David Malcolm on The Trevor Carey Show: Low-Flow Showerheads and Water Pressure
Transcript
[Opening excerpt from Seinfeld about low-flow showers]
[Upbeat rock music]
TV Speaker 1: Jerry.
[Audience laughter]
TV Speaker 2: Jerry!
TV Speaker 1: You too, huh?
TV Speaker 2: Yeah!
TV Speaker 1: These showers are horrible. There’s no pressure. I can’t get the shampoo out of my hair.
TV Speaker 2: Me either!
TV Speaker 1: If I don’t have a good shower, I am not myself. I feel weak and ineffectual. I’m not Kramer.
TV Speaker 2: You? What about me? I got The Tonight Show tonight. I’m gonna have to shower in the dressing room.
[Audience laughter]
TV Speaker 1: Where you going?
TV Speaker 2: Well, I gotta find another shower.
[Audience laughter]
TV Speaker 3: They got you too! This is awful! I’m not Newman!
Announcer: This is The Trevor Carey Show on the Valley’s Power Talk.
Trevor Carey: Come on, man. You had a long day at the office, out on the sweaty job site, working in the yard, looking forward to that nice, hot shower. It might be hot, but you know, it just doesn’t have the oomph behind it.
Trevor Carey: The first time I showered in the Buffalo, New York area, it felt like a fireman’s hose or something coming out compared to the California dribble. Pressure stinks, and that’s gonna make you stay in the shower longer to wash, especially if you’ve got long hair and all that. By the time you’re done, you don’t even feel relaxed.
Trevor Carey: Kramer’s fears came true from Seinfeld there. Leave it to the government, right? To make comedy not real funny in real life. That’s what it’s like.
Trevor Carey: You know, Trump joked as he signed an executive order on this subject. The president said, “I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair. I have to stand in the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.” What you do is you end up washing your hair five times longer.
Trevor Carey: The Biden administration targeted a lot of our appliances: the stoves, the water heaters, washing machines, dishwashers, all of that. You know, the tools that we depend on. And they worked fine before. All the new regulations made it a whole lot worse.
Trevor Carey: The restrictions started in the Obama administration, probably started in California before Obama got in charge of it nationally. But Trump relaxed them; Biden put them back into place. Trump’s order adds he’s gonna, quote, “Make America’s showers great again.”
Trevor Carey: Sorry, Mr. President. David Malcolm at High Sierra already beat you to that. Does he know about you, David? You need to be in his administration now, it seems. Welcome.
David Malcolm: Well, I’d love to reach out to him and let him know that all showerheads are not made alike, and that we know how to do a real good job of rinsing long hair with low flow, believe it or not.
Trevor Carey: I can’t believe when a story hits, I always think I need an expert on something. And when this story hit, I said, I know my— we’ll make you the shower czar. Let’s call you the shower czar. David Malcolm, the shower czar.
Trevor Carey: Of course, you probably know this. When did the restrictions really start in California?
David Malcolm: Well, they actually started nationwide in 1992.
Trevor Carey: That’s a long ago.
David Malcolm: That’s a long ago. And it was two and a half gallons a minute. And the reason why low flow got such a bad name, a bad rap, is because the response by the manufacturers at the time, and they were all American companies, was to just restrict the flow.
David Malcolm: So the restriction was, or the mandate was, no more than two and a half gallons a minute at 80 PSI. And by putting in a restrictor that doesn’t compensate for pressure, most people don’t have 80 PSI. And so let’s say you’ve got 40, 50, 60 PSI. Well, you’re gonna have a lot less than two and a half gallons a minute. And that’s why they hated them. And that’s why they made fun of them on that TV show.
David Malcolm: And it wasn’t until more recently. It pretty much started in the Obama years when manufacturers began modifying the nozzles to work better and to deliver higher pressure at low flow. And they also were adding restrictors that compensate for pressure. So you were able to get your maximum flow, let’s say it’s two gallons a minute, at 80 PSI, but it was also reaching two gallons a minute as low as 40 PSI.
Trevor Carey: Yeah, but David, to me, that sounds like you’re European speaking metrics. Let me ask, is it like going from a V8 to a four-cylinder?
David Malcolm: No, it’s not. I think—
Trevor Carey: The new rules that they put in place. No, the rules they put in place in 1992. What percentage did it back it down? Like, maybe you could use a percentage.
David Malcolm: Well, okay. Prior to 1992, it was unlimited. You could have any flow. And so there was no restriction at all. And people were happy with them. They were probably getting three, four gallons a minute.
Trevor Carey: Let me stop you one moment and ask, where’s it regulated? At what point, when the water leaves the water company and comes to my shower, where is that regulated? That 80 PSI, where does that happen in the process?
David Malcolm: Well, it’s built into the showerhead.
Trevor Carey: Okay, so it’s right in the showerhead. That’s where all the—
David Malcolm: Right, and so where the water comes into the showerhead, that’s where the restrictor is. And it doesn’t allow the flow rate to get above two and a half gallons a minute up to 80 PSI.
David Malcolm: And I know that’s very complicated and hard to understand, but the fact is the delivery of low flow and a good shower is all dependent on the nozzle. And that’s what we’ve done at High Sierra Showerheads.
David Malcolm: We’ve developed a single nozzle. We’re the only ones in the world that do that, that breaks up a stream of water into a cascade of heavy droplets. And the heavy droplets make the water feel like more water than it really is. It can rinse long hair and do as good of a job as a showerhead of twice the flow rate.
Trevor Carey: Well, I experience that every night. I experience that every night, David. You know that. David came up— David’s been in my bathroom. He installed that shower for me.
Trevor Carey: And David, what I like about it is the handheld as well. A lot of times you have a switch where you go from either the shower or the handheld, but they both maintain the same pressure. Even if I shut off the valve on the handheld, everything stays the same.
David Malcolm: Right, right. And that’s that self-adjusting regulator that we build into the showerheads. So it really doesn’t care what the pressure is upstream. It’s always gonna have the same flow rate.
David Malcolm: And our nozzles are designed for a specific flow rate. So if somebody orders a 1.25-gallon-a-minute showerhead, we have a special nozzle just for that. If somebody orders two gallons a minute, we have a special nozzle just for that flow rate.
Trevor Carey: You know what? Can I do another sales pitch here? He’s like, yeah, go ahead, please. On that side nozzle there, David, when I used to clean the shower, the showerhead would only turn just a little bit left or right, and I couldn’t rinse off the tile on the side.
Trevor Carey: With that nozzle now, I can take that anywhere, even up on that little ledge where the shampoo sits on that skinny window. I can even hose it down up there, high pressure. So it actually makes cleaning not hurt my back at all, like having to get a cup in there and fill the cup up and splash it up against the wall to clean it off. You know, none of that medieval cleaning.
David Malcolm: Yep, that’s the beauty of the handheld. And I think everybody should have our handheld showerhead. There’s nothing better.
Trevor Carey: Yeah, well, now is this gonna help California, or is California gonna fight, do you think, this executive order from President Trump?
David Malcolm: Yeah, but California already has its own regulations. It’s got a California Energy Commission, and I’m sure it’s dug in. It’s not gonna budge. And the maximum allowed flow rate for California per showerhead is 1.8 gallons per minute.
David Malcolm: But, you know, you just use our 1.8 and you’ll never miss a high-flow showerhead.
Trevor Carey: Now, does California make less water gallons per minute? You said 1.8. Is it that little rubber valve, the regulator in there? Do they just make that bigger?
David Malcolm: No.
Trevor Carey: So that less water comes around?
David Malcolm: They actually make the holes through it smaller, okay? But you also make the nozzle smaller. If you don’t, the pressure will drop and it’ll be very weak, and people will hate it. So there’s a lot of art involved in making a good showerhead.
Trevor Carey: Yeah, well, there’s a lot of art involved in making a new commercial. I got an idea I think I’m gonna do for your company.
Trevor Carey: No, I’m gonna let people— I’m gonna be naked, but it’s on the radio, so it’s not gonna matter. I’m gonna take a recording in and let people hear how loud that shower is. That says what you’re experiencing when you hear it.
David Malcolm: Yeah, it’s not weak.
Trevor Carey: If they can just block out my nudity in their mental picture of what I’m creating there, yes, it’d be good.
David Malcolm: Getting back to that 1992 mandate, I want everybody to know that I actually agree with President Trump. I don’t think there should be a nationwide mandate on showerhead flow rates. I think it should be regional. Every region’s gonna be different. Some areas need to conserve water more than others.
David Malcolm: And it’s personal too, because a single guy who’s got the shower to himself, he doesn’t have to worry about running out of hot water. But a family of four or five or six, they do. And so high flow for those families, it’s not gonna work. They’re gonna run out of hot water.
David Malcolm: I don’t know how many times people have told me that that’s what they love so much about our showerheads, is that everybody can take a great shower and they don’t run out of hot water.
Trevor Carey: Well, I think you should be kicked out of the state if you keep bragging this way. People like me, because I stay in there a lot longer because it’s enjoyable. So, yeah, boy, I’m using a— yeah, that’s— High Sierra shower— hey, here’s your tagline: High Sierra Showerheads. It’s horrible for the state of California because it’s so comfortable, you just take a long shower.
David Malcolm: That’s good. But you know something? When you can’t stay in long, at least you’re able to get the job done quickly.
Trevor Carey: Yeah, and the pressure’s so good it probably removes some of my hair that’s thinning on top, David. But women that are— even some of the guys that wear their hair in a bun sometimes, you know, that hairstyle, the Jesus apostle look— I can’t imagine trying to get shampoo out of that.
David Malcolm: No, I need to get one of these in the hands of Donald Trump.
Trevor Carey: Yeah, well, you’re the shower czar and he’s into it, so we’ll send him this podcast and you never know, maybe you’ll be the shower czar across the country.
Trevor Carey: David, HighSierraShowerheads.com, correct?
David Malcolm: That’s it.
Trevor Carey: All right, man. Thank you. I appreciate you being our shower czar expert, David Malcolm, High Sierra Showerheads.
Trevor Carey: Ah, I wish it was 5:48 so that I’d be about 29 minutes from in my shower. Maybe I should record that commercial tonight.
Trevor Carey: Yeah, I think so.
Announcer: This is The Trevor Carey Show on the Valley’s Power Talk.