Project Cascade
Can showers dramatically reduce fresh water use while preserving the same experience?
Why does this matter?
A domestic shower is one of the largest single draws of treated drinking water in a home, and almost all of it leaves the building seconds after arriving.
What exists today?
Recycling showers exist in a handful of markets. They are expensive, need servicing, and are usually sold on virtue rather than on comfort.
What prevents it?
Water that has touched skin, soap and hair must be cleaned to a safe standard within seconds, at low energy, in a unit that fits a bathroom and survives years of neglect.
Why hasn't this happened?
Difficult problems stay difficult for reasons. Naming them is the first honest step.
What needs to change?
- Better filtration at domestic flow rates.
- Lower energy UV or equivalent disinfection.
- Affordable cartridges with an honest lifespan.
- Simpler maintenance a household will actually do.
Possible disciplines
Future collaborators
Learning log
- Reading
Comfort is temperature, pressure and duration. Volume is a by-product, not the experience.
- Bench
Any system needing quarterly servicing is a system that gets bypassed in year two.
Research network
Nothing exists alone.
Related questions
- Can affordable drinking water be produced almost anywhere?
- Can a home explain its own water use?
Our Promise
We don't claim to have the answers.
We promise to ask questions worth exploring, test ideas honestly, publish what we learn, and build practical prototypes where we believe they can make a meaningful difference.