Washed Out

photo credit: Bashed

For those who like to get their news from National Party Press Releases, you may have heard about shower-gate.

This dishonest attack on the “nanny state”, National’s scrapping of the fund to insulate homes and the outpouring of foam from the opposition shows that this is all still a joke to these people! John Key himself attacked Clark during the debate saying that Kiwi’s powerbills had rocketed under Labour’s watch.

Make your decision, guys, either it’s a priority or it’s not.

Depending on who you hear it from, shower-gate is a rock hard regulation from Labour, or the Greens. They’ll have black-clad (with respirators) Green police that’ll come break down your door, rip your shower curtain and uninstall your high-flow shower head.

Nice, but don’t ignore the facts. It wasn’t a Green Party policy, or a Labour party policy. It was a standard policy proposal from a ministry. These sorts of things pop up all the time, but Nick Smith seized the opportunity to beat the nanny-state drum.

Evern worse, was the policy isn’t all that bad! Flow regulation would only apply for new houses over a certain size, using the least efficient water heading method! And the very best part is that over 70% of New Zealand homes already have a moderate-flow showerhead!

According to Frog:

80% of all hot water used in homes goes for showers

Out of approximately 1.6 million homes in NZ, 460,000 have high pressure water systems.

This means that 71% of existing homes already have a low-flow shower! (And they are not complaining either.)

If just a third of the high pressure systems in NZ were to switch to a high efficiency shower head of between 6 and 9 litres/min, they would each save on average 1500 kWhs per year, or about $300. They would also collectively save enough power each year to run the entire city of Nelson for that same year. This is not small peanuts. And we don’t need to go to 6 litre/min shower heads to do it!

Also, Steve Pierson weighs in with a Standard Line.