Shower heads and the federal gov

Recently, Young and I decided that the water pressure comeing from our shower head just wasn't quite what we would like. Although we didn't want the Seinfeld-like blow-Kramer-out-of-the-tub type power, we found our current situation lacking. It just seemed that over time, the water pressure had fallen off to a point where our showers seemed lacking a bit.

We had been using the WaterPik Cascadia shower head, which we had initially been very happy with. After a bit of research, I learned that the US Federal Government requires shower heads to output no more than 2.5 gallons of water per minute as long as the plumbing system can supply 60 psi of water pressure. In order to take this into account, shower head manufacturers installed flow restrictors into their shower heads.

Futher investigation revealed that the WaterPik Cascadia included a removable flow restrictor.

So I went down to the Home Depot, and picked up a new one. Before installing, I went ahead and removed the flow restrictor. Wow, what a difference that makes. My first test shower with the new shower head sans flow restrictor was wonderful - plenty of hot water in a nice strong stream.

Is this environmentally questionable? You bet. Does it feel really good? Absolutely.