Showerglass

One of the biggest green killers in our homes is the shower. Heated water is expensive too! It can cost as much as ten cents per minute. So, you know that half hour shower? It's costing you three dollars! Five minutes is plenty of time to take a shower, and for the Tap'dNY contest, I've found the perfect answer. A five minute shower timer timer made from recycled plastic bottles!

Step 1: What you need.

For this project, you will need two used plastic bottles, hot glue and gun, a knife and scissors, and sugar (it's better to use fancy sand, aka sugar sand, which you can find at a craft store).

Comments

[april420]

i live with 2 daughters who both have long thick hair...hence longer shower time.. i have been thinkin about a timer. ha. say for arguments sake that it's $3 for 1/2 hr shower.. which is an easy time est.. . thats $180, just for my 2 kids per month!!! i take faster showers, so say $45 per month for me + 180 =$ 225 !! thats more than my car payment... i really like this showerglass idea :)

[ducktape.mac]

why wasn't this featured? it is a wonderful idea!! when i can find some sand deposits in my woods i am SO going to make one of these!! thanks for the instructable.

[beatrizmuniz]

What a great idea!! It is great for the kids to see and time their showers, also!! Could the sugar be replaced by salt?

[HyeGye]

Probably, it's all about the same size.

[Justin742]

Thanks for this istructable

[Legend in your Mind]

What's wrong with just using a simple egg timer? Or just put a water resistant clock on the wall and peek at it once in a while?

[Grey_Wolfe]

I could take 5 minute showers if I shaved my head. Till then I'll just try to mitigate the damage by turning off the water if I've got tangles. lol

[uguy]

Why sugar and not sand?

[Doctor What]

The sand I had was ugly.

[Grey_Wolfe]

lol. I'm not sure looks are entirely important when going green. But I still find that entertaining.

[Tool Using Animal]

Where did you get that ten cents a minute number?It seems unreasonable.

[Doctor What]

Prices depend on where you live, but I did a little searching, and came up with that number. But, after you mentioned that, I did more searching!

And I came up with a larger number some how.

http://www.atsecosolutions.com/saveonshowering.html

This site suggests that the average 10 minute shower in the United States costs $2.10!

[Grey_Wolfe]

Wow, and that was figured with a water saver.

[Tool Using Animal]

their number look screwy, I'll run them later and see what I get.

[Tool Using Animal]

Okay starting with their numbers

National average cost of water is $.0030274 per liter
Cost of electricity: $0.0944 per kWh
30 degrees Centigrade temperature rise
131.125 liters in ten minutes

and assuming one liter =one kilogram.
one KWH=3.6MegaJoules
the specific heat of water is 4184J/kgK

so 4184*30*131.125=1.646*10⁷J
1.646*10⁷/3.6*10⁶=4.572 KWH

4.572*$0.0944+131.125*$.0030274=$.829 for a ten minute shower or 8.3 cents per minute.

[Wafflicious]

NO! I was planning on doing this for the save your bottle contest =( Oh well nice job.

[stitches22]

great instuctable! but i have just one suggestion, instead of using sugar, use something like actual sand, because over time, sugar can clump together. that may throw off your time and make you make another showerglass!

[DeusXMachina]

Don't take shorter showers, shower with a friend ^_

Also, you might want to use something with an anti-caking agent if you're going to have it in a very moist environment, i.e. a shower.

[rickyd!]

or a co-worker :p

[Doctor What]

or a random hobo.

[PKM]

Alternative timer- the time it takes for you getting in the shower to wake up the person upstairs, who then promptly goes to the toilet and flushes it, killing your hot water >_< it's about 5 minutes!

The easy way to calibrate it to 5 minutes is to totally fill the top bottle, let it run through for exactly 5 minutes then stop- then you know you have 5 minutes' worth of sand in the bottom bottle. I'd recommend using sand rather than sugar, DeusXMachina is right that in a damp environment sugar may well cake up and become useless.

I'm not sure about showering with a friend- sharing with the sort of person I could imagine sharing a shower with might lead to "distractions" that could end up with you being in the shower for longer than you intended in the first place...

_{speaking entirely hypothetically of course}

[Goodhart]

killing your hot water

??? My toilet uses cold water, and so does the upstairs one in the other apt. When they flush, the cold goes away and we get BURNT.

[Doctor What]

Same here!

[DeusXMachina]

Hehehehe... It boils down to technique, really. If you alternate who's under the water stream and who's sudsing up, you can effectively save half your shower water. But you're right, "distractions" more or less negate that :-P. But really all you have to do is lessen the total shower time, and you're saving. If one actually kept track of how much water went down the drain and the power usage to heat the water, I bet even with, erm, less than efficient techniques, you'll still end up saving because you're cutting out a lot of waiting for the water stream to warm up. Or you could just get on-demand water heating and turn the water off when you're sudsing :-P

[Grey_Wolfe]

SO what you're saying is, to save money in the shower, share the shower with someone, but make sure they're ugly. Got it. I'm taking baths from now on...

[Doctor What]

Or you could both suds up at the same time, and huddle together to get under the hot water :-?

[PKM]

It boils down to technique, really.

As do all the best things in life. Ok, I'm going to stop the innuendo now.

Being able to stop the shower in the middle would be nice- I have a power shower which probably counts as on demand, but if you turn it off and straight back on again it oscillates between cold and burningly hot for a minute or so while the temperature control gets itself together.

[rimar2000]

Great idea! But, why don't use sand? It is cheaper, it don't humidify easily as sugar.

[Doctor What]

I thought about it, but the only sand I had was ugly, and I didn't have time to go out and get some sugar sand.

[JakeTobak]

Don't take shorter showers, take less showers. ~_

[CaseyCase]

Don't take less showers, take no showers!

[theburn7]

i like it, i should post some useful bottle things like this

[foobear]

love it

[Erik Lindemann]

Hmm... Just three bucks for a half hour, eh? I think I'll pay through the nose to wake up slowly and non-aggressively. But hey, if you're not into paying $21 a week to shower, then by all means follow this instructable.

[patmac]

Very clever. I think I already take short showers but there's no harm in being sure. As soon as I get time I will borrow your idea and instructions and build a showerglass of my own. Thanks!