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Energy Saving Concepts & Product Reviews!
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Bathing is an everyday activity for most Americans. Whether you shower or take a bath you require hot water to be comfortable. I know many of us have already heard that taking a shorter shower saves energy. Well let's look at this a little more closely. Let's take the stand up shower for instance. Your hot water heater heats every drop of water that leaves the shower head. You either use a gas or an electric hotwater heater to keep the water hot. Every drop of water that leaves the hot water tank is replaced by cold, fresh tap water from the infeed water pipe. This cold water now mixes with the already hot water and cools it down requiring the heater to turn on and apply more heat. Hence more electricity or more gas is being used. Therefore in easy common sense terms, the longer the shower, the more energy you expend. |
There is actually two sides to the story. Let's look at the other aspect... the water. You are not using rain water to bath or shower. In most cases you are using filtered, chlorinated, and tested tap water. The exception being those of us that use well water. Many people in the USA and Canada use wells which require an electric pump to pull the water up from the ground. In the case of tap water, electricity drives the pumps that bring it across town to your house. Electricity also powers any testing or water treatment equipment required to make the water safe for human usage. Once again, the shorter the shower, the less energy required even from the water aspect.
| There are estimates that up to 1/4 of all water that goes down the drain in America is due to our bathing and showers. How about these low flow shower heads? Do they work? Yes they do. The only problem with a low flow shower head is many people complain that it seems to take a little longer to achieve that same clean feeling than if you chose a standard shower head. In order to be considered a low flow shower head, it would have to be rated at the capacity of 2.5 gallons per minute or less, although I have seen models in home improvement stores available all the way down to 1.5 gallons per minute. New federal regulations now actually require that the maximum flow rate allowable for any shower head is 2.5 gallons per minute or less. This is part of an effort to convert all of America to these energy effiicient flow rates. I believe the new low flow shower heads will be in the 1.5 gpm range. |
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