Reducing water usage (Part 1)
Posted by Wesley on
Softrong SKJ-60 kitchen faucet and SH-50 shower head
Not being content with just saving electricity, I looked for more ways to reduce monthly bills. There were two major pay-by-usage categories left: heating and water. With heating during last winter, I did some active manual adjustments instead of blindly relying on the thermostat, resulting in significant savings compared to last year. Sadly, it would be difficult to write this up. With water, there needed to be either some change of habits or hardware to see improvements. I did find the right hardware for the job, so I'm going to tell you about it.
Tiny rounded triangular holes produce strong streams with less water
It wasn't that my family members were particularly wasteful in terms of using water. In fact, overall water usage was consistently below average for the apartment complex. But hot water usage was above average. I guessed that this was due to heavy reliance on hot water during showers and dishwashing. So I bought some water-saving faucets from a company called Softrong in late February. By puncturing tiny, 0.25mm (0.01") holes on a stainless steel sheet for water to come out instead of using wider (~1mm) plastic-molded holes, the faucets supposedly produce stronger streams with less water, significantly cutting the amount of water used.
Replacing the shower head...
Installation was fairly straightforward - just unscrew the existing shower head and screw in the new one. After replacing one in one bathroom and saw it working as intended, I bought a second one. The stream coming out of the shower head was strong, but also very "airy", as if I was showering with both air and water and consequently less "watery" in the end.
...and the kitchen faucet as well
Along with that, I also bought a kitchen faucet version so we would use less water for dishwashing as well. The water coming out of it was quite a bit stronger than expected, spraying all over the place when it bounced off the dishes. So it took a bit of time to adjust.
Overall, the products were seemingly working as intended, and in the four months of use we've never encountered any quality problems. So the only question remaining was whether the water-saving feature had any positive impact or not...