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Comment by positivecomment | Hacker News Reader

Maybe people can also shower with saltwater followed by a quick rinse in drinkable water. That would reduce the usage drastically.

I couldn't find anything against showering with saltwater by skimming the results of a naive google search.

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You can get about the same effect by running the water to get wet, turning it off while washing and then back on for rinsing (the infamous "navy shower").

I imagine the biggest strike against showering with salt water is that you'd need treatment, supply and heating dedicated to the salt tap. And then the salt water is busy corroding all the infrastructure devoted to it.

Turning off the shower while I am soaping is now second-nature to me, like turning off the water while brushing teeth. I highly recommend it.

Going even further, I switched early last year to not using soap at all (except for extreme dirt which warm water couldn't remove) and my showers are done in 1-3 minutes (depending if I wash my hair or not). My girlfriend also says I smell better (and not like various soaps).

Also related, a chemical engineer from MIT started a company[0] back in 2013 purporting that showering kills our healthy bacteria. Supposedly he hasn't showered in 13 years, although their latest product recommends "rinsing in the shower for 3 minutes" followed by spraying their product on your body.

[0]http://aobiome.com

How much do you exercise? I've heard that athletes often don't need to wear deodorant, because they sweat so much during practice that there isn't a build of of odor causing bacteria.

> I've heard that athletes often don't need to wear deodorant, because they sweat so much during practice that there isn't a build of of odor causing bacteria.

As someone who spends ~3 hours a day doing vigorous exercise, there is no way this is true. I smell awful afterwards.

But how do you smell after you shower it off? It could also be that people who exercise a lot might be less likely to sweat outside of exercise time.

> It could also be that people who exercise a lot might be less likely to sweat outside of exercise time.

Nope, I sweat pretty profusely throughout the day. Antiperspirant keeps me a part of civilization. FWIW I'm at a healthy weight and in good shape, just genetics.

Usually 2-4 times per week, but mostly just weekends. Definitely not athlete material (anymore at least). When I'm properly sweaty it generally isn't pleasant, especially when it dries.

I should have also noted that I haven't used deodorant in at least 10 years.

Maybe I just got lucky and won the genetic lottery in regards to smelly bacteria.

I wish this was feasible, but in our house the water takes 5 minutes to get to the shower from the water heater, and if you turn it off for more than a minute, you'll get wild temperature fluctuations over the next 5 minutes while it re-achieves a stable mix. I think this is just one more reason to install an on-demand water heater rather than have a giant monolith in your garage.

Alternatively you could take lukewarm or cold showers. In the very least you save energy, and many claim it is invigorating, better for your skin, burns calories for those trying to lose weight, helps adapt you to cold weather, etc.

Not a fun experience the first few times though.

cold is agony. I have no interest in "adapting", and broaching the idea to my wife is a complete non-starter.

And lukewarm is exactly the same problem; 5 minutes to get that temperature, and some minutes to get it back if you leave the water off.

I am looking for a solution, not for someone to try convincing my entire family that we should prefer the problem. :-P

On-demand water heaters, or electric pre-pumps, or a needle valve with continuous return, are the three viable solutions, period.

I wonder if there is a way to better insulate the pipes so they don't lose their heat so much. That's pretty unusual. Five minutes is a long time for water to run down a pipe- you must be running 75ft or so of pipe- so insulation is the other answer (the first being the on-demand water heater in the shower- I used one once and had no problem with it, and it may be more efficient anyway).

This doesn't work with electric showers. The element retains heat and the water trapped in it gets extremely hot, so you get scalded when you turn it back on.

Ask me how I know, go on...

In the context of this discussion, retrofitting a heater with a better thermostat would probably be more practical than retrofitting a saltwater shower.

The trick is disposing of the saltwater. Consider that depending on the locale, wastewater might be put back into the water table or else treated for bacteria then let back into the environment.

Saltwater saturating our soils, water table or even being too concentrated in a bay would affect the ecosystem negatively.

Source: Someone who isn't an expert in waste management or ecology.

Can you use fresh and saltwater in the same pipes? I feel like they would need to stay separate and having all the infrastructure duplicated and appliances able to switch between the two sounds expensive.

In HK there is a separate water system for sea water, and homes that use it for flushing toilets do have a second set of pipes. The additional cost of this complexity must be weighed against the value of having enough clean water for daily life.

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