Green Mom - Happy Mom

Installing a Low Flow Shower Head is another simple and affordable way to green your home. Not only do you contribute to saving our fragile environment but you also save money by reducing you monthly water and energy bills.

But, before you run off to your local home improvement store, I suggest you do some research. There are several choices of low flow showerheads available, but they achieve the desired results in different ways. Many of the “saving” attributes have sacrifices that can affect not only how much you save, but also how much you continue to enjoy your shower.

The first feature you want to consider is the Flow Rate. Expressed in gallons per minute, a showerhead’s flow rate is one indicator of the amount of water and energy you’ll save. You may see the word “potential” being used since we all shower at a different temperature and for a different length of time. Too low of a flow rate and you will be spending more time rinsing off soap and shampoo which can reduce and sometime eliminate the savings all together.

Since 1992, all showerheads sold in the US have been required to limit the flow rate to no more than 2.5 gallons per minute when the water pressure is at 80 pounds per square inch. What this means is that any showerhead with a flow rate below 2.5 GPM has the “potential” to save water and energy.

A showerhead with a flow rate between 1.75 GPM – 1.5 GPM can deliver an optimum blend of savings and comfort when designed into a properly engineered showerhead. A good quality 1.75 GPM – 1.5 GPM showerhead lowers your shower-based water and energy consumption by 30% - 40%, doesn’t’t require increased shower times and leaves you feeling clean, happy, refreshed and warm.

2.5 0% 2.25 10% 2.0 20% 1.75 30% 1.5 40% 1.25 50% 1.0 60%

Next on your list of spec requirements should be Spray Coverage. This contributes directly to how warm we feel when taking a shower. Many of the less expensive showerheads have a cone pattern to the spray coverage which leaves a large hole in the center. What this means is that there is a large area of your body that is not being sprayed with warm water.

You want to find a showerhead that has a full spray coverage pattern for optimum comfort and warmth.

cone spray pattern - nozzles throughout spray face, but they are different shapes and sizes		full spray pattern - nozzles throughout spray face and all nozzles are same shape and size

The final feature that will effect the efficiency and savings of your new showerhead is how quickly (or not) the water warms up. One of the common drawbacks to low flow showerheads is that it seems to take forever for the water to heat up. This makes sense considering less water is running from you water heater to your shower. So, this directly cuts in on how much energy and water you are saving.

I have found a company that makes low flow showerheads with “Shower Start Technology”. This is what it is:

A new technology, called ShowerStart, has been created to take the inconvenience out of waiting for your shower to get warm. With Shower5tart technology built into your showerhead you no longer have to stand with your hand in the water waiting for it to get to bathing temperature. Rather, ShowerStart monitors the shower’s temperature for you and automatically shuts the water flow down to a trickle as soon as it’s warm enough - about 95°. Reducing the flow to a trickle accomplishes two objectives:

1. you’ll know (hear) the moment your shower is ready
2. it keeps hot water from running needlessly down the drain before you start taking your shower

Not only does the addition of ShowerStart make the low-flow showerhead more convenient, it also has the potential, depending on your behavior patterns, to increase the water and energy savings effectiveness of your new showerhead by 14% or more.

I went through this company’s catalog and found their RoadRunner model. This meets all of the ideal requirements and is a fair price. Even better, I found it on Amazon.com for a significant savings.

As with any purchase you will make in “greening” your home (such as a compost tumbler, CFLightbulbs, cloth shopping bags) you want to look at it as an investment that will pay for itself in a fairly short period of time.

Using cloth or canvas shopping bags for your grocery shopping is one of the easiest, cheapest and fastest methods for living green and helping the environment.

Many large supermarket chains are now offering incentives to use their re-usable shopping bags and/or bringing your own. Our local chain offers a 5 cent credit for every bag you bring of your own.

The one problem I have encountered with this effort is remembering to bring the bags with me…I always plan to put them back in the car when we get home from the store, but it doesn’t always work that way. And, sure enough, I am in the store parking lot and realize that I left the bags at home.

So what I did to prevent this from happening was to buy a few more bags and keep them in a rotation. If I forget to put them in the car when I get home, I still have plenty in the trunk for the next trip. For some reason, I remember to put them back in the car after that. Don’t ask my why.

Here is a great article that I found listing all of the awful details about plastic bags and how brutal they are on our environment and eco-system:

http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/reusablebags.htm

If you would like to go out in style, there are a number of options to go eco-chic…

Bags On The Run

Option if you are a business owner and want to supply bags to your patrons

Earth Wise Bags

Eco Bags