Your comments and criticism, please:
My new apartment is swell, but my shower is awful. (And no, I didn’t think to check it before signing the lease.) Sometimes the water isn’t warm enough and the pressure is so low that it comes out in a trickle. I can pee more gallons per minute than this shower puts out. The water doesn’t actually project from the shower head, but runs down it, like a rock getting rained on.
I dig and dig around for a product that does the following, but am surprised to find that it doesn’t appear to exist.
Let’s call it “Mister Shower”. Mister Shower does the following:
- Sits on the floor, next to the toilet (or wherever)
- T’s off the hot or cold water supply in front of the sink or toilet, using a kit of plumbing adapter-thingies
- Takes in water at a relative trickle at whatever pressure is available
- Heats that water to temperature X, which is set with a dial
- Has a fitting for a flexible shower head hose
- Includes a battery-powered RF dial-thingie pump control that you stick to the wall in the shower stall
So it buffers up water and heat at a precise temperature, and then serves it out in quick blasts. Whammo.
Finer points:
- Just 2 amps of power is plenty to heat 10 gallons from cold to hot in 12 hours
- Just 100 watts of pumping power is plenty to do 2.5 gallons/minute @ 50psi
- The tank is ambient-pressure, like a toilet tank, so it doesn’t need to be a pressure vessel
Note what it does NOT do:
- Hot/cold water mixing — You set the water temperature and walk away
And that’s it.
Maybe there’s another product “Mister Bathroom” that also has a second output for a sink tap.
Anyway, I’m suddenly enamored with this idea, because it’s exactly what I, a mere plumbing mortal, could buy online, take out of the box, and hook up to solve this shower situation.
What I don’t know is how many other people would care.
Well? Brilliant or stupid?
Longshot City 
April 5, 2011 at 4:35 am
Electric and gas shower water heaters are common here in Asia.
My last apt had a cold water only shower and then someone retrofitted a second hot water shower with one of these (no mixing, just variable power on demand hot water heating).
The do not do pressurization but they do convert cold water hose + elecricity == warm/hot shower.
April 5, 2011 at 2:15 pm
I’m not so sure about your Mister Shower, but I have two ideas that may help.
1. Change the shower head. My shower started losing pressure and it turned out that minerals had hardened inside it and were blocking the holes where the water came out…in one drop at a time.
2. In Europe, it is very common to have an electric water heater that you hook up to the cold water pipe and it only heats enough water for your fairly short shower. That’s old technology I saw in France back in 1995. Unlike your Mister Shower, a plumber and electrician installed it, but the savings on gas were so great that the cost was worth it within a few months.
In the meantime, have you considered a bath?
April 5, 2011 at 2:17 pm
One more thought on changing the shower head, some of the newer “green” shower heads are “low flow” and mix in some air to increase the pressure without increasing water consumption.
April 5, 2011 at 6:28 pm
Bath? Bath?!?!?! Sheee, it’ll take a week to fill up.