So in my quest to further reduce our impact, and having no more CFL’s to install and already getting 70+mpg, I turned to our Master Bath. We have made significant cuts in our water use, including the installation of a new 2 stage toilet (only .8 gallons for urine) that has us down to 2-3000 gallons a month, but looking for more I jumped at the chance to test the Shower Start.
Install was an absolute snap-it literally took me longer to get it out of the box than it did to get it installed, and including Teflon tape in the package is just plain smart-amazing how something so small can make such a big difference! That little detail left me thinking how smart this company must be-that they really thought things thru. All psy-ops stuff, but it still worked on me. If you can turn an adjustable wrench both clockwise and counter clockwise you are qualified to install this gadget. Still, I was a skeptic-it wasn’t really a low flow shower head-how Green could it be?
I installed it late in the evening, and since I had spent a sweaty day gardening so I turned it on to give it a test run. I took a few seconds to reread the instructions to ensure I didn’t miss anything, closed the blinds and then stopped dead in a cold sweat. Why, you may ask? Because my shower stopped. That is not so bad, I knew that was going to happen-I installed the thing right? What stopped me dead was that the shower had only been on maybe 45 seconds. It was late-no one had used hot water in 4-5 hours-the pipes were cold. I don’t think I am that atypical in the morning-I turn the shower on, finish up matching socks or whatever and when I notice steam coming up I jump in. It is probably on average 5 minutes. The cold sweat was induced with the knowledge that I had been wasting at least 15 gallons of water every shower of my adult life. 15 heated gallons mind you. Rough math of 5 showers/wk for 20 years equals a savings of, oh, 78,000 gallons of heated water. Sweet Jesus! Suffice it to say I am a huge fan of the Shower Start-and yes its Green!
Combined between the Shower Start and my new low flow with shut off I can now take a full length (10 minutes-I am indulgent) shower on less than 10 gallons of water-2 gallons to warm up, and the shower is now off for at least half the time for lathering thanks to that handy little button. Old shower head w/o the Shower Start would have equated to say 35 gallons (15ish minutes @ 2.5). That is a huge savings over a family of 4 showering most days. Total out of pocket for both is a reasonable $60, and install for both takes no longer than just doing one or the other. This install will have a quick payback of under a year, and the Green Factor is quite high-I rank it up there with CFL’s and hybrids in impact per dollar spent, albeit with no science to back up that claim.
-Beo
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