Trim the Fat Tuesday: The Shower Head

We've been meaning to get to this one all summer, and after a few false starts and a lot of time away, we finally managed to

Switch out the shower head for a low-flow model to save on utility costs.


Our old shower head was a (post-1992) standard, 2.5 gallons per minute model. It was a rain-style one, and quite a nice little comfort upgrade when we moved into this house.

But it uses a lot of water, and the extra comfort it offers also encourages loooooong showers. 

Especially if you're under the age of twelve. Those guys have no concept of time, and we are always yelling at them to get out of the shower. Fifteen- and 20-minute showers by the younger set are not unheard of around here, especially if we aren't playing much attention to what's going on upstairs.

Perhaps a timer is in order as well. The most obnoxiously beeping one we can find, to help hurry things along.

Until we cure our resource-intensive progeny of their wasteful ways, the new, 1.5 gpm shower head should help cut our water and electricity bills by quite a bit while we wait for them to grow up. It was a snap to install — just unscrew the old one and screw in the new one. Kirk used some teflon tape for extra sealing power, but this probably isn't strictly necessary. 

And the savings? I found a helpful online calculator from the Department of Energy here. After entering the necessary numbers like our electricity rate and water/sewer rate, the calculator let me know that switching to the 1.5 gpm shower head will save us $191 per year on water and $106 per year on the electricity we use to heat it.

That's a total savings of $297 per year, or $24.75 per month. As always, I will round up. Also, it's worth noting that this very easy switcheroo pays for itself in less than one month. I'm just sorry it took us so long to get around to something so easy to do.

Savings per month: $25

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