Bath or Shower?

TheGardener

sammyjammy said:

A shallow bath is all well and good at this time, in December without the heating on it'll be a little too much to bear I would imagine!

I'm another that navy showers, turn it on, turn it off, soap hair and body, turn it back on to rinse but not sure I'll be doing it at 6am on a January morning!

I'm working on the theory that I could afford heating last year - so I can afford to have heating this year if I reduce my consumption proportionally to the rise in price. It will mean significantly less heating but not no heating. The dent from inflation and price rises will have to be absorbed from my other disposable income that until now was earmarked for holidays, meals out, new plants, clothes etc. 
There will be many changes in our household, some of which will not be quite as comfortable as I (or the kids!) would like but such is life, I am certainly not rich but I am conscious I am better off than others. 

matelodave

AS above, we've had hard times  even had the phone taken out to save money in the good old days, but we've saved for our retirement by paying into pension schemes and paying for AVC's instead of holidays when we were working and are now seeing the benefits of all of that.

We'll pull in our horns a bit to cope with a nearly fourfold increase in our energy costs and weather the storm like we did in the 70's and 80's. We'll still pay our taxes, rates and increases in living costs, but stuff like SKY and other luxuries wont get renewed. Likewise holidays, days out and even occasional trips to the pub will be curtailed

TBH Its those who go out to work and just miss out on benefits that I feel sorry for, they have all the costs of tax, NI, mortgage, rent, travel etc but wont get many of the extra's that will be handed out to those on benefits, so in most cases it will hit them the hardest. However it doesn't seem that they are the ones who are whinging  quite as much about their situation as thoese who are taking benefits.

Just my opinion you understand, but its gonna be a tough winter and we are all going to have to pull together to try and get through it rather than expecting that someone is going to keep dumping cash and hoping that it will all go away - the rest of us wont be able to afford it anymore.

Ally_E.

People with long thick curly hair reading the suggestion of taking a 2min shower like 👀

I have medium thickness long hair and I take around 4-5min just to massage the shampoo into my hair. I don't have the water running during this time of course, so I have no idea how long I use the water for. Might try timing it one day. 

Van_Girl

Ally_E. said:

People with long thick curly hair reading the suggestion of taking a 2min shower like 👀

I have medium thickness long hair and I take around 4-5min just to massage the shampoo into my hair. I don't have the water running during this time of course, so I have no idea how long I use the water for. Might try timing it one day. 

I have long curly hair, though thankfully not very thick. I've reduced down to only washing it once a week (condition is now amazing) but that's probably a 10 minute shower to get everything done inc double shampoo, conditioner in for 2 mins, conditioner brush, then rinse. I keep the water running because otherwise it's freezing when it goes back on, and I also do all the other beauty bits while I'm there 

Showers in between are super fast in-soap-rinse-out, but I do enjoy the luxury hair wash showers. 

I have an old electric shower so it probably costs a fortune, but I don't have a bath tub at the moment so there isn't another option anyway

matelodave

In the end it's pretty obvious that a deep bath will use more water than a shallow one and standing in a shower for longer will also use more water.

You can reduce the water consumption of a shower by fitting an Eco shower head or flow restrictor to limit the flow to say 6 litres a minute compared to a deluge head which can dump 10-15 litres a minute, so five minutes will only use 30 litres instead of possiblly 60-75 litres. A bath is reckoned to be around 70-80 litres but that depends on the shape and how deep you have it.

To compare the amount of water you use, put the plug in and see how deep the bath gets when you shower or time how long the shower takes to fill a 10 litre bucket - 1 minute = 10lpm, 30 secs = 20lpm, 2 minutes = 5lpm

My shower has an EcoCamel shower head (pinched from our caravan) which gives around 6lpm and I can shower in less than two minutes = around 10 litres of water.

TheGardener

matelodave said:

...You can reduce the water consumption of a shower by fitting an Eco shower head or flow restrictor to limit the flow to say 6 litres a minute compared to a deluge head which can dump 10-15 litres a minute, so five minutes will only use 30 litres instead of possiblly 60-75 litres. A bath is reckoned to be around 70-80 litres but that depends on the shape and how deep you have it...

The caveat is - I was told by the plumber that I would blow my shower up if I put a restrictor on it - those eco heads and restrictors are NOT for electric showers - only those using direct hot water from tanks or combi-boilers. 

Ally_E.

Sorry to pipe up with thick curly hair again, but I found that I needed to rinse conditioner out of my hair for longer if I used restricted flow shower head. So essentially I was using the same amount of water or maybe even more. So I ended up switching shower heads to old full power one just to wash my hair and switch it back to the flow restricted one for the body. 

TheGardener

Ally_E. said:

Sorry to pipe up with thick curly hair again, but I found that I needed to rinse conditioner out of my hair for longer if I used restricted flow shower head. So essentially I was using the same amount of water or maybe even more. So I ended up switching shower heads to old full power one just to wash my hair and switch it back to the flow restricted one for the body. 

I agree! Folk who suggest I can shower in <2 mins : I have a slight mobility issue (limited movent in my shoulders/upper arms) mean 7 mins is the fastest I can go. I could wash my hair in the kitchen sink as it has a flexihose shower thing on it but having banned the use of the dishwasher more than twice a week - I'd probably have to do the washing up first   

shinytop

Ally_E. said:

Sorry to pipe up with thick curly hair again, but I found that I needed to rinse conditioner out of my hair for longer if I used restricted flow shower head. So essentially I was using the same amount of water or maybe even more. So I ended up switching shower heads to old full power one just to wash my hair and switch it back to the flow restricted one for the body. 

I think short hair might come back into fashion this winter 

Alnat1

Bar shampoo, a lot less suds to mess around with and plastic free.