Water Saving Shower/wash method – use just 300 ml

How to shower/wash completely using just 300 ml water.

My new water saving shower/wash ‘kit’

Minimising the amount of water needed for one’s daily “shower/wash”.

Reserving used fresh or ‘grey’ water for another purpose does not save that water; it re-purposes it to be used on a secondary and perhaps less necessary application. But the water still gets used up.

Consider that when showering normally, water is typically consumed by:

• waiting for the water to heat up; anything from 4 to 8 litres (depending upon piping distance) of clean fresh water is used while the warm water comes down the pipes to reach the shower.
• wetting down prior to soaping uses 2-4 litres (assume switching water off while soaping).
• rinsing the soap off uses 4-6 litres (assuming using the water in bursts, i.e. not flowing freely).

By being careful and only running the shower for just as long as is needed, total water typically used can be cut back from the generally accepted 20 litres per shower to under 10 litres, particularly when several people shower shortly after each other so that the water heating cycle is shortened.

And when any fresh water is captured in a bucket for re-use and the ‘grey’ water from the shower itself is collected by standing in a large basin while washing and rinsing, this water can at least be used twice; e.g. the fresh water for washing dishes and the grey water for flushing the toilet.

Still, total water consumption for this purpose alone by a family of, say, 4 people showering every day (pretty necessary in summer) would be (4x 10 litres x 30 days =) 1200 litres/month.

If “Day Zero” arrives, 1200 litres is a lot of water to collect, transport and carry home every month.

Therefore the practical goal must be to rather save water by not using it in the first instance.

So I set out to test how else one could do it using as little water as possible.

I bought two (different coloured) 1 litre spray bottles (ones with adjustable nozzles) for R30 each and a large sponge suitable for cleaning cars for R20.00, all from Builders Warehouse. To this I added a 100ml bottle and atomiser fitting at R5.90 from Plastics for Africa. I already had the basin.

The steps are:

1. finely shave some soap bar – about 1/5 of a bar – into one bottle. Add about 500 ml of hot (not boiling)  water and allow this to dissolve the soap overnight. Fill up with more rain (?) water.
2. fill the second bottle with pure tap or rain water.
3. set both nozzles to a wide fine spray.
4. damp the sponge.
5. stand in the basin (to collect water run-off).
6. spray a part of the body to be washed with pure water from the one bottle to wet it down.
7. then spray that wet area lightly with soapy solution from the other bottle and rub briskly with the sponge to clean.
8. again spray that area with pure water to rinse off.
9. repeat for different parts of the body.

Observations?

The spray bottle water does not need to be heated. In this warmer summer weather the fine spray is immediately warmed by the body and there is no discomfort. Ditto the soap solution.

The soap solution must be well diluted so that residual soap left behind after sponging is minimal and requires very little rinsing. Most folks seem to use to much soap.

Hair need not be soaped every day, but when done tends to need a little more water to rinse fully.

Due to the controlled water flow, all run-off water can be captured in the basin – none is wasted.

Because of washing in stages, this process takes about 5 minutes (vs the ‘normal’ two minutes).

Outcome?

One is at least as clean after this spray shower/wash as one is after a conventional shower.

Usage is about 200ml of fresh water for wetting/rinsing and about 100ml of soapy solution per wash.

Every drop of run-off is captured in the basin for re-use (only abut 150ml/wash – the rest is lost to towelling dry and evaporation) .

What else?

Allow another 100ml per day for a couple of mouth washes after brushing teeth.

Use same sprays for soaping/rinsing when washing hands during the day; perhaps another 100ml?

Conclusion?

One person can shower/wash very thoroughly using just 300ml of water per day and just another 200ml takes care of other daily teeth bushing and washing of hands.

Thus using this method, a person needs just half a litre of potable water per day for a very thorough daily shower/wash and to cover other personal hygiene needs.

Rain water is perfectly suitable for such purposes. So a 200 litre drum filled just once with rainfall run-off from the roof (typically, a 3-4mm rain shower on a 100sqM roof would fill that drum) could cover the personal washing needs of a family of four people for 3 months!

Should “Day Zero” ever arrive, refilling two spray bottles every few days from a tap in a convenient tank will surely be far better than having to travel, queue, collect and then transport and carry 40 litres of fresh water every day to achieve the same result. You should try this now – it does work.

What about the 100ml bottle and atomiser?

This is strictly optional.

What I do is fill the small bottle with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. After my shower/wash, I squirt a few drops onto my skin and face (no more than half a teaspoon full in total each time) and rub it in very thoroughly. This feeds the skin leaving it feeling smooth and supple and minimises dry itchiness.

Extra virgin olive oil is totally natural and is mainly absorbed by the skin, leaving a slight trace because olive oil never dries completely, but without any stickiness or greasiness of other lotions and creams. At first it has a very pleasant, mild fresh grassy scent but that steadily fades and would pose no competition with perfumes. And because one uses so little of the oil, 100ml will last for a long time making it an extremely economical way to care for your skin.

Being mainly a monounsaturate, olive oil does not go off and remains fresh for months. The oil also eases the cleaning action of the following day’s shower/wash.

Oh, and ladies, a little olive oil on cotton wool is a good way to remove make-up.

Tom.