Shorter Showers

Hi Frances

Did you see wa$ted on TV the other night? The focus this week was water. One of the things they looked at was the time that people spent in the shower. They installed a shower monitor from http://www.waitek.co.nz/ . It beeps after a set amount of time or hot water is used, and doesn't stop beeping until the water is turned off. In a general discussion with the staff here, a major problem seems to be the time that their children spend in the shower. That may be a good focus rather than the time that they personally spend in the shower, showing how their children are wasting money in both water rates, and power to heat the water. I would also be interested in talking with you because we are looking at how we can reduce our tenants water usage, so it would be good to work together on this.

Regards
Lisa Bridson

Environmental Specialist
Housing New Zealand Corporation
Ph (04) 439 3478

Hi Frances

I have little experience with taking shorter showers specifically but would encourage you to run a survey in your community to see what the key barriers etc . I have been conducting community based surveys with survey monkey successfully using it as a data gathering tool as well as a community engagement tool. By having questions that show/explain how people can take part in what you are doing (obviously you need a bit of a plan as to what you might want them to do to take part ie more surveys, workshops etc...) you can get some email addresses and create a large virtual community that way. http://www.surveymonkey.com/MySurveys.aspx The surveys are quick to make and easy to circulate via a pass it on to five others type email. All results are then downloaded in excel spreadsheet form.

Good Luck
Julian

You might also suggest that people use the shower in their home that is closest to the hot water tank. In our home there is more than 40 feet of horizontal length plus ten vertical feet between the shower that is closest to the water heater and the shower that is furthest from the water heater. We all now use the shower on the first floor next to the guest room rather than the upstairs showers near our bedrooms. So the total volume of water in 50 feet of pipe is saved for each person that showers each day. (because less water is wasted while waiting for the hot water to reach the shower head) Most US indoor plumbing pipes are 3/8 inch in diameter. So we save 5.3 cubic inches of water for each foot of pipe. In our case thats 5.3ci x 50ft x 4 people x 365 days = 386,900 cubic inches (1,674.89 US Gallons) of water saved annually simply by using a different shower. We also use a five gallon bucket in the tub to capture the water that flows before the shower water is warm enough to enter. That water is then used on plants both inside and outside so we do not need to run the drip irrigation system for landscaping. It can also be used to refill the toilet tank reservoir after flushing. Another water saving tactic we have used is to start a CD playing right when the kids enter the shower. They know they are supposed to be done before the end of the same song every time. We had used a cooking timer but they seemed to drift off and lose track of time. By using a CD they can monitor the music and develop a consistent pace that works better than an unmonitored visual timer.

Toward zero waste,
Bob Hollis

Robert W. Hollis,
CEO Carnegie Partners, LLC
Ph (916) 717-8108
eFax (916) 290-0312
[email protected]
www.CarnegiePartners.com
www.RecyclingJobs.com
www.GreenTechnologyJobs.com 

Bob:

While I applaud your actions to save water, the reality is that the 1674 gallons you save every year is valued (at least here in Western Australia) at less than A$10.00. That's not much of a saving for the effort you and members of your family put in and, to me, it explains why so few people in developed countries are interested in saving water: they can afford to ignore the cost of using or saving water and instead keep using it in the belief that its cheapness is a reflection of its abundance. This also explains why so few people are prepared to spend A$!500.00 or more to install a domestic rainwater tank when annual savings are less than A$50.00. Until governments force us to pay several times more for water that at present, it's going to be really hard to convince people to spend either a lot of their money or a lot of their time conserving it.

Bernie Masters

Hi Bob and other Readers,

Another water saving tactic we have used is to start a CD playing right when the kids enter the shower. They know they are supposed to be done before the end of the same song every time. As you've discovered, it's SO much harder to undo bad habits than it is to establish good ones. And this doesn't just apply to showers, but to all aspects of our style of living - individual, family, institutional and national. About 1/3 of landfill "waste" is food that has been discarded for whatever reason: too much prepared, shelf life exceeded, bad management. I shudder to think how many mega-kWh of electricity are thrown to the sky each night (and much of the day, even when sunny) because of habit. I also shudder to think how many gallons of drinking-quality water are poured over the car(s), how many re-cyclable materials get put into the trash, how many out-of-season foods we purchase from distant lands ... and how we are unthinkingly educating our children to do exactly the same. Children learn quickly, they learn easily, and their primary learning is by example. If your kids are using what you [now] consider to be excesses of anything, they have got there either by example or by lax training. The strongest green-conversion education projects right now seem to be in our schools, but how much harder for even those projects to succeed to the full when they must do so much teaching to un-learn. Translate your curbside good habits into cribside ones. You don't let a small child burn himself in order to learn about heat; you warn him verbally, "Hot!! Be careful!". So with all of Earth resources. Inculcate good habits from the start, and those kids are more likely to grow into caring denizens. Try a mental experiment. Picture life when there are absolutely no garbage removal services, water comes only from your seasonal well, and food is available only in season from a local farm. Then design a style of living that allows you to exist harmoniously with those surroundings so that you leave a minimal mark of your existence. Cheating (such as burying garbage until the trash-collectors get back to work) is not on the menu. Thus, start with nothing and only add in what is actually necessary. You will be surprised how little trash you accumulate, how little water you throw back into the ground, and how few opportunities for self-help you pass up. With that mental image strongly visible, begin to observe the normal, routine, unthinking habits of others. Un-learning is best handled by social marketing in all its forms - examples, fashions, explanations, for all ages and conditions. The reductions thus procured are felt both by the pocket and by the environment. Whether we regard the environmental benefits are reduced GHG emissions or reduced fossil-fuel consumption, they are all part and parcel of the same thing, so highly connected that they cannot easily be separated. Whether we specifically target air purity, earth-resource pollution, energy from sustainable sources, ozone reduction or what, there are knock-on effects that impact from one to the other. The biggest financial losers are likely to be automobile makers, but they are dextrous enough to build windmills and heat-exchangers instead.

Elizabeth Griffin
(Victoria, Canada)

If you are building or renovating, you should also consider "home running" your hot water lines from a manifold adjacent the hot water heater instead of "daisy chaining" the hot water piping from bathroom to laundry to bathroom to kitchen. This will give you the shortest length of piping for hot water to pass thru and is common in many PEX plumbing installations.

Regards
JR

JR Fulton,
Architect, LEED AP
HFS Capital Planning and Sustainability Manager

I know a lot of people use Survey Monkey and feel they are finding successful measurement with this online tool. Online survey tools like Survey Monkey are often free, handy, easy to use and can quickly reach the masses. However, I am concerned about the scientific validity of surveys created with online tools like Survey Monkey. A lot of people who use tools like Survey Monkey might not be qualified researchers skilled at formulating the most appropriate survey questions for truly unbiased results. Measurment could therefore be skewed.

I'm curious to hear thoughts from others about crafting surveys with these kinds of survey tools.

Sonja Hall
Community Relations Specialist
Tacoma Public Utilities
UnitedStates