Living Greener

Green Advice ~ Shower

Your shower is where a lot of your money (and water and heating energy) is leaking every day. But because it is where there is so much leaking, it is also one of the easiest places to make some significant gains for the environment.

Here’s one of the simplest tips for saving money in your shower.

If you cut your shower time down to four minutes you can possibly save 75 per cent of your showering costs, even more! But how much does a shower cost? Let’s start by finding out how much water is used when you take a shower.

1. Take a bucket with litre markings into your shower. Turn on your shower at your normal rate and collect all the water from your showerhead in the bucket for 15 seconds.
2. Measure how much water is in the bucket and multiply it by four. This shows you how much water you use every minute.
3. Next, multiply the number of litres by the number of minutes you have the shower running. This will give you your total water consumption per shower.

Breaking the habit

The best way to break the fast shower rate habit is to buy and install a low water use showerhead with a WELS 3 star rating or an Eco valve with a maximum flow rate of 9 litres per minute.

To get used to cutting back on the time, buy a timer. You will soon see how time flies when the shower is on. If you live in a large household, an added bonus of a timer is that there will be less waiting for your turn in the shower each morning!

Finally, if you do get your usage down to 20-25 litres per shower, perhaps you could spoil yourself with a slightly longer shower on the weekend as an indulgence.

A month of efficient showering and the money you will have saved on lower water and energy bills will have paid for the showerhead and the timer!