5 ms·

Opinion: Your shower head is lying to you about pressure

38 points by MilnerRoute 2y ago

yial 2y ago
https://archive.is/2025.02.26-115836/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/26/shower-pressure-save-water/ https://archive.is/2025.02.26-115836/https://www.washingtonp...
nothercastle 2y ago
Low flow showers suck because places install even lower than required flow heads and then they get calcium build up and it’s absolutely awful. 2.5g/m is good enough on a well designed shower head but 1.5 or 1 is not. It might be possible to compensate with high water pressure but it’s expensive and risky to pressurize incoming water beyond what it comes out of the tap as.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  Why is it expensive and risky?
  - nothercastle 2y ago
    You need pump in street water to higher pressures which requires an expensive pumping system. then your internal pipes run higher pressures and are more likely to leak.
readthenotes1 2y ago
"I was speaking truth to shower." It is a good read!
angry_moose 2y ago
I pulled our flow restrictor out a couple years ago and watched our water bills over the year before and year after. In the year before we used 76 units of water, in the year after we used 78. So maybe it increased our total usage by 2.6%; but there were also some other lifestyle changes over that period that I'd expect drove up our water usage more. Even if all 2.6% could be attributed to the flow restrictor, its not enough for me to go back to crappy showers.
- mrandish 2y ago
  Living in California I'm just tired of the pervasive limitations on so many things when it makes virtually no net difference in overall usage. We have a house on a large, isolated property. We have our own well and a 600 gallon tank with a septic system. No one else is pulling from the water table for many miles around. Essentially all of our water is recycled back into the water table from the septic system. Yet I still had to test, modify and, in one case, replace, shower heads, faucets and toilets to get devices with minimally acceptable flow. As you said, at most around a 2% difference in consumption for something that works well and feels great. Yet I drive by our large lakes and the system of agricultural aqueducts weekly and see the millions of gallons of water being pulled to grow crops that aren't even well-suited to the local climate (but which are more profitable). I guess making life a little bit more annoying for tens of millions of consumers, who don't have lobbyists in the capitol, is an easy way for politicians to virtual signal "doing something" for the environment while still collecting that sweet PAC money from the agri-lobby.
jimnotgym 2y ago
[flagged]
CharlesW 2y ago
> In 2023, according to the Financial Times, data centers in Northern Virginia alone used nearly 2 billion gallons of water. University of California at Riverside researchers estimate that, in 2027, thirsty AI will slurp up between 1.1 trillion and 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally. What does "used" mean in this case? Aren't these closed systems?
- gpm 2y ago
  They aren't closed systems, they ultimately cool by evaporating water to reject heat.
  - stevarino 2y ago
    Yeah this. Cooling towers work by maximizing evaporation rare, transferring energy into the atmosphere via water molecules. Other heat sink strategies could involve refrigeration systems, but those are significantly more energy intensive and a lot more complex.
- Rotundo 2y ago
  Data centers often use drinking water for cooling and let the heated water flow into the local rivers and streams. At least in my locale.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    That seems quite different; the water isn’t used up at all. Of course there could be some consequence of dumping heat into the water (my gut says—usually it turns out we don’t have enough power to appreciably change the temperature of a river, but I guess it depends on the rate of flow of the river and the amount of heat).
    - wlesieutre 2y ago
      We’re sucking water out of aquifers and dumping it in the ocean, the aquifers are not replenishing. The water still exists yes, but ground water is essentially “used up.”
namuol 2y ago
People bemoaning low flow don’t have experience with a good shower head. (Note: the author acknowledges this!) Highly recommend the Speakman brand of low-flow, high pressure shower heads. I learned of the brand while staying in a hotel that had a fantastic shower (compared to what I was used to) and bought a similar model immediately. I live in CA where my apartment has mandatory low flow, and I replaced the cheap 2.5gpm shower head with an even lower-flow 1.75gpm high pressure head and it was night and day better. When visiting my family in western NY suburbs, they have all high flow but low pressure shower heads, and it’s just not a very effective or satisfying shower after getting used to our shower head.
- philwelch 2y ago
  But I don’t want 1.75 gpm compressed into tiny high-pressure jets. I want (and have) a perfectly normal shower head except with the flow limiter ripped out and now the “mist” setting is a thick deluge of water while the high pressure jet settings are, if anything, uncomfortable. My counter recommendation is to grab a pair of needle nose pliers, take apart your shower head, find the blue plastic flow limiter, and yank it out. Or if you rent, buy a new showerhead and take it apart instead.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Are they easy to take apart? I feel like many of them are made to resemble a single piece even if they aren’t. Are there brands built to be easy to work on?
    - philwelch 2y ago
      Mine’s a waterpik. I think I looked up a YouTube video (not brand or model specific) for how to identify and remove the flow limiter. It wasn’t hard at all.
    - avidiax 2y ago
      New ones no longer have the flow restrictor piece. I couldn't find instructions online to reduce the flow restriction, but I assume it involves drilling out a restrictor plate.
WheatMillington 2y ago
I worked finance at a pulp mill once - a small pulp mill by international standards. The mill used 90 million litres of water a day. It has been hard to take my own efforts to save water seriously since then.
- mpalmer 2y ago
  Your perception is that water is wasted elsewhere, therefore you feel less inclined to avoid wasting water yourself?
  - rockemsockem 2y ago
    Why do something "to make a difference" if it's literally incapable of making a difference (even with every single person doing it).
    - mpalmer 2y ago
      Why indeed
    - philwelch 2y ago
      It’s a sort of luxury disease. It used to be that life entailed so much material suffering that people needed to rationalize that they were suffering for something, and so human beings got incredibly good at that coping mechanism. So good that now that we live in a world where we have material abundance, we cannot believe it, and then we go out of our way to impoverish ourselves just so we can feel good that at least we’re suffering for something. All of us can have high flow showers and toilets like we used to. The world isn’t going to end if we do. Even regions that have water shortages can solve them with technology that’s existed for the better part of a century by now. But if we do that, we will end up standing in our hot, high-flow showers thinking to ourselves—this is wrong, we don’t deserve this, this is too good to be true.
      - mpalmer 2y ago
        Tell that to California
ctz 2y ago
This is a great opinion piece about Personal Liberties and Free Markets. Thanks Jeff!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
fock 2y ago
the author might enjoy acquiring a pressure washer from his boss! Decisive action to take back his personal liberty and getting a proper high-pressure cleanse will be beneficial to humanity for sure.
ks2048 2y ago
Bezos has directed the WaPo opinion team to focus on the true enemy of the people - bathroom fixtures.
colonial 2y ago
It's frankly ridiculous that people thousands of miles away in Washington have any say over what goes on in our bathrooms (modulo basic safety strictures.) My current apartment came with a showerhead that (I assume) was compliant with the Obama/Biden rules. It dribbled water until, sopping wet and desperate, I grabbed a pair of pliers and bashed out the flow limiter. My water bill didn't even budge.
mpalmer 2y ago
The claim in the title is not substantiated in the slightest. it's a hook to get you to read Lasswell's confused jumble of weak quips and outright misleading statements. --- I knew that this was the moment when I could later claim that this was the moment when I knew Trump was going to win Wow, pretty impressive, Mark. A single video posted to social media told you that? --- “I lather up and then you turn on this crazy shower and the thing — ‘drip, drip,’ and you say, ‘I’m going to be here for 45 minutes. What the — ?’” he said, giving new meaning to the term stream of consciousness but also inadvertently getting at what that British study had found. This would be the study that found that people are _satisfied_ with low flow when water pressure is high. --- This guy seems like a complete hack, but he's also just what Bezos ordered.
- mcphage 2y ago
  >> I knew that this was the moment when I could later claim that this was the moment when I knew Trump was going to win I’m following in the long HN tradition of commenting in the thread without reading the article, but… that’s a pretty funny mockery of all the “that’s when I knew Trump was going to win” blather.
throeorj 2y ago
Invest into Hitachi, if you find shower head experience unsatisfactory.
moepstar 2y ago
I got a 1.5gpm (6Lpm) from this brand (sorry, German manufacturer/site, use a translator) which works awesomely well. It does mix air very effectively into the water, providing a very good illusion of a normal shower. https://www.wolf-aqua-manufaktur.de/shop/de/bubble-rain-handbrausen/69-bubble-rain-espresso-xl-4260459530121.html https://www.wolf-aqua-manufaktur.de/shop/de/bubble-rain-hand...
ttepasse 2y ago
This is one of the weird US debates I, a German, don't understand, like that Seinfeld episode back then. I never had the feeling that any of the shower heads here I was standing under was particularly bad. Maybe it's different with those ominous low flow thingies. But: If you're not using massage jets, is high or low flow even relevant? To get shampoo out of your hair you just need water and hands. But according to Jerry and Kramer it's a catastrophe. (Maybe because American shower heads are fixed mounted and as such are higher above the head?)
- yencabulator 2y ago
  As a Northern European who's been living in USA for a while now, one harsh lesson was that a lot of things are cheap here, but they are often cheap because they're both manufactured cheaply, and horribly designed. Everything here encourages buying crap, using it for at most a year, and then throwing it away. Average-house fixtures in Europe are probably higher quality than average-house fixtures in the US.

38 points by MilnerRoute 2y ago

yial 2y ago

https://archive.is/2025.02.26-115836/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/26/shower-pressure-save-water/ https://archive.is/2025.02.26-115836/https://www.washingtonp...

nothercastle 2y ago

Low flow showers suck because places install even lower than required flow heads and then they get calcium build up and it’s absolutely awful. 2.5g/m is good enough on a well designed shower head but 1.5 or 1 is not. It might be possible to compensate with high water pressure but it’s expensive and risky to pressurize incoming water beyond what it comes out of the tap as.

rrr_oh_man 2y ago
Why is it expensive and risky?
- nothercastle 2y ago
  You need pump in street water to higher pressures which requires an expensive pumping system. then your internal pipes run higher pressures and are more likely to leak.

readthenotes1 2y ago

"I was speaking truth to shower." It is a good read!

angry_moose 2y ago

I pulled our flow restrictor out a couple years ago and watched our water bills over the year before and year after. In the year before we used 76 units of water, in the year after we used 78. So maybe it increased our total usage by 2.6%; but there were also some other lifestyle changes over that period that I'd expect drove up our water usage more. Even if all 2.6% could be attributed to the flow restrictor, its not enough for me to go back to crappy showers.

mrandish 2y ago
Living in California I'm just tired of the pervasive limitations on so many things when it makes virtually no net difference in overall usage. We have a house on a large, isolated property. We have our own well and a 600 gallon tank with a septic system. No one else is pulling from the water table for many miles around. Essentially all of our water is recycled back into the water table from the septic system. Yet I still had to test, modify and, in one case, replace, shower heads, faucets and toilets to get devices with minimally acceptable flow. As you said, at most around a 2% difference in consumption for something that works well and feels great. Yet I drive by our large lakes and the system of agricultural aqueducts weekly and see the millions of gallons of water being pulled to grow crops that aren't even well-suited to the local climate (but which are more profitable). I guess making life a little bit more annoying for tens of millions of consumers, who don't have lobbyists in the capitol, is an easy way for politicians to virtual signal "doing something" for the environment while still collecting that sweet PAC money from the agri-lobby.

jimnotgym 2y ago

[flagged]

CharlesW 2y ago

> In 2023, according to the Financial Times, data centers in Northern Virginia alone used nearly 2 billion gallons of water. University of California at Riverside researchers estimate that, in 2027, thirsty AI will slurp up between 1.1 trillion and 1.7 trillion gallons of water globally. What does "used" mean in this case? Aren't these closed systems?

gpm 2y ago
They aren't closed systems, they ultimately cool by evaporating water to reject heat.
- stevarino 2y ago
  Yeah this. Cooling towers work by maximizing evaporation rare, transferring energy into the atmosphere via water molecules. Other heat sink strategies could involve refrigeration systems, but those are significantly more energy intensive and a lot more complex.
Rotundo 2y ago
Data centers often use drinking water for cooling and let the heated water flow into the local rivers and streams. At least in my locale.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  That seems quite different; the water isn’t used up at all. Of course there could be some consequence of dumping heat into the water (my gut says—usually it turns out we don’t have enough power to appreciably change the temperature of a river, but I guess it depends on the rate of flow of the river and the amount of heat).
  - wlesieutre 2y ago
    We’re sucking water out of aquifers and dumping it in the ocean, the aquifers are not replenishing. The water still exists yes, but ground water is essentially “used up.”

namuol 2y ago

People bemoaning low flow don’t have experience with a good shower head. (Note: the author acknowledges this!) Highly recommend the Speakman brand of low-flow, high pressure shower heads. I learned of the brand while staying in a hotel that had a fantastic shower (compared to what I was used to) and bought a similar model immediately. I live in CA where my apartment has mandatory low flow, and I replaced the cheap 2.5gpm shower head with an even lower-flow 1.75gpm high pressure head and it was night and day better. When visiting my family in western NY suburbs, they have all high flow but low pressure shower heads, and it’s just not a very effective or satisfying shower after getting used to our shower head.

philwelch 2y ago
But I don’t want 1.75 gpm compressed into tiny high-pressure jets. I want (and have) a perfectly normal shower head except with the flow limiter ripped out and now the “mist” setting is a thick deluge of water while the high pressure jet settings are, if anything, uncomfortable. My counter recommendation is to grab a pair of needle nose pliers, take apart your shower head, find the blue plastic flow limiter, and yank it out. Or if you rent, buy a new showerhead and take it apart instead.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Are they easy to take apart? I feel like many of them are made to resemble a single piece even if they aren’t. Are there brands built to be easy to work on?
  - philwelch 2y ago
    Mine’s a waterpik. I think I looked up a YouTube video (not brand or model specific) for how to identify and remove the flow limiter. It wasn’t hard at all.
  - avidiax 2y ago
    New ones no longer have the flow restrictor piece. I couldn't find instructions online to reduce the flow restriction, but I assume it involves drilling out a restrictor plate.

WheatMillington 2y ago

I worked finance at a pulp mill once - a small pulp mill by international standards. The mill used 90 million litres of water a day. It has been hard to take my own efforts to save water seriously since then.

mpalmer 2y ago
Your perception is that water is wasted elsewhere, therefore you feel less inclined to avoid wasting water yourself?
- rockemsockem 2y ago
  Why do something "to make a difference" if it's literally incapable of making a difference (even with every single person doing it).
  - mpalmer 2y ago
    Why indeed
  - philwelch 2y ago
    It’s a sort of luxury disease. It used to be that life entailed so much material suffering that people needed to rationalize that they were suffering for something, and so human beings got incredibly good at that coping mechanism. So good that now that we live in a world where we have material abundance, we cannot believe it, and then we go out of our way to impoverish ourselves just so we can feel good that at least we’re suffering for something. All of us can have high flow showers and toilets like we used to. The world isn’t going to end if we do. Even regions that have water shortages can solve them with technology that’s existed for the better part of a century by now. But if we do that, we will end up standing in our hot, high-flow showers thinking to ourselves—this is wrong, we don’t deserve this, this is too good to be true.
    - mpalmer 2y ago
      Tell that to California

ctz 2y ago

This is a great opinion piece about Personal Liberties and Free Markets. Thanks Jeff!

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

fock 2y ago

the author might enjoy acquiring a pressure washer from his boss! Decisive action to take back his personal liberty and getting a proper high-pressure cleanse will be beneficial to humanity for sure.

ks2048 2y ago

Bezos has directed the WaPo opinion team to focus on the true enemy of the people - bathroom fixtures.

colonial 2y ago

It's frankly ridiculous that people thousands of miles away in Washington have any say over what goes on in our bathrooms (modulo basic safety strictures.) My current apartment came with a showerhead that (I assume) was compliant with the Obama/Biden rules. It dribbled water until, sopping wet and desperate, I grabbed a pair of pliers and bashed out the flow limiter. My water bill didn't even budge.

mpalmer 2y ago

The claim in the title is not substantiated in the slightest. it's a hook to get you to read Lasswell's confused jumble of weak quips and outright misleading statements. --- I knew that this was the moment when I could later claim that this was the moment when I knew Trump was going to win Wow, pretty impressive, Mark. A single video posted to social media told you that? --- “I lather up and then you turn on this crazy shower and the thing — ‘drip, drip,’ and you say, ‘I’m going to be here for 45 minutes. What the — ?’” he said, giving new meaning to the term stream of consciousness but also inadvertently getting at what that British study had found. This would be the study that found that people are _satisfied_ with low flow when water pressure is high. --- This guy seems like a complete hack, but he's also just what Bezos ordered.

mcphage 2y ago
>> I knew that this was the moment when I could later claim that this was the moment when I knew Trump was going to win I’m following in the long HN tradition of commenting in the thread without reading the article, but… that’s a pretty funny mockery of all the “that’s when I knew Trump was going to win” blather.

throeorj 2y ago

Invest into Hitachi, if you find shower head experience unsatisfactory.

moepstar 2y ago

I got a 1.5gpm (6Lpm) from this brand (sorry, German manufacturer/site, use a translator) which works awesomely well. It does mix air very effectively into the water, providing a very good illusion of a normal shower. https://www.wolf-aqua-manufaktur.de/shop/de/bubble-rain-handbrausen/69-bubble-rain-espresso-xl-4260459530121.html https://www.wolf-aqua-manufaktur.de/shop/de/bubble-rain-hand...

ttepasse 2y ago

This is one of the weird US debates I, a German, don't understand, like that Seinfeld episode back then. I never had the feeling that any of the shower heads here I was standing under was particularly bad. Maybe it's different with those ominous low flow thingies. But: If you're not using massage jets, is high or low flow even relevant? To get shampoo out of your hair you just need water and hands. But according to Jerry and Kramer it's a catastrophe. (Maybe because American shower heads are fixed mounted and as such are higher above the head?)

yencabulator 2y ago
As a Northern European who's been living in USA for a while now, one harsh lesson was that a lot of things are cheap here, but they are often cheap because they're both manufactured cheaply, and horribly designed. Everything here encourages buying crap, using it for at most a year, and then throwing it away. Average-house fixtures in Europe are probably higher quality than average-house fixtures in the US.