How your showerhead and fridge got roped into the culture wars

Comments

• tal@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I’m fine with putting more insulation on refrigerators, but low-flow showerheads are a serious disappointment in showering experience. I want to be hammered by that water, not misted.

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  • comador@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I always get downvoted for saying it, but I don’t care because the real water savings never came from stupid showers:

    Most low flow shower heads have a plastic insert in them called a restrictor that can be removed to make it work like the high flow ones.

    It’s nothing more than a small cylinder that can be pushed or pulled out from the shower line and manufacturers use these restrictors because it allows them to sell the same unit in multiple markets.

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    • tal@lemmy.today ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      because the real water savings never came from stupid showers:

      Another factor is that your shower water is very probably — unless you have some sort of gray-water irrigation system going on or something — heading to a sewage treatment plant, and if we wanted to do so, we can purify the water there, make that closed loop and feed back into the water supply, recover basically all the water from treatment.

      The UK does it:

      washingtonpost.com/…/uk-drink-sewage-water-squeam…

      California and some other states are doing it:

      pbs.org/…/california-is-set-to-become-2nd-state-t…

      California has been using recycled wastewater for decades. The Ontario Reign minor league hockey team has used it to make ice for its rink in Southern California. Soda Springs Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe has used it to make snow. And farmers in the Central Valley, where much of the nation’s vegetables, fruits and nuts are grown, use it to water their crops.

      But it hasn’t been used directly for drinking water. Orange County operates a large water purification system that recycles wastewater and then uses it to refill underground aquifers. The water mingles with the groundwater for months before being pumped up and used for drinking water again.

      California’s new rules would let — but not require — water agencies to take wastewater, treat it, and then put it right back into the drinking water system. California would be just the second state to allow this, following Colorado.

      The new rules require the wastewater be treated for all pathogens and viruses, even if the pathogens and viruses aren’t in the wastewater. That’s different from regular water treatment rules, which only require treatment for known pathogens, said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the division of drinking water for the California Water Resources Control Board.

      In fact, the treatment is so stringent it removes all of the minerals that make fresh drinking water taste good — meaning they have to be added back at the end of the process.

      “It’s at the same drinking water quality, and probably better in many instances,” Polhemus said.

      Plus, in California and a lot of other places, we can (and do) desalinate water.

      www.sdcwa.org/…/seawater-desalination/

      In November 2012, the Water Authority approved a 30-year Water Purchase Agreement with Poseidon Water for the purchase of up to 56,000 acre-feet of desalinated seawater per year, approximately 10 percent of the San Diego region’s water demand.

      It costs more than pulling from a river, and that’s economically-difficult for agriculture…but it’s just not prohibitive for residential use, and there’s a whole ocean of water out there.

      www.sdcwa.org/wp-content/…/desal-carlsbad-fs.pdf

      Based on current electricity cost estimates, the Water Purchase Agreement sets the price of water at about $3,400/ acre-feet for fiscal year 2024.

      An acre-foot of water will, depending upon where in the country you are — usage levels vary by area — supply about one to four households for a year at average usage. And that price is in California; electricity is a major input to desalination, and California has some of the highest electricity prices in the US, generally second only to Hawaii and something like double most of the country.

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    • Eheran@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      No idea at what point you talk about where the real savings actually come from, but not anywhere after that colon.

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  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    As someone who dislikes traditional low flow heads that tend to icepick you with little streams, I highly recommend high sierra showerheads. I don’t know how they pull it off, but it absolutely blasts you with water while still being low flow. Like I prefer it to any other shower head I’ve tried, low flow or not.

    They make one with an adjustable valve that let’s you dial in the perfect amount of flow too.

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    • Tim_Bisley@piefed.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Their website says make american showers great again :\

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    • karpintero@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      High Sierra shower heads are awesome. Installed them in each of our bathrooms. Feels like a rain shower, with more pressure then our previous stock shower head while still saving water. Win-win. They also manufacture them in small town in the foothills of the Sierra mountains which is a pretty cool fact.

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    • Paradox@lemdro.id ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I liked em so much I wrote a blog post about it

      pdx.su/blog/2023-01-30-a-good-shower/

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  • Paradox@lemdro.id ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I used to feel the same way, going as far as to drill out the flow restriction devices, but I found a shower head I actually like a few years back, and even it’s lowest flow model feels powerful

    I liked it so much I wrote a blog post about it

    pdx.su/blog/2023-01-30-a-good-shower/

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    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Thanks for sharing this. I really prefer the wider diameter nozzles as this style always just feels like a garden hose to me, but I might give it a try as I also have not been very happy with anything I’ve tried. Any reason you didn’t do the long nut version?

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  • terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Same. Managed to remove the flow regulator out of my new one. Back to proper pressure!

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• K1nsey6@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

  As more and more cities across the nation are privatizing their water systems, the idea that they want to remove water flow restrictions on shower heads makes more sense. Anytime public services are privatized, our costs go up, and that privatized profit also goes up.

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