You are here » » » Reduce Hot Water Use for Energy SavingsOver in the Gothamist Forum yesterday, Larry asked what kind of water restrictions New York has on shower heads. Of course, we all remember the classic Seinfeld episode where Jerry's building puts low-flow heads into the building to the dismay of Jerry, Kramer, and Newman. After doing a little research, Gothamist found an answer for Larry. On the New York City DEP website, there's a handy list of restrictions on water usage in a normal situation as well as drought conditions. In the city, sale or installation of showerheads that use more than 2.5 gallons of water per minutes is prohibited. During any type of drought restriction, all showerheads must use 2.5 gpm or less. And if you're thinking of removing a water restricting showerhead, be aware that if you replace it with something that doesn't meet standards, you're subject to a summons after being served with a warning. If a warning just isn't enough to curb your desire for a more water consuming showerhead, there's also a potential cost savings.

Besides the obvious use of less water (water actually costs money, you know), you can save a lot of energy with efficient showerheads. Used Book Stores Indio CaAccording to Flex Your Power, about 73% of water used in a typical shower is hot water. Homes For Sale In La Vega Dominican RepublicWith the cost of heating that water growing more and more expensive, any way you use less could save you a good amount of money.Miami Wall Mirror In Multi-Level Collage Design And if you really need that high-powered shower, there are plenty of showerheads out there now that makes it feel like you're using a lot of water when you're actually using an efficient showerhead. Photo by Rachelle BowdenThe remnants of a marina at the New Melones Lake reservoir in California as seen on May 24.

Good showers may be the latest victims of California’s drought, after officials Wednesday approved new regulations that will require ultra low flow shower heads. The new regulations — which were approved by the California Energy Commission — mean shower heads sold in California will be limited to spraying 2 gallons per minute beginning in July 2016. By 2018, they’ll be limited to just 1.8 gallons per minute — the toughest standard in the nation. Existing regulations limit California shower heads to 2.5 gallons per minute. The changes come as California slogs through the fourth year of it’s record-breaking drought. The idea is to save energy, cut emissions, and reduce water use. And in the first year alone, officials expect the new shower heads to save 2.4 billion gallons. Houseboats are moored on a shrinking arm of the Oroville Lake reservoir on May 24. So will these new regulations make a big difference in the drought? To understand the answer, it’s useful to keep in mind that California is home to about 38.8 million people.

As of June, Californians were using an average of 97.5 gallons per person per day, meaning collectively they were using about 3.8 billion gallons a day. At that rate, residential water use in California would add up to about 1.38 trillion gallons a year, though usage rates do vary from month to month depending on weather and rainfall. Assuming 1.38 trillion gallons are used per year, the new low flow shower head regulations should save about 0.17% of the water Californians are using at home in the first year. Ten years later, the program should be saving 24 billion gallons, which amounts to about 1.7% of the state’s residential water. And by 2028, the savings will jump up to 2.8%. By 2028 the regulations should also save 202 million therms of natural gas, 1,322 gigawatt‐hours of electricity, and $702 million, according to a California Energy Commission report. Even though these new regulations will have very little impact on actual overall water use in California, it does fit into a larger lifestyle realignment in the drought-prone West.

Earlier this year, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered Californians to cut back on their water use. Cities responded with an array of strategies, including outreach and fines. Some of these measures will likely end when the drought finally subsides, but not all of them. Lawns for example, have been disappearing in the face of watering restrictions and generous rebates for replacing turf with drought-tolerant landscaping. Many of those lawns are probably gone for good now that homeowners have invested heavily in new kinds of landscaping. The new shower head regulations represent a similar kind of shift, where an initial investment — albeit a small one in the form of a shower head — leads to a long term change that will outlast any particular drought. Here’s How California Will Enforce Its First-Ever Statewide Water Restrictions Some California Cities Are Using Insane Amounts Of Water — Here’s WhyWHEN Joseph Steuer, a Manhattan correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter, came home one recent evening, he was confronted with a nasty piece of cat burglary that hit, he felt, below the belt.

His old showerhead was gone, replaced with a stingy low-flow model by a stealthy superintendent. "My old showerhead wasn't even that great," he said ruefully, "but this is Chinese water torture." Those lucky enough still to have one of those luxuriant vintage showerheads, like the one Janet Leigh stopped short of enjoying in "Psycho," might be wise to hoard it: it could be tomorrow's collectible. It is already so hard to find that this fixture is fetching $150 to $1,200 for the aptly nicknamed "rain head." Ever since the city stepped up the installation of water meters a few years ago, ending a famously lenient water policy, landlords have responded to new costs by switching old, gushing faucets, toilets and showerheads with water-saving ones that deliver a half to a fifth as much water. The water restrictor in Mr. Steuer's showerhead has reduced the flow to a measly gallon-and-a-half-a-minute drizzle, as recently timed with the help of a bucket and stopwatch by his girlfriend, Erin Fitzgerald, a yoga instructor.

That makes the city happy, but not the tenants, whose unwritten right to a daily downpour has inspired fits of indignation, an episode of "Seinfeld" and even hardware surgery. As the summer heat blooms, people with new low-flow showerheads have been flooding hardware stores and showerhead manufacturers with requests to shake more water out of their new showerheads -- both city-provided models that landlords use as well as store models, which limits a newly made showerhead's output to 2.5 gallons a minute, in compliance with the Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992. "If I don't have a good shower, I'm not myself," grouses Kramer, the typically compulsive New Yorker, on tonight's "Seinfeld" episode. He will find a receptive audience. "On an average day we get three-, four-, five-dozen people, between phone calls and people who come in, who want showerheads with more water," said Craig Herbert, the plumbing manager of Gracious Home on the Upper East Side. The bad news for those with city-provided heads, distributed through the New York City Department of Environmental Protection toilet rebate program: the water restrictors are not removable.

Faced with two choices -- live with the low-flow model (forget it!) or buy a new head with a removable restrictor -- zealous New Yorkers have invented a third: take out a power drill and get to work. "If you've got people spending $5,000 or $10,000 on a bathroom, they're going to want a good shower," said John Christou, a co-owner of George Taylor Specialties, a custom plumbing supply in TriBeCa. Of the restrictors, he added, "I bet 99 percent get taken out." George Taylor's own $60 house model, when duly doctored by the customer, delivers up to 12 gallons a minute. Speakman Company, a plumbing hardware manufacturer, said its popular Six-Jet model's restrictor is designed to be removed with "eight pounds of force," or a quick tug with a screwdriver, said Michael Santora, the company's showerhead product manager. "We get a lot of calls complaining about the low pressure, and we do tell people that they are removable," he said. it's just whether you want to be a good citizen or use a lot of water."

Mr. Christou added that his experience had been that manufacturers who make water restrictors unremovable learn fast that their products don't sell at retail. The scenario gets taken to extremes on a rerun of "Seinfeld" tonight on NBC when Kramer (played by Michael Richards), incensed with his new low-flow showerhead, visits a black-market showerhead dealer and buys the "Commando 450," a model so strong it fire-hoses him right out of the tub. The scene, said the show's writer, Peter Mehlman, spoofs Robert De Niro's arms-negotiation scene in the film "Taxi Driver" but was inspired by the writer's own experience. "When I lived in New York, I had this really great shower, and when I heard that they were replacing them with those new water-saving ones, I did whatever I could to avoid the superintendent, and it worked," he recalled proudly. He added, "Of course the joke was on me, because I was the only one with a key and when my oven caught on fire the fireman had to break down my door."

While the idea of a black market for plumbing hardware has caused amusement in the industry -- there's no evidence of any such market -- the city's environmental agency is not laughing. "We have men going around to hardware stores and plumbing-supply houses checking up on how everything is sold," said Warren Liebold, the director of conservation, who says his agents are searching for new models sold without restrictors. A Federal code that makes restrictors unremovable, he said, "would be the ultimate solution." In the meantime, every little bit helps. While the current savings achieved through low-flow showerheads are estimated at 5 million to 10 million gallons a day -- a drop in the bucket of New York's estimated 1.3 billion gallons-a-day usage -- Mr. Liebold says he hopes that figure will double by the turn of the century. If water is not New York's biggest tourist attraction, it has millions of fierce local fans. "New Yorkers are proprietary about water, because in part, New York has a history of having the finest water in the world," said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a senior attorney for the Hudson River Keeper, an environmental group that lobbies for water conservation, "and for a long time it was extraordinarily cheap and extraordinarily abundant."