Showering generally uses less water and energy than taking a bath. A full bathroom may include a shower, but a half bathroom will not.

 

 

The hygiene regimen in the form of a shower goes back to the time of the Greeks, as evidenced by extant vases and murals. During the Scottish Enlightenment, Lord Monboddo showered every morning with cold water on his front porch to emulate the Greeks and profess his belief in the practice as healthful; his habit, while eccentric, was well publicized with the intelligentsia of that era. Another step toward the spread of showering was when the Prussian military installed showering rooms in their barracks in 1879.

 

 

 

Showering in the Western World is mostly part of a daily routine, but is also practiced for wellness and relaxation. Showering has today largely replaced bathing.

 

 

 

Showering results in a few phases, in which the skin, and usually the hair, are wet with water. Then the cleansing products are applied, allowed to work, and subsequently rinsed out. If necessary, soaping and rinsing is re-performed.

 

 

 

Showering is easier and more secure than bathing, for elderly and disabled people as it requires less effort to step out of and also presents a lower risk of slipping and falling

 

This is certainly true for the elderly and/ or disabled in their home setting. Companies such as Premier Bath, Inc. and others that have copied their design are selling walk-in tubs and showers for home-owners who would like to safely age-in-place at home. This is a great solution for anyone who is still relatively ambulatory, but as mobility decreases so does the effectiveness of this type product.

 

Institutional showering in Nursing Homes and Rehabilitation facilities was replaced for several years by whirlpool tubs. During the mid-1970's up until the late-1900's these tubs were how residents were mostly cleaned. For several reasons, whirlpool use has been greatly reduced and the trend is back to showering. Some of the reasons that whirlpool bathing has been abandoned are:

 

Time constraints: to fill a whirlpool with the 60+ gallons necessary to bath takes approximately 12 to 15 minutes (depending on water pressure and size of the water pipes of 1/2 or 3/4 inch), another 12 to 15 minutes to perform bathing and an additional 12 to 15 minutes to disinfect the tub for the next resident to go in. Staffing challenges and higher acuities of residents has made this very inefficient.

 

Cross-contamination: 90 to 100% of today's institutional residents bladder and/or bowel incontinent. Whirlpool tubs, by design, take the water that the resident is emerged into a hydraulic pump which is then forced out of a series of jets. This very feature that relaxes the healthy with a pleasant spa experience becomes a source of cross-contamination for incontinent residents and care-givers alike.

 

Disinfection: Disinfecting between bathing incontinent residents becomes an even bigger task because of all the internal plumbing and pump...did the disinfection process remove all of the matter that was sucked into the pump and out of the jets? This is impossible to verify without dismantling the tub or testing water samples.

 

Clostridium Difficile: C-Diff is a dangerous bacteria that is only transmitted by fecal-oral contact. Is is especially deadly to the very young and the very old. C-Diff has claimed many lives, causing Canada and the UK to outlaw the use of whirlpool tubs with incontinent people. Ohio State CDC has kept records of C-Diff and the effect on the elderly.

 

The only real advancement to showering over the past 70 years has been from metal constructed shower chairs to PVC plastic construction. The process has always been to undress the resident in their room, place them onto a shower chair, wrap a sheet around for modesty and wheel them down to the central shower area with all of their toiletries in their lap. Occasionally, in new construction designs, a institution will have roll-in showers in each room or shared between two rooms. This eliminates the shrouded trip down the hallway for the resident, but it also drives up the construction cost of facility and takes away square footage for other uses.

 

David Storm of Storm Showers, LLC, Cookeville, Tennessee, has designed, patented and manufactures a true bedside shower called the Melanie Spa. It addresses all of the issues of time efficiency, contamination containment, resident dignity and C-Diff. It also, by design, consumes less water and keeps the resident warmer during the process.

 

 

 

Various purposes of showering include routine hygiene, as well as safety (as in chemical spills, mass decontamination, etc.).

 

There are free-standing showers, but also showers which are integrated into a bathtub. Showers are separated from the surrounding area through watertight curtains (shower curtain), sliding doors, or folding doors, in order to protect the space from spraying water. There are seldom floor-level showers. Here, the wall and floor of the shower areas are tiled or otherwise made waterproof.

 

Places such as a swimming pool, a locker room, and a military facility, have multiple showers. There may be shower rooms without divisions (typically sex-segregated) or shower stalls (typically open at the top; often in shower rooms which are sex-segregated anyway).

 

Anthony David Rueli of the University of Massachusetts researched the aspect of why shower curtains billow inwards during showering ("shower-curtain effect") and received for it the Ig Nobel Prize in 2001.

 

A shower head is a perforated nozzle that distributes the water over a large solid angle. Thus less water can be used to wet the same area. Low flow shower heads can use water even more efficiently by aerating the water stream. Some shower heads can be adjusted to spray different patterns of water. Hard water may result in calcium and magnesium deposits clogging the head, causing it to lose effectiveness.