Early summer is a great time to start thinking about conserving water for the summer. And one of the easiest and best ways to save water this summer is to replace your inefficient high-flow showerhead with a high-efficient model.  Switching now will provide several benefits. Not only will you be helping the environment, you'll also see an immediate savings on your water bill, because a new low-flow showerhead will result in a much lower water flow-rate.

Most families consume most of their water in the shower. So showering at a reduced flow-rate is a wonderful idea.  Today's selection of showerheads is countless.  Here's exactly how much you can save by installing a low-flow shower head.

1.5 GPM High-Efficiency ShowerHead

Testing a low-flow shower head vs. a traditional high-flow shower head.

Step One: Find out the shower head’s GPM.  That's the flow-rate in gallons-per-minute

Just about every shower head sold in America today has a 2.5 (GPM) gallons-per-minute max. flow rate. That means for every minute in the shower, you end up using 2.5 gallons of water. Quite a bit will be hot water. And of course hot water has the added expense in the form of higher natural gas or power bills. And while 2.5 gallons-a-minute is considered by many to be "low-flow", the newer ultra-low-flow showerheads are coming on the market and only use 0.5 to 1.5 gallons-per-minute. Compare this with the old standard high-flow shower head still being used in some older homes that are using between 5 and 10 GPM and you begin to see that significant water savings that are indeed possible.  The newer ultra-low-flow models are available in a multitude of different sizes and shapes. 

IMPORTANT: The duration of your shower

Six to twelve minutes. According to recent studies, that's the average amount of time people spend showering.  Of course there are those who love to spend fifteen minutes or more; contrast that with those who are in-and-out in a minute or two. If you normally spend a while in the shower, you'll save quite-a-bit more money and water by tossing your old high-flow showerhead.

Studies also show that the average person takes one shower per day. 

So just how much water can you save by intalling a low flow high pressure shower head?

If you shower once-per-day for about eight minutes.  

An Old Standard 7.0 GPM (gallons-per-minute) high-flow shower head:
Showering once-per-day for an average of 8 minutes each. That's a total of 240 minutes. With a high flow shower head this will result in water consumption of about 1680 gallons.

Today's regular 2.5 GPM low-flow shower head:
Using the same numbers, that 240 minutes of showering will result in 600 gallons of water used. You can already see a difference of 1,080 gallons-per-month, or almost 13,000 gallons-per-year in savings over a high-flow unit.

Today's newer ultra-low-flow 1.5 GPM high pressure shower heads:

  If we use our same estimates of 240 minutes in the shower each month, multiplied by 1.5 gives us a monthly total of 360 gallons.  This will result in 2,880 gallons saved each year over the regular low-flow model and 15,840 gallons per year saved compared to the older high-flow shower heads. 

It becomes easy to see how a family of four could easily see an annual savings of about 63,000 gallons, not to mention a huge savings on their annual power bill.  And that's just one way you can begin conserving water this summer.  It's easy, cheap and environmentally friendly.

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Note from SilverLakeStar: Easily shop online and compare shower heads at LiveWellShopWell.com