Water Flow Meter
Last updated Sunday January 5, 2014
Do you want to know the flow-rate of a shower fixture or faucet? You can either use an expensive, highly accurate, calibrated flow meter or the 2 cent version. A cup.
Note the size of the cup: 12 oz, 16 oz, 20 oz, etc. Count the number of seconds (1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi….) it takes to completely fill the cup). You don’t have to be exact.
Use the following calculation to find the flow rate:
(ounces / seconds) * (60 seconds / 128 ounces per gallon) = Flow-rate.
For example if it took 3 seconds to fill a 16 oz cup, that means that fixture has a flow-rate of:
16 ounces / 3 seconds * (60 / 128) = 2.5 gallons per minute.
If your shower head uses more than 2.5 gpm, it is costing you a lot more money than it should. Replace it with a more efficient shower head. There are shower heads out there that use way less, yet still feel like a full force shower.
I really like this water sipping 1.5 gpm shower head.
