$20 fix improves shower and reduces water bill

Several years ago, I moved into a condo in San Francisco. My wife said we might not be able to stay. Stepping into the shower, we were greeted by a sad trickle rather than a blast of water. No amount of fiddling was of any help. The plumber told me there was nothing he could do.

An online search led to salvation — hundreds of specialized nozzles that increased water pressure even with meager volumes of water. Soon, we rinsed the shampoo out of our hair with ease. I confidently unpacked my things.

Most of us assume more water means a better shower. But that’s not true. Today’s high-pressure shower heads are designed to deliver the same experience that once required three times as many gallons per minute. Consumer Reports suggests today’s low-flow models can do even better.

But these thrifty shower heads not only use less water. Because they deliver a satisfying jet, they might also encourage you to turn off the faucet sooner, saving even more water, a recent U.K. study suggests. Higher pressure alone appears to entice people to spend less time showering.

Here’s how to upgrade to a water-saving solution we may all be able to agree on.

Showers are a sacred time for many. Teenagers can escape their siblings. Parents find momentary refuge from their children. There’s solace in the steam after a hard day. But it’s also a huge drain. Showers account for roughly 20% of total household water consumption. Your shower also burns energy: Just under half of a home’s hot water is used for showering.

Americans’ showering habits add up to about 1.2 trillion gallons of water annually, estimates the Environmental Protection Agency, roughly as much water New York and New Jersey use in a year for everything.

Regulators tried to reduce water waste in the mid-1990s by mandating more efficient shower heads. While succeeding at reducing the average flow rate from 5.5 gallons per minute to 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm), early models were awful. Users complained of weak water streams.

The culprit? Manufacturers merely added gaskets restricting water flow, instead of redesigning shower heads to work at these new flow rates.

But since then almost all manufacturers have gotten better at saving water without sacrificing performance, redesigning nozzles to work best at low-flow rates, said David Malcolm, founder of High Sierra Showerheads, a manufacturer specializing in low-flow designs.

“We’re trying to create ideal spray and droplet size at the ideal pressure,” he says.

The EPA’s WaterSense standard of 2.0 gpm (or less) is expected to cut about $5 billion off our national water and energy bill, states the agency.

Ian Walker, an environmental psychology professor at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England, was researching ways to conserve water. His team used temperature and pressure sensors to covertly track water use in 290 shower stalls and suites over 10 months.

Of the 86,000 individual showers they tracked, the median lasted six minutes, although the range stretched from 30 seconds to more than an hour. But one consistent finding stood out: The higher the pressure, the shorter the shower.

Crucially, more powerful streams of water consumed much less water overall — with the most savings from shower heads that combined high pressure with a low water flow.

“No one had any idea pressure would do this,” Walker says. “At any given flow rate, high pressure is better.”

The bottom line is you can now save water without having to compromise.

Upgrading your shower head can cost less than $20. For its 2024 shower-head guide, Consumer Reports tested more than a dozen products based on adjustability, spray quality — “robust pressure, satisfying water droplet size and good coverage” — as well as their ability to maintain high temperatures and save water.

“Our testing found that water flow really doesn’t predict performance,” says Bernie Deitrick, a test engineer for Consumer Reports. “In fact, the two best shower heads we tested earned top marks for both shower feel and water consumption, and the top model used only about half the legal limit.”

Consumer Reports’ top choice, the Hopopro High Pressure Fixed Showerhead, sells for just $18 and uses just 1.3 gallons per minute, around half the standard shower head.