The single, 10-minute long shower will cost you $0.46 or $168.93 if you repeat it daily for a full year. Don't forget that these are sample calculations for one person and 10 minutes for showering only 1 time a day.
A ten-minute hot shower uses 6 cents of natural gas, so the total cost comes out to $0.435. This means that a two-person household where each member takes two 10-minute showers a day can expect to pay $1.74 a day or roughly $635 a year in energy and water bills.
Generally, taking a shower uses less water than a full bath. A standard showerhead flows at a rate of 2.5 gallons per minute . This means that a ten-minute shower only uses 25 gallons of water.
For an average middle-class household in South Africa (LSM7-10), a 10-min shower costs over R24 if you have a 'standard' 15 litre/min showerhead! This is about R2. 43/min. By changing to a low-flow showerhead and reducing shower time to 6 minutes, you can dramatically reduce this to about R7.
Following our calculations based on a 10-minute shower, you can expect to spend 73p per electric shower and 40p per gas shower. Overall, it's cheaper to run a gas shower. However, fear not, as there are plenty of ways to cut costs on your energy bills irrespective of what kind of shower you use.
What makes an optimal shower then? Ideally, it should be about 5 to 7 minutes and no longer than 15 minutes, says Yousuf Mohammed, PhD, a senior research fellow in dermatology at the Frazer Institute of the University of Queensland in Australia.
That's why Lipoff suggests using lukewarm water instead of hot (the higher the temp, the more it'll dry you out), keeping showers under 10 minutes, and going easy on the soap (which can also have a drying effect). Ditching washcloths and loofahs goes a long way, too.
What costs the most on your electric bill? Heating and cooling are by far the greatest energy users in the home, making up around 40% of your electric bill. Other big users are washers, dryers, ovens, and stoves. Electronic devices like laptops and TVs are usually pretty cheap to run, but of course, it can all add up.
In fact, heating the water to a pleasant showering temperature is at least twice as expensive as the cost of the water itself. Accordingly, water heating can quickly drive up utility bills and accounts for roughly 10-20 percent of an average household's energy bill.
The total running time of this kind of shower can last less than two minutes – using an initial thirty seconds or so to get wet, followed by shutting off the water, using soap and shampoo and lathering, then rinsing for a minute or less.
Let's start with the truth: Showers are cleaner than baths. A shower is the best option if thoroughly cleaning your entire body is your top concern. Showers whisk dirty water out of sight while evenly distributing clean water over your body.
Flush Facts
Design improvements have allowed toilets to use 1.28 gallons per flush or less while still providing equal or superior performance. This is 20 percent less water than the current federal standard of 1.6 gallons per flush.
If you have a low-flow showerhead installed, you can expect to use about two gallons of water per minute, equalling 20 gallons throughout a 10-minute shower. With a standard showerhead, around half a gallon more water will emerge each minute, so a 10-minute shower would use somewhere close to 25 gallons.
The majority of kettles have a 3kW element. An example 3kW kettle boils one cup of water (235ml) in approx 45 seconds. This means it uses 1p to boil a cup of water in a kettle.
Furthermore, based on Department of Energy data, they calculated that the standard 1.6 gallon toilet costs 1.3 cents to flush. Since people flush about five times every day, the estimated cost of flushing the toilet is $24 per person per year.
Even when turned off, the majority of modern kettles draw 30W (watts) of electricity each hour. That means a year of keeping your water kettle plugged in, you've spent 64p of electricity not using it.
Average TVs use between 50 and 200 W of electricity to stay powered. On average, solar panels are rated at around 350 W, meaning you'll be able to power a TV easily with just one solar panel.
Dermatologists recommend keeping your showers between 5 and 10 minutes. This time period gives you enough time to properly clean your body without overdoing it. If you have certain skin conditions, staying in the shower too long could have negative effects.
It also depends on your personal preference. If you feel better with a daily showering routine, go for it. If you would rather skip some days, that's OK, but never go more than two or three days without washing your body with soap.
Many doctors say a daily shower is fine for most people. (More than that could start to cause skin problems.) But for many people, two to three times a week is enough and may be even better to maintain good health. It depends in part on your lifestyle.
Healthy Showering Tips
Whenever you take a shower, there are some steps you can take to protect your skin. Keep it short. Five to 10 minutes is ideal for showering. If you stay in the water too long, it can dry out your skin.
The average person has a shower duration of 7 minutes. Shower timer duration is 4 minutes; saving 3 minutes shower time or 45 litres (QLD Government 2008).