So.. In my apartment I have a shower problem. The current head is a somewhat old, fixed head. It gives us fantastic water pressure and we have rather fantastic pressure available in the apartment. The problem is that it is way too much water and too much pressure. It seriously feels like it was designed for bathing elephants or something. Anyway.. that wouldn't be so bad.. I love extreme water pressure. The real problem is how much water it uses - way too much. It uses so much that our water heater can't keep up and our showers here last about 2 minutes maximum if you want decent water temperature.

We went to Walmart to buy a new one.. got a shiny new one.. looked fine.. "80psi blah blah blah" Fine.. didn't see anything with higher PSI there. We put it on.. turn it on.. looks kinda crummy for water pressure. I get under it.. yep.. definitely crummy.

So of course I get online to find out more about shower heads. Search for "showerhead" or "shower head" or anything close to that - you'll eventually see a page, probably on the front of whatever search engine you prefer, to this article on Mises. Amazing.. I search for showerhead stuff and what comes up but my trusty old anarcho-capitalist friends over at the Mises Institute.

So anyway the story goes something like this:

The Federal Energy Policy Act of 1992 mandates that "all faucet fixtures manufactured in the United States restrict maximum water flow at or below 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) at 80 pounds per square inch (psi) of water pressure or 2.2 gpm at 60 psi."

Now normally one may just assume this is some libertarian gibberish.. but as you will see, this all comes straight from the government. If you're a showerhead manufacturer in the United States you just CANNOT make showerheads more powerful than 80psi.

So what am I gonna do? I don't know yet. Mod my old pre-1992 showerhead and make it not so powerful and water-wasteful; find a different type (aerating/non-aerating - I'm pretty sure my current one is non-aerating) and see if that works better; tell the Department of Energy to fuck off and just completely remove my showerhead - see how you like THAT.