just a question
Having read this thread over several times, I have an opinion to express and questions to ask.
First it seems the originator asked a reasonable question. He may have reacted to a fairly "cute" response inappropriately but the question itself strikes me as one many folks are frustrated by.
In my home there are lighted areas where the lighting was calculated assuming 150 watt floods. Shortly after we built, the Feds decided to only "allow" 120 watt floods to be manufactured. Reason given: Energy conservation...for a fixture whose purpose is to produce a given amount of light for a given input of energy...Go figure? SO the solution was to add more cans to contain the additional 120 watt floods to produce the required (also according to US lighting guidelines I might add) lumens. Net result? Same energy expended, same light output, more cost of light bulbs, and a chopped up ceiling. (And more manufacturing ENERGY used in producing the additional glass globes, filaments, brass bases, paper cartons, gas to deliver the product in the same size containers, floor space to stock, etc etc etc!) This insane federal reasoning frustrates millions of folks and solves no problem, not a d@mn one. Now producing more lumens per watt of energy might have been a reasonable regulation but its the government bureacrats we are dealing with hear and IQ is not their strong point.
Now back to plumbing. The question of a 2.5 gpm restriction is a bureacratic regulation. Manufacturers are prohibited from making higher flow shower heads but not many (any?) local codes require that flow restriction. Moreover, people have resorted to installing multiple shower heads and jets in the same shower to be operated simultaneously yielding far more than a 2.5gpm rate..Once again the crazy regulations fail in their dubious purpose.
Why then is it considered a crazy question for an individual homeowner to want to know how to modify a single shower head to bypass this stupid restriction when no restriction exists on how many heads may be installed, or for that matter what the flow of the yard watering system on the same property is? There are no restrictions on the individual homeowner regarding modifying an existing shower head by removing the restrictor that I know of and if there were many of us would not care and do it anyway. Is there some plumber's code that prevents knowledgable folks from sharing information on whether or how these devices can be modified? After all we are not talking about making a nuclear weapon or cooking up a bunch of antrax here. (Relax NSA).
I guess I don't understand the treatment this fellow received on this forum. Plumber's in my area will generally give pretty pragmatic answers to reasonable questions like this. I also have one of these hand held Discover 7 shower heads and if I find the answer to whether poking a hole in the little pink membrane at the base of the handset will increase the flow, I will post it here. In the meantime I would like to know why the folks here treated this guy the way they did. Was it because of his reaction to a non-answer? Was it because no one knows the answer? Was it because you feel you are the guardians of the Regulations book? What? No one asked anyone to violate ethics or codes or the law. I'm not trying to be contentious but I am puzzled.
In the meantime I will continue to flush twice every restricted toilet tank I find on general principles if not to complete the job one bureacratic flush fails to accomplish. New to the forum in Georgia.