At the end of January I was visiting Mu and Eric (my parents). They live in a village near Leicester at the end of a lane next to a farm. The water pressure to their house has always been poor, and as the number of homes in the lane has increased over the last few years it has got steadily worse. Although the low flow rate does not affect their shower, which is fed from a cistern in the loft, everyone links the two together. Anyway the flow rate from the shower is poor at the best of times and it has a propensity to become air locked, even though the cistern sits precariously on a pile of bricks and wood to increase the head to the fittings below.
This particular shower was struggling even to live up to its poor rating and by the time I had shampoo all over my head the trickle of water gave up the ghost altogether. At that point I was forced to abandon the shower and yell downstairs to ask someone to turn off the hot tap. This didn’t help the situation so I resorted to messing around with the bath taps to get rid of the airlock. Eventually I got some flow back (1.3 litres/minute I later measured it as!) and as I stood under the dribble of water, the idea for this blog page was formed.
By the way, their shower had a flow rate of 2.2 litres at its best that weekend! So my parents, even if they spent 30 minutes in the shower, (they actually spend less than five minutes) would still use less water than the average bath.