Bath or shower? The claim is that a short shower saves water, energy and cash.

Maybe choosing a shower is an obvious choice to save water, and it is fairly likely that this is the case. The answer to this question online seems to be take a shower. But how do you know it is best for you?

It is actually fairly easy to work it out for your home and if you have children you might want to get them to help you measure it. Have a look at how you might do this with our educational resource here.

Waterwise is an organisation in the UK promoting saving water and present plenty of ideas that could help cut down water usage and bills. It claims an average bath uses 80 litres of water and an average power shower lasts ten minutes and so could be using 150 litres of water. To reduce the amount of water in a shower there are two main options: purchase a low flow shower head or reduce the time under the shower. A 5 minute shower with a 6 litre per minute shower head would reduce the water used to 30 litres. Other sites also suggest similar ideas. Where water scarsity is a problem, using water to wet then switching off the shower to soap and shampoo, and finally switching on briefly to rinse off, helps conserve the precious resource.

Based on our measurements, a shallow bath could use 60 litres and a 4 minute shower with an ultra low flow shower head could use as low as 15 litres. Now when less water is being used, less water needs to be heated. It is very expensive to heat water. What could a slightly cooler water temperature do to the energy bills? Saving water in the bath or shower saves money on the water bill and saves money on the heating, whether that be by gas or electricity. That saving also means lower greenhouse gas emissions so this small change is climate friendly too.

Does a bath or shower use less water for you? Could you use even less?

For other ways to save without spending have a look here.

For the educational resource associated with this article click here.