I’d seen a number of adverts for aerated showers. The idea’s simple – just replace your existing showerhead (a five second swap) and you can significantly reduce your water consumption every time you shower. The claim is that aerated showers give the same ‘feel’, but use much less water. For around £20, it seemed a good investment.

In use, the aerated shower certainly feels powerful – at full blast, it feels decidedly aggressive.

But now for the science. With the help of a 2 litre measuring jug and a timer from the kitchen, we ran a series of tests to see how much water came out of the shower (lpm = litres per minute). Note: it is quite instructive to see a large jug fill up in under 10 seconds – if you have a family member who spends 10 minutes in a shower that’s a lot of water!

The results are interesting. We have a combi condensing boiler feeding the usual thermostatic mixer unit.

Test	lpm
No showerhead	12.25
Normal showerhead	11.75
Aerated showerhead	9.75

So, the aerated shower does reduce water consumption, but not as much as the manufacturers claim (8 lpm). I’ve posted a review with these figures on their shop website – currently awaiting moderation…

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 9:54 am and is filed under Greenery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.