potential for bacterial growth in the hot water heater tank, and because "hot water tends to corrode pipes more quickly than cold water, so you may get more dissolved metals from the hot water tap compared to the cold."


• Can shower water be used for toilet flushing? Yes! This interesting design sanitizes the water and stores it in the wall for the next flush. See a cut-away of the system here: http://freshome.com/2009/02/06/smart-toilet-system-that-uses-shower-water-for-flushing/
• Napoleon once wrote to Josephine; "I'll be home in a week -don't bathe till I get there." The need to be clean hasn't always been as important as it is today. In fact, western civilizations are one of the few nations of the world where a daily shower is considered a daily must. Most Americans shower rather than bath, as opposed to most Europeans, who mostly bath rather than shower due to a long history of communal washing.
• The Russian and Turkish bath houses were likely the first place most early Americans saw a shower. The baths were a set - up that copied the lavish public baths of the Roman Empire. There were communal hot tubs, steam rooms and cold baths. The showers were used before and after a bather enjoyed all the other pleasures of the facility.
• The grandness of these showers didn't last. The norm for showers became the single head. Often, the set-up was crude and, once again, strictly utilitarian. At least this time the water was warm.
• Unfortunately, the Western world's showering advancements stopped when people began to think that bathing itself was not altogether necessary. Queen Isabella of Spain, who funded the voyage of Christopher Columbus, was proud of the fact she had taken only two showers in her lifetime. In fact, early Christians equated bathing with vanity and avoided it in order to be more holy.
• Advances in plumbing in the mid-1800s led to advancements in showering capabilities. It was about this time that plumbers began making freestanding showers with both hot and cold water, according to theplumber.com. Shortly after the shower renaissance in the late 19th century, showers moved back to being thought of as strictly utilitarian devices and the fancy designs disappeared until the 1980s when manufacturers began responding to the desires of their customers for more versatility in the shower.
• How to calculate how much water your showerhead uses? Hold a plastic bucket under the shower head and fill it to the 1-gallon mark while checking the second hand on your watch. Divide 60 by the number of seconds it took to flow one gallon from the shower head to get the gpm output.
• What is a Navy Shower? A Navy shower is "the term used for a water-saving technique that was started in the Navy to help save precious freshwater aboard ships. The basic idea is to hop in the shower, get wet all over, turn off the water while soaping up, and then rinse clean. The small change in routine makes a huge difference: a regular shower can use as much as 60 gallons of water, while a Navy shower can check in at about 3 gallons."
• Can you use shower water to water your garden? Yes, visit for a detailed explanation: http://www.instructables.com/id/Have_showerwater_garden/ Studies show that 22% of water used inside the house goes to bathing. In certain areas of the country, heating water electrically can cost three times that of heating water with natural gas.