11 ms·

Mist Showers: Sustainable Decadence?

78 points by howard941 7y ago

choeger 7y ago
This is really getting ridiculous. By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth and while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources. So yes, warm water consumption might be a thing in ever denser megacities, but please stop to greenshame every single habit of an industrial society and simply reconsider the typical source of energy. For small houses, solar thermic or photovoltaic collectors should do just fine, for bigger ones, consider distributed heat networks or small scale combined powerplants. And should you live in an area, where water is indeed a scarce resource, make a distinction between greywater and wastewater.
- CapitalistCartr 7y ago
  The author makes clear it saves water and energy without sacrificing comfort: "Jonas writes about his shower that 'it is not all a compromise in comfort, as it is sometimes suggested in the research papers of the 1970s' and I totally agree." So substantially more efficient with no loss of living standard. As for energy: " . . . while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources." All energy can be obtained from carbon-neutral sources, but as it's fungible, all savings are beneficial. Conservation is the lowest hanging fruit. I think your greenshaming diatribe is more personal.
  - cowmoo728 7y ago
    I think it's a reaction to people constantly saying "take shorter showers!" when doing that would have minimal effect on climate change. Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis.
    - coldpie 7y ago
      > Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis. Maybe, but people minimize the impact of day-to-day living. Which do you think is higher: US carbon emissions from passenger vehicles, or US carbon emissions from freight trucks, ships, trains and airplanes combined? In fact, it is passenger vehicles. Does your modern city dweller drive to work every day instead of taking transit? Individual choices really do have a real impact, it's not all due to industry and agriculture. Don't minimize the impact of individual choices. Source, US EPA: "The Transportation sector includes the movement of people and goods by cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes, and other vehicles. The majority of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions resulting from the combustion of petroleum-based products, like gasoline, in internal combustion engines. The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars and light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans. These sources account for over half of the emissions from the transportation sector. The remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector come from other modes of transportation, including freight trucks, commercial aircraft, ships, boats, and trains, as well as pipelines and lubricants." https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
      - wffurr 7y ago
        What's the point of comparing vehicle emissions to the energy cost of hot showers? In fact, reducing access to long hot showers might increase vehicle emissions as fewer people would be inclined to bicycle, especially in hot weather.
        coldpie 7y ago
        I'm not. The person I'm replying to said, "industrial and agricultural ... pollution [is] massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis." Many people use this premise as an excuse to avoid making changes in their own lives. However, my point is that it is a false premise. Industrial pollution is actually not massive compared to individual pollution.
  - t34543 7y ago
    I think you sacrifice a lot of comfort with a mist shower. I enjoy high GPM showers - because it feels really good and it’s one of my favorite things every morning. hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off, I imagine it would be even harder in a misting system.
    - logfromblammo 7y ago
      I imagine that all the little mist ports would almost immediately clog with lime scale, and the shower would quickly be reduced to utter uselessness.
      - Klathmon 7y ago
        If they're anything like the misting irrigation systems, they never clog even if they are literally covered in dirt and mud for most of their life.
        icebraining 7y ago
        Covered is fine, because the water pressure can clear out the path. The problem is stuff inside the pipes.
        Klathmon 7y ago
        the ones at a place I worked used reclaimed water. I don't know how well filtered or treated it was, but I know that it would leave horrible water spots all over anyone who parked too close to them.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      >hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off Isn't it the opposite (i.e. soft water is the problematic one)?
      - t34543 7y ago
        Yes, you’re absolutely correct. I was mistaken.
  - tlarkworthy 7y ago
    I am with the OP, I think a lot of suggestions come from people with no quantitate intuition. Switching shower tech will not move the needle in any useful way. In fact, think it will be harmful in some ways as it further acclimates a sloppy non-quantitate approach to resource efficiency.
  - scythe 7y ago
    I used mist showerheads in the freshman dorms at Georgia Tech. In my experience, it absolutely was a huge sacrifice of comfort. I was always excited to take a real shower every time I went home for vacation.
- Klathmon 7y ago
  The article does put some numbers to the energy needed to heat the water. They estimate it at being equal to driving 3.5 – 7 km with a relatively fuel efficient car per shower. They also say they didn't count the energy costs from water treatment and distribution. And they also point out that all of the current wind turbines in the world could only power 1 billion people's daily shower, only considering the heating of the water... If there's a way to reduce the cost of showering without any significant decrease in quality of life, why not encourage it?
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  I agree. A low-flow toilet still takes ~5 litres to flush; definitely the obvious thing to do is capture the used shower/sink water into a reservoir that then is used to flush the toilet throughout the day. If the reservoir is inside, then even the energy used to heat the water is not lost, as it will warm the house while the tank cools down. But whenever I've looked into greywater capture systems, they seem mostly focused on an outdoor storage drum with rain-barrel type applications in mind (garden irrigation, etc). I mean, the other option is just not to have a shower every single day. I know the thought is horrifying to some, but a fully-grown adult can be perfectly presentable on 2-3 showers a week.
  - throwaway123x2 7y ago
    I start stinking after ~18 hours no matter what deodorant I use.
    - shantly 7y ago
      I need a couple showers a day or my bedding would start to collect oils & such so much that it starts causing skin issues when I sleep in it. I mean it does anyway but slowly enough that I can go a reasonable amount of time between washing it. A lot of my saved water and energy from showers would just go to washing all my bedding every day or two. [EDIT] of course I could clean off some other way, too, but dropping to only bathing in any serious fashion less than once a day is not something I'm much interested in trying, for this reason if no other.
    - airstrike 7y ago
      Review your dietary habits (certain foods will make you stink much more, probably booze as well if I had to guess) and switch to an antiperspirant brand like Certain Dri
    - Filligree 7y ago
      Do you use soap, on anything but your hands? That seems to be a prime cause of smelliness, and it's entirely unnecessary.
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  Water isn't really scarce but it is over-extracted and as per typical in this overly individualist society, that gets thrown back on the individual to make tokenistic gestures of self sacrifice by buying more stuff. The correct solution to over-extraction is political policies that put the health of the whole environment, including surface and ground water, above the selfishness of industry.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  I think people aren't as aware of how power intensive showers are as maybe they should be. It takes roughly 10kw to provide a decent instant hot water shower. That's roughly the output of 40 domestic solar panels at 100% capacity. Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Taken another way it's the same amount of energy as it required to propel a scooter or small motorcycle along at 50mph. How many people start their showers several minutes before the are actually ready to step into them?
  - icebraining 7y ago
    > Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Or you could just slowly heat water in a well insulated tank. And if you paint your tank black and put it in the sun, you may even be able to skip the PV panels :)
  - Filligree 7y ago
    Is it common where you're from to use 10kW water heaters for a shower? We've got that at our cottage (gas-based, not electrical), but that's mainly because there's no grid connection. Everywhere else I've been, people just use tanks. It might take a few hours to heat up from nothing, but even a mid-sized tank can easily do 2-3 showers.
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      At a wild guess I'd say 50% of UK homes would have at least one instant hot water electric shower. The other option being a power shower driven from the hot water loop on their gas central heating.
  - howard941 7y ago
    You can heat water with DC and no inverter. Finding a DC water heater that's safe and inexpensive and voltage swing-tolerant might be a challenge.
- oddeyed 7y ago
  You've approached this as if you're concerned that someone will take away your shower. You could also view this article as saying "hey, look at this low-cost and low-resource-intensity way to make luxurious daily showers accessible to more people!" There's a huge number of people around the world who want better lives, the true challenge of the environmental crisis is how that can be delivered without trashing nature (and maybe inadvertently destroying our own civilisation).
  - benologist 7y ago
    If you get enough drought daily showers may indeed be threatened - about ten years ago my city took drastic steps to reduce the time spent in showers by distributing 4 minute timers to use as part of a larger effort to reduce residential water consumption. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-conserve-brisbane24-2009nov24-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-co...
- justinph 7y ago
  Water is more scarce than you think. We're depleting groundwater faster than it is being replenished in a _vast_ swath of the country. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/06/mapping-strain-our-water/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/0... Even in regions where surface water is plentiful, making water fit for human use is a _significant_ user of energy. Even if it was cold water, it takes a lot of energy to pump water, filter water, and treat water after use.
  - coding123 7y ago
    There are people that know this. The vast majority of people are totally ignoring it. You can even type this, it will be skipped over. It's an absolute nightmare waiting to happen.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Depleting groundwater is mostly caused by agriculture, which in effect, is literally exporting water. Treated sewage is available for reuse as treated drinking water (sticking your wastewater treatment plant upstream of your water treatment plant makes people less squeamish about the idea), which means that it can form part of a cycle with >95% reuse capability. Reducing the amount in that flow doesn't do much to solve the water stress issues, particularly if people choose to reduce that component instead of the other components (such as lawn care) that actually do matter greatly.
- Tharkun 7y ago
  > by no means is water scarce in many regions What regions have this apparent overabundance of drinking water? And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). > while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources. Is it? Where can I get one of these magical devices today? And do they work reliably in all climates? Specifically in those where drinking water is apparently abundant and where waste water treatment is free?
  - choeger 7y ago
    > And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). It is suffering from too little water consumption, actually: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-Irrsinn-laesst-Deutschlands-Staedte-stinken.html https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-I... Where can I get one of these magical devices today? Here, for instance: https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html
    - Tharkun 7y ago
      Good luck getting solar water heaters to heat your 8liter/minute shower in the winter in those places where water is abundant. The article discusses a realistic approach to save large amounts of energy and to bring more comfort to water/energy poor regions. You, on the other hand, are peddling a fantasy.
- boomlinde 7y ago
  > This is really getting ridiculous. What's getting ridiculous here is the definition of "greenshaming". If you find the mere description of a more energy efficient alternative shameful, that's on you, not on the author of the article. > By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth And in many places it is. What's your point? The point of the blog is to point out and remind us of low-tech and obsolete solutions to conserve energy and depletable resources. As the article points out, you can "steamify" a regular shower at low cost and waste less freshwater. Whichever energy source you use to heat water then, you'll need less of it.
  - wffurr 7y ago
    Thea article literally opens with "The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels". I don't think that's true, even for 70 L "wasteful" showers.
    - Daishiman 7y ago
      It is absolutely, completely true that a 70L warm shower for every human being is unsustainable; it even backs it up by comparing the amount of electrical energy needed to heat up that volume of water with the current production of wind energy worldwide.
      - Accujack 7y ago
        "Sustainable" or "Unsustainable" are imprecise terms. Our Sun is unsustainable long term if you think in terms of billions of years. What matters to many people here is whether a given use of energy makes a significant difference in present contributions to anthropogenic climate change. There's an unfortunate tendency for environmentalist folks to pile on to the idea of preventing climate change as validation for their views and to speak as if all actions which can be undertaken to benefit the environment are equally important to prevent a climate apocalypse. They are not. Personally, I'm in favor of widespread use of Nuclear generating stations. They're sustainable for millennia in terms of fuel abundance and the needed storage space for waste as well as being very low emitters of CO2 even when you amortize the amount of greenhouse gases generated during construction over their lifetime.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Water is not scarce, no, but safe and consumable water is; usually that's groundwater, and at this moment groundwater is used at a higher rate than it's being replenished (and remember that it takes hundreds if not thousands of years for e.g. rainfall to become groundwater). There have been instances in hot summers where water pressure has been lowered to reduce consumption. And there's a water crisis in Cape Town (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis) where they basically ran out of water. So while most of us live fairly comfortably with running water, it's not something to take for granted. We had a long, very dry summer last year and it still has an effect on a lot of things. (in our case, dikes dried out too much which weakened them, enough to cause a problem in case of floods)
- mcv 7y ago
  It's not ridiculous at all. Salt sea water is not scarce, but clean fresh water is absolutely scarce in many places on Earth. There's a very good reason why many homes moved towards those 'low flow' showers 30 years ago: wasting less water. As the article points out, wasting less water automatically means wasting less energy (mostly for heating the water, but also cleaning and pumping it). Unfortunately the savings from those more efficient showers from 30 years ago have been undone by those fancy rain showers that everybody wants nowadays. Fortunately there are also rain showers that recycle the unused water; most shower water goes down the drain completely unused and quite clean. These shower systems recycle the clean water and as a result use much, much less water per minute[0]. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-loop-shower-is-cleaner-greener-and-can-save-you-1000-per-year https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-...
  - cpwright 7y ago
    The ridiculous showers are in part a reaction to the limitations of low-flow shower heads. You can get around the limit of 2.5 GPM per head by having multiple heads that add to more than 2.5 GPM.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Shower water is going to go into the sanitary sewer, which, if your municipality is smart, is going to discharge upstream of your water treatment intake. Since the sewer and water system would effectively form a mostly-closed loop, reducing the amount of water you dump into the sewer isn't going to have a meaningful impact on the total water you're withdrawing from the environment--it's the lawn care (depending on the aquifer configurations) and agricultural water usage that removes the water from the system entirely.
    - mcv 7y ago
      Are there many municipalities that are that smart? I'm not so sure most municipalities even have separate sewer systems for toilets vs showers. And if they don't, then this is absolutely going to have an impact. Though I agree that lawn care and agricultural water use are massive issues.
- deleted 7y ago
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- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  I live just outside the English Lake District, a region famous for both its beauty and sheer ridiculous abundance of excess water. It rains a lot round these parts (though that's changing). It's how it got to be the Lake District in the first place. Let me tell you what's ridiculous. Local news is telling how we can soon expect water shortages as rainfall patterns change and the entitled in water-deprived London get increasingly frequent in calls to take ours or our neighbours in God's own country - Yorkshire, as it's long past time for a national water grid etc. Purely because they are running out and not trying to manage their use. The south east's main water utility isn't being fined £100m a day for all the leaks they aren't fixing (apparently they have a terrible record, one of the worst in the country - if not the worst, for fixing leaks). I see no building regulations mandating greywater recovery in the short of water south east, or heat exchange from waste water. Just increasing calls to take someone else's and give them a water shortage problem too. Then no doubt continue ever wider until everyone has a water shortage. A little way south of here, Coca bleeding Cola (or maybe Pepsi, I forget) stuck in the most ridiculous plant to produce clever water. Apparently without limit. Extract millions of gallons yearly, distil it to purify it - at massive energy waste, then add a precise recipe of ingredients and minerals unrelated to the spring source they took it from. What's the fucking point of that? Just use the tap anywhere on the planet. Oh wait, they'd have to pay for their resource waste by the litre then. I think it is more accurate to say: Every single habit of industrial society has deliberately forgotten the connection with inputs, planet, sustainability, with encouragement from commerce and government. Once those inputs were always implicit in an activity, now it's an "externality" that can conveniently be ignored and pretend it doesn't matter. Few individuals have any connection with where stuff comes from any more, or the underlying cost. That is where the shame should lie. That's how everyone got in this mess - of resource depletion, climate heating, species loss, habitat loss and all the rest in the first place. All in my lifetime. So no, discouraging profligate waste is not ridiculous - regardless of if a mist shower is a practical idea or not. Probably easier to shower every other day as unless you work down a mine you're unlikely to actually need daily. In short, sustainable needs to be everywhere, in everything, always.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  It was already ridiculous 10 years ago. The individuals that are receptive to it are already on board. Asking them to shower less or use less in the shower is playing right into the "dirty hippy" stereotype. You may not be able to smell the difference on an extreme-water-saving hygiene regime, but those who do take regular showers, using as much water as necessary, can detect it. Sesqui-daily (morning, evening, skip, repeat) "Navy showers", taken cold, are probably the best one can do without sacrificing inoffensiveness towards the end of the inter-bathing interval, as measured by a nose that is not already acclimated to your specific body odor. This requires a shower head with a powerful, relatively narrow spray, to blast the soap off fast, even with hard water. If you are not on board a ship with a limited supply of fresh water, or living in a bona fide desert, or experiencing a lengthy drought, it is not necessary to attempt this. Your individual contribution to freshwater usage is entirely insignificant compared with industrial and agricultural use. Every shower you will ever take during your entire lifetime is likely to be less than 4 acre-feet in total. California alone uses more than 30 million acre-feet of irrigation water every year. Great Plains farms collectively use enough water to deplete one of the largest underground aquifers on the planet. It's not you. If you really want to conserve, invent or improve an irrigation scheme, with installation and operating costs as cheap as center-pivot, that uses 1% less water. Then you could shower every waking moment of the rest of your life, under a 5 gpm showerhead, and still come out ahead on planetary karma.
- DataGata 7y ago
  Fresh water is a scarce resource, but only because it is required to feed the enormous number of plants needed to feed an enormous amount of livestock.
equalunique 7y ago
I really appreciate this article. It hasn't sold me on mist showers, but the panorama of alternative showering techniques was eye opening. Maybe the Dutch rain shower is for me.
- t34543 7y ago
  Deluge showers are a step above rain showers - and are quite pleasurable.
- vzidex 7y ago
  Having used rain showers at various fancy hotels, I am not a fan of them. The ones I've experienced don't pressurize the water, they just let it fall on you - the experience ends up being closer to standing in the rain than to a shower, and that takes all the enjoyment out of it for me.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
I've had a recurring idea to build a water recycling shower. The idea being the water is initially stored in a tank below the shower, pumped up through the shower head and returned to the tank via the drain. A (hopefully) small amount of hot water is added to the tank to maintain the temperature of the water and to introduce more clean water. Some degree of filtering would obviously be required on the return path, at the very least to remove hair which would damage the pump but hopefully also removing soap suds etc. I'm not sure if it would really work but it seems like it would be ideal for some situations, for example in motorhomes, small yachts etc.
- hapidjus 7y ago
  Have a look at this https://orbital-systems.com/ https://orbital-systems.com/
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    It makes sense that there's a filter you have to change, but I don't see a lot of information on what the filter is other than an offer to get on a six month subscription service for it, presuming it's a disposable. Hopefully it's not some locked-in proprietary thing, at any rate. Love the design, though— could definitely picture installing this or something like it in a future bathroom reno.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  There's an open source design of this at https://showerloop.org/ https://showerloop.org/
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    Nice. I've tried searching for it before but clearly didn't get the right combination of keywords. Mostly I've found people using the waste water to pre-heat the supply (which itself is a good idea but doesn't solve the water capacity problem).
Dirlewanger 7y ago
Mist showers may be OK for people with short hair, but it's a no-go for those with long hair. You need a decent amount of flow/water pressure to be able to get all shampoo/conditioner out.
- kaikai 7y ago
  I don’t have long hair anymore but also read through this and thought, “this guy must have a shaved head.” In order to rinse hair clean, you need quite a bit of water. If the shower is too low-flow (like dorm or gym showers often are in California), it takes much longer to do a good job, which kinda defeats the purpose of saving water.
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    Shaved head and sparse body hair. Even if you aren't that hirsute yourself, try washing a dog with an extra-low-flow showerhead. It's a miserable experience for everyone.
_Microft 7y ago
Does anyone have experience with these nozzles and calcareous water? We get chalky deposits on the kitchen sink, electric kettle, even the surface edge of the fish tank (and that after blending the water for the fishes 1:1 with collected rainwater) in no time and need to remove it frequently. The nozzles look like as if they would be clogged after a few uses, especially as the problem gets worse with warm/hot water. Anyone has experience with that?
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  It will be an issue indeed. Get a filter system. There are small in-line ones for just before your showerhead, or larger whole-home systems. Many options exist, start with a water analysis, and go from there. You may benefit from a 'softener' more than a filter system. I find a cheap cleanable particulate filter placed before any media type filter to increase efficiency and lifespan.
- Filligree 7y ago
  Huh, I've never had to deal with hard water in my fishtank(s). Usually I'm adding hardness, not removing it. What sort of fish do you keep? I imagine tetras wouldn't do too well in that, so that's my favorite setup out the door.
  - _Microft 7y ago
    I can't say for sure, they are not mine personally. A few are a kind of catfish (small, no longer than 10-12cm). Having such hard water is not great but it would be difficult to do otherwise. They are thriving, in case you were concerned.
    - Filligree 7y ago
      I'm not doubting that, mostly just curious. There are entire groups of fish which I cannot keep because I'd need continuous hardness monitoring(, and water replacements would get expensive).
- bloopernova 7y ago
orliesaurus 7y ago
I love the idea, being aware that long showers are detrimental to our planet and all! However, IMHO, there are things we could do that would impact energy savings on a 100x scale compared to showering with a mist shower. First thing that comes to mind, those hundreds of big offices in every city, that keep their lights on, on every floor (!!), every single night.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Every city? Certainly not, I remember no such thing where I've lived. Why would they do that?!
  - orliesaurus 7y ago
    You must be living/lived in a very energy conscious city - do you mind if I ask where do you live/lived that didn't have office lights running at night?
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Lisbon. There may be exceptions, but I can't think of any office building with more than just a few windows lit late at night. It's probably more due to cost-savings than environmental concerns, though. The offices I worked on in Brussels and Luxembourg also went dark, but I'm not sure if that was common throughout the city.
- benatkin 7y ago
  It would be better to cut energy use during peak time. In Phoenix during the sunmertime that's between 2pm and 8pm. https://srpnet.com/prices/home/tou.aspx https://srpnet.com/prices/home/tou.aspx
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Whataboutism and power consumption is not equivalent to water consumption. That said, IDK what city you live in, but most offices I know have energy-efficient lighting (used to be TL, nowadays LED) and motion sensors. If you do want to make a "what about" point though, highlighting how consumers only use a relatively small percentage of power compared to companies - think any IT company with datacenters, large scale shipping, but also Bitcoin and co - and shaming individuals into stuff like using less water, going vegetarian or change their bulbs is putting the blame in the wrong direction.
mberning 7y ago
I don't understand the obsession with sending civilization back to the stone age for the sake of "sustainability". I like hot showers. I would rather focus on new technology that makes producing fresh hot water in abundance nearly free and with minimal impact to the environment.
- icebraining 7y ago
  The question is whether we can keep our current lifestyle until such technology exists.
hashberry 7y ago
I admire the passion the author has for mist shower tech, but the "carbon footprint" is a tough argument, especially since we spend so much water "showering" our lawns/yards.[0] That "rain showers" faucet looks pretty slick and I think I might upgrade to that. [0] Landscaping is the second largest component of water consumption in California at 9% of total use. https://priceonomics.com/california-lawn-watering-economics/ https://priceonomics.com/california-lawn-watering-economics/
- Klathmon 7y ago
  It's not about the water usage on it's own, but more about the energy usage required to heat, treat, and transport the water. According to the article "Hot water production accounts for the second most significant use of energy in many homes (after heating), and much of it is used for showering."
  - mcv 7y ago
    It's definitely about the heat, but it's also about the water usage on its own. There are many places where fresh water is scarce. Cleaning water also takes energy, and in some places, any kind of water is scarce.
mrob 7y ago
Increased comfort in exchange for increased risk of fatal lung disease sounds like a bad trade-off to me. I think I'll stick with the Navy shower technique, which is already comfortable enough so long as the shower room isn't too cold.
Jamwinner 7y ago
I recall bucky fuller always had mist showers in his future home demos. He always said, and it stuck with me, that his ideas were not for his lifetime, but for when humanity needed them. I think we would do well to catalog these type of ideas for periodic revisitation as the world inevitably changes.
hanoz 7y ago
Sounds like a recipe for Legionnaires' Disease to me.
- oehpr 7y ago
  No doubt a mister would basically guarantee you'd aspirate the bacteria if your hot water tank was contaminated. But I'm having difficulty seeing how you wouldn't also aspirate the bacteria with a shower head anyway. Are there a bunch of homes who take showers with legionaries contaminated water that manage to avoid infection?
crazyjncsu 7y ago
Thanks, but I'll stick with my Commando 450: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMITcQUe-9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMITcQUe-9M But seriously, even I get concerned with the green movements when they seem to be coming for each part of my life I hold sacred-- a nice warm shower (or two!) is a highlight of my day. And to rationalize: I am also constantly looking for ways to reduce energy usage, so I looked into capturing the heat lost from a shower. First I measured the difference in the shower head outlet temperature and the drain temperature. I found about 75% of the heat is released before even entering the drain. So it goes into my body (yay), the air, or the floor system. I suspect the majority of the next 25% is released in the drain system that is either part of the conditioned space of the house or in the semi-conditioned crawlspace. So the heating cost/fuel of the water is offsetting my HVAC cost/fuel. Additionally, the shower boosts humidity which is the #1 energy efficient method of feeling warmer in a cold, dry house. Notes: If you can leave the water to cool down by not draining a tub, you'll gain even more. Or take a bath. If you're using electricity to resistant-heat your water (highly inefficient), you should address that first. This doesn't apply in the summer, so I bathe in the outdoor pool, usually.
- authoritarian 7y ago
  >even I get concerned with the green movements when they seem to be coming for each part of my life I hold sacred-- a nice warm shower (or two!) is a highlight of my day. How is this article an example of "coming for each part of your life" you hold sacred? Did they state, or even imply, anywhere in the article that they were going to go around and force people to be environmentally conscious?
reeddavid 7y ago
I have followed the crowdfund-launched Nebia shower, which looks like a similar mist technology: https://nebia.com https://nebia.com I’ve been curious about it, but it’s kind of hard to try a permanently installed plumbing fixture without buying it.
- aza05001 7y ago
  I have 3 of these installed in my house. they are pretty amazing. Wouldn't go back to a conventional shower head.
ttraub 7y ago
A reasonable compromise might be one of the high efficiency shower heads that have been around for decades, e.g. the Delta. These gadgets have been around since at least the 1980s, come with an on-off switch to shut off the H2O while you soap down, and cut the flow while increasing the intensity. It's almost ideal. In fact I need to make a trip to the hardware store and pick up a couple to replace the lame heads in our two bathrooms. These types of heads simulate the mister experience but also spray the water quite intensely, almost painfully, if that makes any sense :) Regarding energy use, it seems to me that solar thermal is the way to go; you can keep your tank pretty hot during the day and if it's properly insulated, should minimize energy use at night. If you're showering early in the morning, though, you'll probably be burning some fossil fuel, but if you can time your showers to be mid-day or evening, would be optimal. In Phoenix, probably every fifth house has solar hot water; it just makes economic sense. When we traveled in the Middle East (mainly Israel), every house and apartment building seemed to have solar hot water. If it makes economic sense (and the tax credit also helps), people will adopt it. I'd be reluctant to support some kind of mandated regulatory approach that forces a less pleasant shower experience on everyone; as others here have mentioned, the shower is one of life's great luxuries.
authoritarian 7y ago
I'll never understand why articles discussing environmentalism are always met with a certain amount of comments where people seem to be angry, offended, or otherwise upset as if they're being personally attacked. The police aren't going to come around forcing you to give up your current shower. Spreading awareness of ways to live one's life in a less wasteful well is a good thing, and the emotionally charged negative comments are a step in the wrong direction
- bloopernova 7y ago
  I wonder how much of it is based in fear of losing their creature comforts. Anger can definitely stem from perceiving a threat subconsciously and not realizing the cause and effect happening very quickly within your own amygdala/brain.
- simonsarris 7y ago
  > The police aren't going to come around forcing you to give up your current shower. I mean, they did do that? Federal law from 1992 mandates the gpm flow of shower heads. The law says: > "all faucet fixtures manufactured in the United States restrict maximum water flow at or below 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at 80 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure or 2.2 gpm at 60 psi." In 2005 the feds had to pay a visit to a shower head manufacturer last decade to force them to stop producing non-conforming shower heads: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-says-shower-heads-too-wet-1190772.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-says-shower-... Literally the police aren't going to come around forcing you to give up your current shower, they're just forcing all companies to produce and sell only certain kinds of showers. Why wouldn't a reasonable person who cares about something like this feel personally attacked? They already were attacked! There seems to be no reason to assume that federal law that already exists around this issue won't tighten more. In their eyes you're basically saying: "Why are people worried the government will interfere with [things they've been interfering with for decades]?" (note I personally don't care about this issue, but it seems like there's already a history of forcing XYZ on people here, so it seems natural that people would resist further intrusion or whatever. "What if that's good" is a separate argument.)
sterkekoffie 7y ago
Can anyone brighter than me tell me the more specific names of the "brass mist nozzles" and "6mm hose adapter"?
RickJWagner 7y ago
I wonder if those plastic tubes get moldy after a while...

78 points by howard941 7y ago

This is really getting ridiculous. By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth and while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources. So yes, warm water consumption might be a thing in ever denser megacities, but please stop to greenshame every single habit of an industrial society and simply reconsider the typical source of energy. For small houses, solar thermic or photovoltaic collectors should do just fine, for bigger ones, consider distributed heat networks or small scale combined powerplants. And should you live in an area, where water is indeed a scarce resource, make a distinction between greywater and wastewater.

CapitalistCartr 7y ago
The author makes clear it saves water and energy without sacrificing comfort: "Jonas writes about his shower that 'it is not all a compromise in comfort, as it is sometimes suggested in the research papers of the 1970s' and I totally agree." So substantially more efficient with no loss of living standard. As for energy: " . . . while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources." All energy can be obtained from carbon-neutral sources, but as it's fungible, all savings are beneficial. Conservation is the lowest hanging fruit. I think your greenshaming diatribe is more personal.
- cowmoo728 7y ago
  I think it's a reaction to people constantly saying "take shorter showers!" when doing that would have minimal effect on climate change. Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis.
  - coldpie 7y ago
    > Industrial and agricultural water use, and pollution, are massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis. Maybe, but people minimize the impact of day-to-day living. Which do you think is higher: US carbon emissions from passenger vehicles, or US carbon emissions from freight trucks, ships, trains and airplanes combined? In fact, it is passenger vehicles. Does your modern city dweller drive to work every day instead of taking transit? Individual choices really do have a real impact, it's not all due to industry and agriculture. Don't minimize the impact of individual choices. Source, US EPA: "The Transportation sector includes the movement of people and goods by cars, trucks, trains, ships, airplanes, and other vehicles. The majority of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions resulting from the combustion of petroleum-based products, like gasoline, in internal combustion engines. The largest sources of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions include passenger cars and light-duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans. These sources account for over half of the emissions from the transportation sector. The remaining greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector come from other modes of transportation, including freight trucks, commercial aircraft, ships, boats, and trains, as well as pipelines and lubricants." https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#transportation https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
    - wffurr 7y ago
      What's the point of comparing vehicle emissions to the energy cost of hot showers? In fact, reducing access to long hot showers might increase vehicle emissions as fewer people would be inclined to bicycle, especially in hot weather.
      - coldpie 7y ago
        I'm not. The person I'm replying to said, "industrial and agricultural ... pollution [is] massive compared to anything a modern city dweller does on a daily basis." Many people use this premise as an excuse to avoid making changes in their own lives. However, my point is that it is a false premise. Industrial pollution is actually not massive compared to individual pollution.
- t34543 7y ago
  I think you sacrifice a lot of comfort with a mist shower. I enjoy high GPM showers - because it feels really good and it’s one of my favorite things every morning. hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off, I imagine it would be even harder in a misting system.
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    I imagine that all the little mist ports would almost immediately clog with lime scale, and the shower would quickly be reduced to utter uselessness.
    - Klathmon 7y ago
      If they're anything like the misting irrigation systems, they never clog even if they are literally covered in dirt and mud for most of their life.
      - icebraining 7y ago
        Covered is fine, because the water pressure can clear out the path. The problem is stuff inside the pipes.
        Klathmon 7y ago
        the ones at a place I worked used reclaimed water. I don't know how well filtered or treated it was, but I know that it would leave horrible water spots all over anyone who parked too close to them.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    >hard water makes it difficult to rinse soap off Isn't it the opposite (i.e. soft water is the problematic one)?
    - t34543 7y ago
      Yes, you’re absolutely correct. I was mistaken.
- tlarkworthy 7y ago
  I am with the OP, I think a lot of suggestions come from people with no quantitate intuition. Switching shower tech will not move the needle in any useful way. In fact, think it will be harmful in some ways as it further acclimates a sloppy non-quantitate approach to resource efficiency.
- scythe 7y ago
  I used mist showerheads in the freshman dorms at Georgia Tech. In my experience, it absolutely was a huge sacrifice of comfort. I was always excited to take a real shower every time I went home for vacation.
Klathmon 7y ago
The article does put some numbers to the energy needed to heat the water. They estimate it at being equal to driving 3.5 – 7 km with a relatively fuel efficient car per shower. They also say they didn't count the energy costs from water treatment and distribution. And they also point out that all of the current wind turbines in the world could only power 1 billion people's daily shower, only considering the heating of the water... If there's a way to reduce the cost of showering without any significant decrease in quality of life, why not encourage it?
mikepurvis 7y ago
I agree. A low-flow toilet still takes ~5 litres to flush; definitely the obvious thing to do is capture the used shower/sink water into a reservoir that then is used to flush the toilet throughout the day. If the reservoir is inside, then even the energy used to heat the water is not lost, as it will warm the house while the tank cools down. But whenever I've looked into greywater capture systems, they seem mostly focused on an outdoor storage drum with rain-barrel type applications in mind (garden irrigation, etc). I mean, the other option is just not to have a shower every single day. I know the thought is horrifying to some, but a fully-grown adult can be perfectly presentable on 2-3 showers a week.
- throwaway123x2 7y ago
  I start stinking after ~18 hours no matter what deodorant I use.
  - shantly 7y ago
    I need a couple showers a day or my bedding would start to collect oils & such so much that it starts causing skin issues when I sleep in it. I mean it does anyway but slowly enough that I can go a reasonable amount of time between washing it. A lot of my saved water and energy from showers would just go to washing all my bedding every day or two. [EDIT] of course I could clean off some other way, too, but dropping to only bathing in any serious fashion less than once a day is not something I'm much interested in trying, for this reason if no other.
  - airstrike 7y ago
    Review your dietary habits (certain foods will make you stink much more, probably booze as well if I had to guess) and switch to an antiperspirant brand like Certain Dri
  - Filligree 7y ago
    Do you use soap, on anything but your hands? That seems to be a prime cause of smelliness, and it's entirely unnecessary.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
Water isn't really scarce but it is over-extracted and as per typical in this overly individualist society, that gets thrown back on the individual to make tokenistic gestures of self sacrifice by buying more stuff. The correct solution to over-extraction is political policies that put the health of the whole environment, including surface and ground water, above the selfishness of industry.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
I think people aren't as aware of how power intensive showers are as maybe they should be. It takes roughly 10kw to provide a decent instant hot water shower. That's roughly the output of 40 domestic solar panels at 100% capacity. Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Taken another way it's the same amount of energy as it required to propel a scooter or small motorcycle along at 50mph. How many people start their showers several minutes before the are actually ready to step into them?
- icebraining 7y ago
  > Of course you can buffer this with a battery bank but getting 10kw worth of inverter is non-trivial and the hit that a battery bank would take from providing that power would be challenging. Or you could just slowly heat water in a well insulated tank. And if you paint your tank black and put it in the sun, you may even be able to skip the PV panels :)
- Filligree 7y ago
  Is it common where you're from to use 10kW water heaters for a shower? We've got that at our cottage (gas-based, not electrical), but that's mainly because there's no grid connection. Everywhere else I've been, people just use tanks. It might take a few hours to heat up from nothing, but even a mid-sized tank can easily do 2-3 showers.
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    At a wild guess I'd say 50% of UK homes would have at least one instant hot water electric shower. The other option being a power shower driven from the hot water loop on their gas central heating.
- howard941 7y ago
  You can heat water with DC and no inverter. Finding a DC water heater that's safe and inexpensive and voltage swing-tolerant might be a challenge.
oddeyed 7y ago
You've approached this as if you're concerned that someone will take away your shower. You could also view this article as saying "hey, look at this low-cost and low-resource-intensity way to make luxurious daily showers accessible to more people!" There's a huge number of people around the world who want better lives, the true challenge of the environmental crisis is how that can be delivered without trashing nature (and maybe inadvertently destroying our own civilisation).
- benologist 7y ago
  If you get enough drought daily showers may indeed be threatened - about ten years ago my city took drastic steps to reduce the time spent in showers by distributing 4 minute timers to use as part of a larger effort to reduce residential water consumption. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-conserve-brisbane24-2009nov24-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-nov-24-la-me-co...
justinph 7y ago
Water is more scarce than you think. We're depleting groundwater faster than it is being replenished in a _vast_ swath of the country. See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/06/mapping-strain-our-water/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/08/0... Even in regions where surface water is plentiful, making water fit for human use is a _significant_ user of energy. Even if it was cold water, it takes a lot of energy to pump water, filter water, and treat water after use.
- coding123 7y ago
  There are people that know this. The vast majority of people are totally ignoring it. You can even type this, it will be skipped over. It's an absolute nightmare waiting to happen.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Depleting groundwater is mostly caused by agriculture, which in effect, is literally exporting water. Treated sewage is available for reuse as treated drinking water (sticking your wastewater treatment plant upstream of your water treatment plant makes people less squeamish about the idea), which means that it can form part of a cycle with >95% reuse capability. Reducing the amount in that flow doesn't do much to solve the water stress issues, particularly if people choose to reduce that component instead of the other components (such as lawn care) that actually do matter greatly.
Tharkun 7y ago
> by no means is water scarce in many regions What regions have this apparent overabundance of drinking water? And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). > while there is a certain amount of energy needed to heat the water for a daily shower it is very simple to obtain from carbon-neutral sources. Is it? Where can I get one of these magical devices today? And do they work reliably in all climates? Specifically in those where drinking water is apparently abundant and where waste water treatment is free?
- choeger 7y ago
  > And how's their waste water management? (Of which there is a lot more if people shower more). It is suffering from too little water consumption, actually: https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-Irrsinn-laesst-Deutschlands-Staedte-stinken.html https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article128369660/Wasserspar-I... Where can I get one of these magical devices today? Here, for instance: https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html https://www.solarbayer.com/solar-systems.html
  - Tharkun 7y ago
    Good luck getting solar water heaters to heat your 8liter/minute shower in the winter in those places where water is abundant. The article discusses a realistic approach to save large amounts of energy and to bring more comfort to water/energy poor regions. You, on the other hand, are peddling a fantasy.
boomlinde 7y ago
> This is really getting ridiculous. What's getting ridiculous here is the definition of "greenshaming". If you find the mere description of a more energy efficient alternative shameful, that's on you, not on the author of the article. > By no means is water scarce in many regions of the earth And in many places it is. What's your point? The point of the blog is to point out and remind us of low-tech and obsolete solutions to conserve energy and depletable resources. As the article points out, you can "steamify" a regular shower at low cost and waste less freshwater. Whichever energy source you use to heat water then, you'll need less of it.
- wffurr 7y ago
  Thea article literally opens with "The daily shower would be hard to sustain in a world without fossil fuels". I don't think that's true, even for 70 L "wasteful" showers.
  - Daishiman 7y ago
    It is absolutely, completely true that a 70L warm shower for every human being is unsustainable; it even backs it up by comparing the amount of electrical energy needed to heat up that volume of water with the current production of wind energy worldwide.
    - Accujack 7y ago
      "Sustainable" or "Unsustainable" are imprecise terms. Our Sun is unsustainable long term if you think in terms of billions of years. What matters to many people here is whether a given use of energy makes a significant difference in present contributions to anthropogenic climate change. There's an unfortunate tendency for environmentalist folks to pile on to the idea of preventing climate change as validation for their views and to speak as if all actions which can be undertaken to benefit the environment are equally important to prevent a climate apocalypse. They are not. Personally, I'm in favor of widespread use of Nuclear generating stations. They're sustainable for millennia in terms of fuel abundance and the needed storage space for waste as well as being very low emitters of CO2 even when you amortize the amount of greenhouse gases generated during construction over their lifetime.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Water is not scarce, no, but safe and consumable water is; usually that's groundwater, and at this moment groundwater is used at a higher rate than it's being replenished (and remember that it takes hundreds if not thousands of years for e.g. rainfall to become groundwater). There have been instances in hot summers where water pressure has been lowered to reduce consumption. And there's a water crisis in Cape Town (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis) where they basically ran out of water. So while most of us live fairly comfortably with running water, it's not something to take for granted. We had a long, very dry summer last year and it still has an effect on a lot of things. (in our case, dikes dried out too much which weakened them, enough to cause a problem in case of floods)
mcv 7y ago
It's not ridiculous at all. Salt sea water is not scarce, but clean fresh water is absolutely scarce in many places on Earth. There's a very good reason why many homes moved towards those 'low flow' showers 30 years ago: wasting less water. As the article points out, wasting less water automatically means wasting less energy (mostly for heating the water, but also cleaning and pumping it). Unfortunately the savings from those more efficient showers from 30 years ago have been undone by those fancy rain showers that everybody wants nowadays. Fortunately there are also rain showers that recycle the unused water; most shower water goes down the drain completely unused and quite clean. These shower systems recycle the clean water and as a result use much, much less water per minute[0]. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-loop-shower-is-cleaner-greener-and-can-save-you-1000-per-year https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170784-recycling-closed-...
- cpwright 7y ago
  The ridiculous showers are in part a reaction to the limitations of low-flow shower heads. You can get around the limit of 2.5 GPM per head by having multiple heads that add to more than 2.5 GPM.
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Shower water is going to go into the sanitary sewer, which, if your municipality is smart, is going to discharge upstream of your water treatment intake. Since the sewer and water system would effectively form a mostly-closed loop, reducing the amount of water you dump into the sewer isn't going to have a meaningful impact on the total water you're withdrawing from the environment--it's the lawn care (depending on the aquifer configurations) and agricultural water usage that removes the water from the system entirely.
  - mcv 7y ago
    Are there many municipalities that are that smart? I'm not so sure most municipalities even have separate sewer systems for toilets vs showers. And if they don't, then this is absolutely going to have an impact. Though I agree that lawn care and agricultural water use are massive issues.
deleted 7y ago
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NeedMoreTea 7y ago
I live just outside the English Lake District, a region famous for both its beauty and sheer ridiculous abundance of excess water. It rains a lot round these parts (though that's changing). It's how it got to be the Lake District in the first place. Let me tell you what's ridiculous. Local news is telling how we can soon expect water shortages as rainfall patterns change and the entitled in water-deprived London get increasingly frequent in calls to take ours or our neighbours in God's own country - Yorkshire, as it's long past time for a national water grid etc. Purely because they are running out and not trying to manage their use. The south east's main water utility isn't being fined £100m a day for all the leaks they aren't fixing (apparently they have a terrible record, one of the worst in the country - if not the worst, for fixing leaks). I see no building regulations mandating greywater recovery in the short of water south east, or heat exchange from waste water. Just increasing calls to take someone else's and give them a water shortage problem too. Then no doubt continue ever wider until everyone has a water shortage. A little way south of here, Coca bleeding Cola (or maybe Pepsi, I forget) stuck in the most ridiculous plant to produce clever water. Apparently without limit. Extract millions of gallons yearly, distil it to purify it - at massive energy waste, then add a precise recipe of ingredients and minerals unrelated to the spring source they took it from. What's the fucking point of that? Just use the tap anywhere on the planet. Oh wait, they'd have to pay for their resource waste by the litre then. I think it is more accurate to say: Every single habit of industrial society has deliberately forgotten the connection with inputs, planet, sustainability, with encouragement from commerce and government. Once those inputs were always implicit in an activity, now it's an "externality" that can conveniently be ignored and pretend it doesn't matter. Few individuals have any connection with where stuff comes from any more, or the underlying cost. That is where the shame should lie. That's how everyone got in this mess - of resource depletion, climate heating, species loss, habitat loss and all the rest in the first place. All in my lifetime. So no, discouraging profligate waste is not ridiculous - regardless of if a mist shower is a practical idea or not. Probably easier to shower every other day as unless you work down a mine you're unlikely to actually need daily. In short, sustainable needs to be everywhere, in everything, always.
logfromblammo 7y ago
It was already ridiculous 10 years ago. The individuals that are receptive to it are already on board. Asking them to shower less or use less in the shower is playing right into the "dirty hippy" stereotype. You may not be able to smell the difference on an extreme-water-saving hygiene regime, but those who do take regular showers, using as much water as necessary, can detect it. Sesqui-daily (morning, evening, skip, repeat) "Navy showers", taken cold, are probably the best one can do without sacrificing inoffensiveness towards the end of the inter-bathing interval, as measured by a nose that is not already acclimated to your specific body odor. This requires a shower head with a powerful, relatively narrow spray, to blast the soap off fast, even with hard water. If you are not on board a ship with a limited supply of fresh water, or living in a bona fide desert, or experiencing a lengthy drought, it is not necessary to attempt this. Your individual contribution to freshwater usage is entirely insignificant compared with industrial and agricultural use. Every shower you will ever take during your entire lifetime is likely to be less than 4 acre-feet in total. California alone uses more than 30 million acre-feet of irrigation water every year. Great Plains farms collectively use enough water to deplete one of the largest underground aquifers on the planet. It's not you. If you really want to conserve, invent or improve an irrigation scheme, with installation and operating costs as cheap as center-pivot, that uses 1% less water. Then you could shower every waking moment of the rest of your life, under a 5 gpm showerhead, and still come out ahead on planetary karma.
DataGata 7y ago
Fresh water is a scarce resource, but only because it is required to feed the enormous number of plants needed to feed an enormous amount of livestock.

equalunique 7y ago

I really appreciate this article. It hasn't sold me on mist showers, but the panorama of alternative showering techniques was eye opening. Maybe the Dutch rain shower is for me.

t34543 7y ago
Deluge showers are a step above rain showers - and are quite pleasurable.
vzidex 7y ago
Having used rain showers at various fancy hotels, I am not a fan of them. The ones I've experienced don't pressurize the water, they just let it fall on you - the experience ends up being closer to standing in the rain than to a shower, and that takes all the enjoyment out of it for me.

VBprogrammer 7y ago

I've had a recurring idea to build a water recycling shower. The idea being the water is initially stored in a tank below the shower, pumped up through the shower head and returned to the tank via the drain. A (hopefully) small amount of hot water is added to the tank to maintain the temperature of the water and to introduce more clean water. Some degree of filtering would obviously be required on the return path, at the very least to remove hair which would damage the pump but hopefully also removing soap suds etc. I'm not sure if it would really work but it seems like it would be ideal for some situations, for example in motorhomes, small yachts etc.

hapidjus 7y ago
Have a look at this https://orbital-systems.com/ https://orbital-systems.com/
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  It makes sense that there's a filter you have to change, but I don't see a lot of information on what the filter is other than an offer to get on a six month subscription service for it, presuming it's a disposable. Hopefully it's not some locked-in proprietary thing, at any rate. Love the design, though— could definitely picture installing this or something like it in a future bathroom reno.
wlesieutre 7y ago
There's an open source design of this at https://showerloop.org/ https://showerloop.org/
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  Nice. I've tried searching for it before but clearly didn't get the right combination of keywords. Mostly I've found people using the waste water to pre-heat the supply (which itself is a good idea but doesn't solve the water capacity problem).

Dirlewanger 7y ago

Mist showers may be OK for people with short hair, but it's a no-go for those with long hair. You need a decent amount of flow/water pressure to be able to get all shampoo/conditioner out.

kaikai 7y ago
I don’t have long hair anymore but also read through this and thought, “this guy must have a shaved head.” In order to rinse hair clean, you need quite a bit of water. If the shower is too low-flow (like dorm or gym showers often are in California), it takes much longer to do a good job, which kinda defeats the purpose of saving water.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  Shaved head and sparse body hair. Even if you aren't that hirsute yourself, try washing a dog with an extra-low-flow showerhead. It's a miserable experience for everyone.

_Microft 7y ago

Does anyone have experience with these nozzles and calcareous water? We get chalky deposits on the kitchen sink, electric kettle, even the surface edge of the fish tank (and that after blending the water for the fishes 1:1 with collected rainwater) in no time and need to remove it frequently. The nozzles look like as if they would be clogged after a few uses, especially as the problem gets worse with warm/hot water. Anyone has experience with that?

Jamwinner 7y ago
It will be an issue indeed. Get a filter system. There are small in-line ones for just before your showerhead, or larger whole-home systems. Many options exist, start with a water analysis, and go from there. You may benefit from a 'softener' more than a filter system. I find a cheap cleanable particulate filter placed before any media type filter to increase efficiency and lifespan.
Filligree 7y ago
Huh, I've never had to deal with hard water in my fishtank(s). Usually I'm adding hardness, not removing it. What sort of fish do you keep? I imagine tetras wouldn't do too well in that, so that's my favorite setup out the door.
- _Microft 7y ago
  I can't say for sure, they are not mine personally. A few are a kind of catfish (small, no longer than 10-12cm). Having such hard water is not great but it would be difficult to do otherwise. They are thriving, in case you were concerned.
  - Filligree 7y ago
    I'm not doubting that, mostly just curious. There are entire groups of fish which I cannot keep because I'd need continuous hardness monitoring(, and water replacements would get expensive).
bloopernova 7y ago

orliesaurus 7y ago

I love the idea, being aware that long showers are detrimental to our planet and all! However, IMHO, there are things we could do that would impact energy savings on a 100x scale compared to showering with a mist shower. First thing that comes to mind, those hundreds of big offices in every city, that keep their lights on, on every floor (!!), every single night.

icebraining 7y ago
Every city? Certainly not, I remember no such thing where I've lived. Why would they do that?!
- orliesaurus 7y ago
  You must be living/lived in a very energy conscious city - do you mind if I ask where do you live/lived that didn't have office lights running at night?
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Lisbon. There may be exceptions, but I can't think of any office building with more than just a few windows lit late at night. It's probably more due to cost-savings than environmental concerns, though. The offices I worked on in Brussels and Luxembourg also went dark, but I'm not sure if that was common throughout the city.
benatkin 7y ago
It would be better to cut energy use during peak time. In Phoenix during the sunmertime that's between 2pm and 8pm. https://srpnet.com/prices/home/tou.aspx https://srpnet.com/prices/home/tou.aspx
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Whataboutism and power consumption is not equivalent to water consumption. That said, IDK what city you live in, but most offices I know have energy-efficient lighting (used to be TL, nowadays LED) and motion sensors. If you do want to make a "what about" point though, highlighting how consumers only use a relatively small percentage of power compared to companies - think any IT company with datacenters, large scale shipping, but also Bitcoin and co - and shaming individuals into stuff like using less water, going vegetarian or change their bulbs is putting the blame in the wrong direction.

mberning 7y ago

I don't understand the obsession with sending civilization back to the stone age for the sake of "sustainability". I like hot showers. I would rather focus on new technology that makes producing fresh hot water in abundance nearly free and with minimal impact to the environment.

icebraining 7y ago
The question is whether we can keep our current lifestyle until such technology exists.

hashberry 7y ago

I admire the passion the author has for mist shower tech, but the "carbon footprint" is a tough argument, especially since we spend so much water "showering" our lawns/yards.[0] That "rain showers" faucet looks pretty slick and I think I might upgrade to that. [0] Landscaping is the second largest component of water consumption in California at 9% of total use. https://priceonomics.com/california-lawn-watering-economics/ https://priceonomics.com/california-lawn-watering-economics/

Klathmon 7y ago
It's not about the water usage on it's own, but more about the energy usage required to heat, treat, and transport the water. According to the article "Hot water production accounts for the second most significant use of energy in many homes (after heating), and much of it is used for showering."
- mcv 7y ago
  It's definitely about the heat, but it's also about the water usage on its own. There are many places where fresh water is scarce. Cleaning water also takes energy, and in some places, any kind of water is scarce.

mrob 7y ago

Increased comfort in exchange for increased risk of fatal lung disease sounds like a bad trade-off to me. I think I'll stick with the Navy shower technique, which is already comfortable enough so long as the shower room isn't too cold.

Jamwinner 7y ago

I recall bucky fuller always had mist showers in his future home demos. He always said, and it stuck with me, that his ideas were not for his lifetime, but for when humanity needed them. I think we would do well to catalog these type of ideas for periodic revisitation as the world inevitably changes.

hanoz 7y ago

Sounds like a recipe for Legionnaires' Disease to me.

oehpr 7y ago
No doubt a mister would basically guarantee you'd aspirate the bacteria if your hot water tank was contaminated. But I'm having difficulty seeing how you wouldn't also aspirate the bacteria with a shower head anyway. Are there a bunch of homes who take showers with legionaries contaminated water that manage to avoid infection?

crazyjncsu 7y ago

Thanks, but I'll stick with my Commando 450: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMITcQUe-9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMITcQUe-9M But seriously, even I get concerned with the green movements when they seem to be coming for each part of my life I hold sacred-- a nice warm shower (or two!) is a highlight of my day. And to rationalize: I am also constantly looking for ways to reduce energy usage, so I looked into capturing the heat lost from a shower. First I measured the difference in the shower head outlet temperature and the drain temperature. I found about 75% of the heat is released before even entering the drain. So it goes into my body (yay), the air, or the floor system. I suspect the majority of the next 25% is released in the drain system that is either part of the conditioned space of the house or in the semi-conditioned crawlspace. So the heating cost/fuel of the water is offsetting my HVAC cost/fuel. Additionally, the shower boosts humidity which is the #1 energy efficient method of feeling warmer in a cold, dry house. Notes: If you can leave the water to cool down by not draining a tub, you'll gain even more. Or take a bath. If you're using electricity to resistant-heat your water (highly inefficient), you should address that first. This doesn't apply in the summer, so I bathe in the outdoor pool, usually.

authoritarian 7y ago
>even I get concerned with the green movements when they seem to be coming for each part of my life I hold sacred-- a nice warm shower (or two!) is a highlight of my day. How is this article an example of "coming for each part of your life" you hold sacred? Did they state, or even imply, anywhere in the article that they were going to go around and force people to be environmentally conscious?

reeddavid 7y ago

I have followed the crowdfund-launched Nebia shower, which looks like a similar mist technology: https://nebia.com https://nebia.com I’ve been curious about it, but it’s kind of hard to try a permanently installed plumbing fixture without buying it.

aza05001 7y ago
I have 3 of these installed in my house. they are pretty amazing. Wouldn't go back to a conventional shower head.

ttraub 7y ago

A reasonable compromise might be one of the high efficiency shower heads that have been around for decades, e.g. the Delta. These gadgets have been around since at least the 1980s, come with an on-off switch to shut off the H2O while you soap down, and cut the flow while increasing the intensity. It's almost ideal. In fact I need to make a trip to the hardware store and pick up a couple to replace the lame heads in our two bathrooms. These types of heads simulate the mister experience but also spray the water quite intensely, almost painfully, if that makes any sense :) Regarding energy use, it seems to me that solar thermal is the way to go; you can keep your tank pretty hot during the day and if it's properly insulated, should minimize energy use at night. If you're showering early in the morning, though, you'll probably be burning some fossil fuel, but if you can time your showers to be mid-day or evening, would be optimal. In Phoenix, probably every fifth house has solar hot water; it just makes economic sense. When we traveled in the Middle East (mainly Israel), every house and apartment building seemed to have solar hot water. If it makes economic sense (and the tax credit also helps), people will adopt it. I'd be reluctant to support some kind of mandated regulatory approach that forces a less pleasant shower experience on everyone; as others here have mentioned, the shower is one of life's great luxuries.

authoritarian 7y ago

I'll never understand why articles discussing environmentalism are always met with a certain amount of comments where people seem to be angry, offended, or otherwise upset as if they're being personally attacked. The police aren't going to come around forcing you to give up your current shower. Spreading awareness of ways to live one's life in a less wasteful well is a good thing, and the emotionally charged negative comments are a step in the wrong direction

bloopernova 7y ago
I wonder how much of it is based in fear of losing their creature comforts. Anger can definitely stem from perceiving a threat subconsciously and not realizing the cause and effect happening very quickly within your own amygdala/brain.
simonsarris 7y ago
> The police aren't going to come around forcing you to give up your current shower. I mean, they did do that? Federal law from 1992 mandates the gpm flow of shower heads. The law says: > "all faucet fixtures manufactured in the United States restrict maximum water flow at or below 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at 80 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure or 2.2 gpm at 60 psi." In 2005 the feds had to pay a visit to a shower head manufacturer last decade to force them to stop producing non-conforming shower heads: https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-says-shower-heads-too-wet-1190772.php https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Seattle-says-shower-... Literally the police aren't going to come around forcing you to give up your current shower, they're just forcing all companies to produce and sell only certain kinds of showers. Why wouldn't a reasonable person who cares about something like this feel personally attacked? They already were attacked! There seems to be no reason to assume that federal law that already exists around this issue won't tighten more. In their eyes you're basically saying: "Why are people worried the government will interfere with [things they've been interfering with for decades]?" (note I personally don't care about this issue, but it seems like there's already a history of forcing XYZ on people here, so it seems natural that people would resist further intrusion or whatever. "What if that's good" is a separate argument.)

sterkekoffie 7y ago

Can anyone brighter than me tell me the more specific names of the "brass mist nozzles" and "6mm hose adapter"?

RickJWagner 7y ago

I wonder if those plastic tubes get moldy after a while...