Shower flow rates are somewhere of the order of 10L/min -- potentially rather more if you're talking about power showers -- so the showers-are-more-efficient-than-baths thing is only really clear cut if you take relatively brief showers. I think some of the comparisons I've seen in the past have pointed to 2 minute showers, which seems pretty rushed, especially if you have hair to wash.
If you have a family, can you share a bath (taking turns)? That's a substantial and fairly easily-achieved saving.
If you've got a garden, adding a gray-water collection system also makes things that little bit less wasteful, at least in the summer (but I suppose that would also work with a shower too...)
>* I think some of the comparisons I've seen in the past have pointed to 2 minute showers*
Wait?
Wouldn't that mean that you bathe in 20L of water? I know it's only the eyeball test, but most of the bath tubs I've seen seem to be filled with more than 20L when in use. Particularly if people are soaking, which would be a fair comparison to a long shower.
I think maybe we need some kind of way to recycle water for more than one night, and reheat it efficiently. Then baths start being better for the environment.
I have no idea how to do that? (Or even if you can do that?) But it seems a good way forward if some company made tubs like that.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I meant that most people I know seem to shower for >>2 minutes, so I doubted the credibility of the comparison.
Clearly, if you are fairly consistently sticking to 2-minutes showers, that's going to be more economical than baths -- even with some degree of sharing.
I have, indeed. I studied APL at school (which shows you how old I am!) I enjoyed reading it and hated typing it :-) I tend to prefer things that are a little bit in between. APL has quite a lot of unusual features, though (some of which were intuitive for me, having been a FORTH programmer, and some of which were not -- having a pretty poor math background). I've been thinking of playing with one of the modern APL variants. I think I would really enjoy it these days.
