Search engine visitors - click here to access entire "$ensible Home" web site
Click to back to Main Tips List
The following is a simple bathroom tip to reduce your utility bills. Take showers instead of baths, but limit the length of the showers to five minutes. A typical bathtub requires about 30 gallons for a bath. A standard shower head will flow about 3 gallons per minute. In five minutes, this uses only 15 gallons of water.
Install a low-flow shower head with a sudsing shut-off slide valve. Many common low-flow shower heads have them. While you are sudsing and scrubbing, the sudsing shut-off valve slows the water flow to a trickle. This trickle will maintain the water temperature adjustment and eliminate a shot of very hot water when you slide it open again to rinse. Using a low-flow shower head with one of these valve can cut the total water usage to under ten gallons saving thousands of gallons of water per year.