Tundrayeti, maybe you have an answer for this. It's something that's been ignored. ********* ************ ****** ********** *********** ************* *************** *********** ************** ************ ********* ********** What on earth is the point of those very low-flow shower heads? No matter how you slice it, it takes a certain volume of water to, say, rinse the soap off your body. More if you're a furry guy, more if you have long hair, etc. It doesn't matter if the water is trickling or going like Niagara, you still need the same amount of it to rinse off. Period. ********* ************ ************ ************** *************** ************** ************ *********** *********** *********** ************ ************ ************ ************** ********* ********** ********** ****** Hotels have gone with the low flow idea for years. It's become ordinary. It's also intensely irritating to have to stand in the shower for an extra half hour or so because the water is piddling out so slowly that you could lick the soap off faster than rinse it. Usually, I just turn on the tub faucet and rinse my hair that way. It is neither graceful or glamourous, but that's what it takes. ******** ****** ********* ************ ************* ************* *************** ************ ************** ********** ********* *********** ******** ********* ***** The other thing we've done (and this DOES save hot water) is turn the hot water tank above the standard setting. I know people will say that it should be lower - beware, your tank can easily become a bacteria-filled Petri dish if you turn it too low. However, turned UP means that you use less hot water by volume because the mixer then uses more cold than hot water to make things the right temperature. Proof? Our gas bill is a lot cheaper than our neighbor's even though we cook more than they do and keep the house warmer.

That's the long and short of it.

While some specific amount of water is needed to rinse off, that amount is actually quite low. Most people take a period of time in the shower based on how much they want to luxuriate under the steamy blast, and how long it takes to soap and scrub everything (and for women how long it takes to shave everything)... This length of time is relatively unchanged for the average person regardless of the shower flow, down to as little as ~1.5 gallons/minute. (most low-flow showerheads are ~2 gallons/minute). If you've had problems before, it's probably been in places that have low water pressure which resulted in significantly less than 1.5 gallons/minute... that's supposedly the point that people started taking more time.

So for most people a low-flow showerhead means you use less water.

As for turning your tank up... sorry, but that's not correct. You may have a more efficient water heater than your neighbor, or a more efficient furnace, or your neighbor might have a small leak, or whatever... but at no time does it become more efficient to turn your tank up... An anecdote for you: when I moved into my current house, I was very frustrated with the hot-water heater, because it was old. I swapped it out for a tankless heating system, and my power bill dropped by 30 dollars a month! I take 5-10 minute heated showers (with a low-flow showerhead) and literally never run the hot water for any other reason (wash dishes with cold water and antibacterial soap, do laundry with cold water, wash hands in cold water, shave with cold water, etc..)... My gas bill was through the roof because the tank was a piece of crap, not because of my lifestyle choices.

Heat transfer is partially based on the difference between the two temperatures - so your tank and your pipes will lose more energy more quickly the higher the temperature of your tank compared to ambient temps. But the big loss is in the pipes. Whenever you're waiting for the water to warm up, that's the water trapped in the pipes gradually being pumped out - replaced by new hot water from your tank. When you shut the hot water off... that hot water will begin gradually cooling to ambient temperature, and the heat value you put into the water is all wasted. So the hotter you heat your tank, the more heat is exhausted through the trapped and unused hot water in the pipes.

As far as the shower goes - you're heating a certain volume of water (based on your showerhead) to a certain degree... Energy wise - there's technically no difference between heating 20 gallons of water 50 degrees and heating 10 gallons of water 100 degrees to mix with 10 gallons of unheated water... the result is still 20 gallons of water heated 50 degrees, the energy needed there is the same. The only difference is the few gallons of water that is left in the pipes to cool to ambient temperature (and hence wasted).

I don't know what to say about your statement concerning bacteria... I have no tank. But it should be quite safe to have your tank at 115 (that should pasturize any bacteria over the course of a few hours, and render the tank a completely unacceptable place for bacterial growth)... So here's the challenge for you. After your next meter reading, lower your tank temp to 115 and try to live life as you have, and see what your gas bill looks like.

Of course, if you have a gas furnace you'll have to use year-over-year comparisons and calculate for weather... but I assure you that you will use less energy per month if you keep your tank temperature lower.

:)

but rather, letting the shower run which you soap your sexy littl....er, yourself up. Also, while it may seem you take longer to rinse off, so you assume you use more water, you actually use less, because much of the high flow water streams down your silky hair, you back, your naked shoulders, soft and soapy, then down your breas....er you lose a lot of water not used for rinsing

KA

Thanks! Yes, we did have to install a new water heater when we moved here four years ago (the house is only seven years old) because the builder managed to screw up the installation so that the original tank was rusted. It was only an extra $150.00 to put in a larger and MUCH more efficient tank, so I'm sure that's part of the savings. ******** *********** ************** **************** ********** ************** ************* *********** *** ********* ********** *********** **************** ***************** *********** ********* *************** **** As for the bacteria issue, a few years ago there was some environmental/"healer" guru who got a lot of press in Canada. One of the things he advocated was to turn the temperatures on hot water tanks down considerably below the recommended temperature. It took awhile, but a surprising number of people got sick because of it. Not only were there bacteria issues in the tanks themselves, dishwashers run at those low temperatures were not getting dishes clean. There were so many nasties inside those dishwashers and on those dishes that people literally got sick. The only real fix to the problem after that was to replace the appliances altogether. Expensive mistake....eh?

How low were these people turning their tanks down to?

It seems that if you had a 50 gallon tank, and had 3 people living in the same house (a small family), there would be no way that the family could manage with less than a certain amount of heat energy stored in that tank.

While I was telling you that energy-wise it's all the same (between 20 gallons heated 50 degrees vs 10 gallons heated 100 degrees mixed with 10 gallons unheated), it's certainly not the same VOLUME-wise. Turning the temperature down in the tank would result in more quickly depleting the hot water... that's a given. It seems that, for most families, turning the tank down to a level suitable for microbes would ensure there was not enough hot water for everyone to be comfortable...

So I guess I'm a bit surprised that the idea to turn your water heaters down below 105 would have caught on with many people...

In CANADA, no less, where the unheated water is fricken COLD.

Wow... Well, I guess people do funny things for the environment... (kind of the slogan of this strange "the Lantern" column).

:)

BTW, my dishwasher has its own water heater - that you can turn on or off (choosing low energy or HOT). I'm not sure why it wouldn't be able to fix itself by merely running a few HOT purge cycles...

People are weird. The idea was to keep any water that you immerse yourself in close to body temperature, which makes for a pretty darned cold shower as far as I'm concerned. But then I'm a confirmed, wine drinking, foie gras nibbling, soak-in-the-tub or long shower hedonist and I'm starting to get irritated with people who tell me I'm "wasting water" when I live in CHICAGO! On a GREAT LAKE!

Over the eco-obsession with water.

I think it's because the "heart" of the environmental movement in America is in California, which is desperate for water.

But regardless, water concerns are certainly regional issues. This article was the very first one I've seen where Nina acknowledged the regional nature of water concerns. (Hurray!)

But the energy issues are always an environmental concern... and hot water is a big enough energy consumption to be worth considering.

That said, body temperature water would suck for a shower... Count me out.

;)