I have just read Jo Ellison’s “editor’s letter” in the HTSI weekend magazine on how an eight-minute shower squanders more than 100 litres of water and that two minutes is a much better option (“How to perk it, from perfect caffeine stops to short, short showers”, HTSI, Life & Arts, FT Weekend, March 1).
This reminded me of visiting a Royal Navy submarine with my young children 20-something years ago. We were told that to maintain enough water on board, submariners were only allowed to use water in the shower for 30 seconds!
Apparently the trick adopted was to have 15 seconds of water to wet your hair and body and then turn off the water while you lathered and scrubbed. Then you could have a further 15 seconds of water to rinse off.
So we enthusiastically adopted this term of “submarine showers” to persuade the children that they didn’t need to waste water and almost made it into a competition.
It spread to their friends too and of course my husband and I had to play by the same rules.
Alison Kirby
Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, UK
