High efficiency Californiaquistan shower heads

[rp2813]

The exaggeration by the OP is off the charts.  Get real.  Low flow shower heads are completely adequate.  And by the way, flow restrictors have been around for a few decades.  Long before Gavin Newsom became governor, and any recent regulations occurred before he was elected as well.

 

I'm certain that there's no limit on how much water you can use in the Mar-A-Lago area.  It sounds like the perfect alternative.

 

[appnut]

Well I'm pretty proud of myself. In the winter time, my monthly usage is between 1000 & 1300 gallons a billing cycle of 4 weeks or so. One of the reasons why I the way way I feel about top loaders. When I had the Lady Shredmore, my winter water consumption was between 3000 & 5000 gallons a month. And my sewar bill reflected that consumption.

 

[brisnat81]

2.4gal per min showerheads have been the norm here for the last 20 years. Has CA dropped below that amount?

Even rain showers operate well on that flow rate.

Being pressed against the wall is nice, but 2.5gal/min is a good compromise and saves water and electricity.

Maybe the OP just needs to buy a better quality shower head?

 

[thomasortega]

CA is way lower than 2.4 gal with the new standards.

If I'm not mistaken, it's 1.2 gal, so half of the rest of the country.

2.4 would be very "decent".

 

[arbilab]

They're on to y'all restrictor violators.

 

New Delta kitchen faucet, the restriction is inside the swing arm, not the aerator where you could get at it.

 

Gee, why not just make aquarium air hose the new code for water?  Here, more water evaporates from landscaping than any other use.  That flow is restricted alright, down to one inch per valve times as many valves as you want. 

But I'm supposed to make do with little needles coming out of my showerhead.

 

You know who does NOT have flow restrictors?  Nestle and Cocacola, sucking water out of aquifers as fast as they can put it in little/litter bottles.  Gasp, wouldn't want to interfere with free trade, would we?

 

[sfh074]

Interesting .....

Add to the chart ....

2018 CA = 1.8 gpm

 

[warmsecondrinse]

I saw an article in the NYT that the 2 agricultural 'sweet zones' are expected to move over the next 100 years or so. In the west it's supposed to hug the coast and move north, but actually expand a bit further inland as one moves north. The other one, occupying the central 1/3 of the US is supposed to move to the northeast.

Showerheads? I have an ancient one that stays with me when I move.

If state & local governments were really concerned with saving water, there'd be waterless urinals in all new construction and commercial remodelling jobs.

Wet wipes: From what I've read there're two problems. First, there're two kinds, flushable and non-flushable. When you pick up a random package the distinction is printed in a font so small there's no way anyone would see it unless they were deliberately looking for it. So the shopper is obviously not intended to know. That means someone is making money off of that somehow. Second, some organization (forget who) tested the major brands of flushable wipes and 1/4 to a 1/3 did not meet the criteria to be 'flushable' even though they were labelled so.

 

[sudsmaster]

I've lived in California since 1963, but the flow restrictions didn't seem to become common until the 1980's. I routinely pluck the restrictors out of any new plumbing. I feel somewhat justified in this in that my daily water usage is about 2/3 of average. And some of that has to do with this property having a non-potable well that I use to water the garden and lawn.

IMHO the biggest advance in home plumbing came around with the detachable shower heads at the end of a hose. I will not explain here how useful those are.

 

[tolivac]

Any new showerheads I buy get a date with my drill press!

 

[polkanut]

I left the restrictor in our new showerhead last year, and we've been very happy with it since then.  The Moen website says it should retail for $177.70.  I bought mine at Menard's for under $20.00. Ignite Spot resist brushed nickel five-function 3-3/4" diameter spray head wallmount -- 209W0SRN -- Moen

 

[whitewhiskers]

Over 30 years ago I vacationed in Santa Barbara, staying at the Santa Barbara Inn. The shower heads at the hotel were beyond low flow. What came out was more like a mist, no doubt because the main source of water was from a desalination plant.

Thomas Ortega: My advice for you is to get rid of the shower head entirely and have the bare pipe coming out of the wall give you the flow and Hollywood bathing experience you so desperately desire. And then at election time you vote for Caitlyn Jenner, who like the previous POTUS (promised) will solve all your problems

 

[gizmo]

a different perspective

I live in the wettest place in the state, over 2 metres a year rainfall. (between 6 and 7 feet rainfall.) I don't know how that compares in other countries but in Australia, that is huge. We catch our own rainwater off garage and house, we always have plenty. We don't have to worry about saving water most of the year. Currently the place is waterlogged.

I recently replaced two taps (faucets) in the kitchen and laundry. I was very limited in what I could buy as I was looking for a single lever mixer tap that would turn only a fixed limited amount each way, so the tap couldn't be turned to deliver water off the sink. We needed this because our cat had two or three times flooded the place by turning the tap off the sink and turning on the tap. (bumped it when jumping around like a big kitten.) We could only find a couple of suitable taps at a reasonable price, one from Grohe for the kitchen and one from Ikea for the laundry.

 

Both came with little inlet hoses that were NOT removable/replaceable, and were stupid skinny little things like a drinking straw. The flow is miserable as we have low water pressure - we don't have a pressure pump, our water comes from a tank up the hill and it isn't much higher than the house. Our water supply is plenty for the washing machine to fill in a normal time, plenty to operate a tankless gas hot water service as our backup unit, but the flow though these taps is pathetic. I am more or less used to it now, but it is s-l-o-w. A litre takes about 30 to 40 seconds. It is not a flow restrictor, it is the tiny hoses and they are machined in, can't be replaced. (there was a restrictor of sorts in the aerator, but I removed that.)

 

as I catch my own water, no municipal infrastructure needs to be built to give me water. I just "borrow" the water briefly from the environment before returning it. But it is almost impossible to find taps and fittings that don't have restrictors that are designed for mains pressure, not low pressure.

 

[48bencix]

Standards can't go lower

The shower head I posted is 2.5 gallons/minute. Probably not available to ship to California. I bought mine a few years ago. The newest Calif. standard is 1.8 gal/min. Maybe 2.5 is a good compromise. The federal standard is 2.5 so that's what a lot of people have right now. The folks working on the standards here and at the Federal level keep changing them. At some point the standards should just stay where they are.

 

[ea56]

The shower head I posted in reply#18 is 2.5 gpm and is available at Lowes in California where I bought mine. If you look at the link it’s still rated at 2.5 gpm and the there are plenty of reviews that indicate the owners are very happy with the flow rate. I don’t know where this 1.8 gpm rate for California is coming from, but the shower heads on the Lowes website all advertise 2.5 gpm which is perfectly adequate.

Eddie

 

[kd12]

Ok, so let me ask this as someone who doesn't live on the Left Coast. Why in the hell has California not gone all-in on desalination when they have the whole Pacific ocean in their back yard? Water has always been an issue there as there's only a finite amount of fresh water available (hence the water wars of the early 20th century). So why not leverage the ocean for additional supply?

 

[arbilab]

Skuze me for pointing out that California does not have a water shortage.  California has a shortage of effing <span style="text-decoration: underline;">SENSE</span>. 

 

80% of available water goes to agriculture which makes up 3% of the state's economy.  Growing things like almonds, which are 'nice' but nobody "needs" them,  and they take NINETEEN HUNDRED GALLONS of water to grow ONE POUND of nuts.

 

Oh, and if you get teary-eyed thinking of mom & pop farmers out of water, save your lacrimation for the geraniums.  More than 80% of California agriculture is corporate AND subsidized on top of that.

 

I loved every minute I lived in California, both north and south.  Except for the occasional traffic jam spanning the entire horizon in every direction.  But most of the desperation they claim is of their own doing.

 

[ea56]

Excuse Me Rick

but I watched Bill Maher last night too and your post is almost verbatim from his mouth. It may or may not be true that California’s agriculture is only 3% of our economy. But it also provides thousands of jobs and food for not just Californian’s but people across the nation and the world.

So we should just let all the farms dry up and go fallow? I don’t think so. I’m a Native Californian and we DO have a water shortage, regardless of what Bill Maher says. I used to really like him, now his devils advocate bullshit just irritates me and I’m probably not going to watch him anymore. This has been coming for me for a long time now and his rant last night sealed the deal.

And as far as water misuse is concerned, I notice he had nothing to say about all the billions of gallons of Northern California water that is diverted to Southern California for their millions of swimming pools. These swimming pools should go dry before allowing farms to go fallow. And the same goes for the lawns on golf courses and mansions. If I have to let the lawns of my HOA go brown then so can the lawns of the wealthy go brown too. I’ll bet Bill Maher is irrigating his landscaping and if he has a pool, which I imagine he does, that sucker is being topped off regularly too.

No matter how you cut it THERE IS a shortage of water in California, PERIOD!

Eddie[this post was last edited: 6/19/2021-15:57]

 

[thomasortega]

I have to agree with Eddie at this.

It is a FACT that California has a shortage of the precious liquid.

When I created this thread
, the idea was exactly point the nonsense.

Keeping the restrictors at decent level wouldn't save that much water, but people would leave them alone. Ok, it reduced the waterflow but I still can get a decent shower, so it's a little effort that will have a great return for everybody.

But they decided to make the restrictors so thrifty that it feels like you're showering with a spray bottle. Intuitively people will try to drill or get rid of the restrictors, just like me.

I was going to drill my restrictor, to allow a bit more water... but the restrictor came off, so now I have no restrictor at all.

I won't even bother looking for a 2.5 gal restrictor to put there.. why? Waste.my time because it's forbidden to sell or ship them to California.

As a result... people end up wasting much more water... it's not "me", it's thousands of people in the state that have exactly the same situation every single day.

Simply put, reducing even more the water flow had the opposite effect, the plan didn't work at all!

 

[arbilab]

Yes, the Maher show is the statistic source.

 

<blockquote>
THERE IS a shortage of water in California, PERIOD

</blockquote>
<span style="text-decoration: underline;">Not</span> "period".  No issue of this scope and depth is "period".  There is a shortage compared to what the state is accustomed to miss-allocating before the climate trend changed.  And it's still miss-allocated despite the intrusion of spit showers.  That is to say, spit showers are bureaucratic window dressing that do next to nothing about the problem.

 

Jobs schmobs.  3% of economic product does in no way justify 80% of a dwindling resource that is the basis of life.  Growing water-intensive ag like almonds and rice in a desert is a bad idea.  No matter that it was established in a different climatological age. 

You CAN put a "period" after that if you want.

 

You do know where LA's water comes from, right?  Down an enormous open-air sluice running half the length of the state.  Through the high desert (Palmdale-Lancaster) where [how much?] evaporates into single-digit-dewpoint air.  I've been there too.  How much evaporates?  More than how much evaporates from pools, since the formula is rate times surface area.  And yes, Maher's house is lushly landscaped.  That may have to change as well.

 

This isn't a fight between you and me, Eddie.  I have zero to say about what ultimately happens and you have about one ten-millionth more than I do.  We're both in the same piranha tank when it comes to electric, and neither of us has anything to say about that either.  Where is the 36-point shrug smiley when we need it?

 

[qsd-dan]

California has a shortage of effing <span style="text-decoration: underline;">SENSE</span>. 

 

But most of the desperation they claim is of their own doing.

 

6th generation Californian here and this is spot on. It's incredibly sad what politics and corruption has done to the state.