The company Puregreen, known from “The Lion’s Den”, has set itself the task of saving water in German households. Because of the current energy costs, this is not only environmentally friendly, but also saves money in the household budget. Puregreen’s original idea was a water saver for the shower that promises to allow less water with the same pressure.
In 2021, Karsten Gaedke and Alexander Schulze pitched their product on the TV show and Ralf Dümmel took the bait back then. The company’s second product is now on the market and it goes from the shower to the tap: the Puregreen 360-degree aerator saves an incredible 95 percent when washing hands and a whopping 60 percent when rinsing.
There are no surprises when it comes to the delivery of the 360-degree aerator. Included is an adapter, the aerator itself, the assembly tool and of course the installation instructions. In addition to saving water, the highlight of the Puregreen aerator is a rotatable ball head. Its processing and that of the individual components appear to be of high quality. A first turning of the head works without any problems and there is no squeaking or metallic grinding to be heard. Nice.
The installation of the aerator is as unspectacular as its scope of delivery. The old aerator can be easily removed using the assembly tool supplied. Once this has been removed with its sealing ring, all you have to do is unscrew the Puregreen aerator. The assembly tool also helps here. But there are also taps where this is not so easy to do. For all those, the supplied adapter must be screwed on beforehand.
Let’s get down to the essentials: saving water. For this we fill a measuring glass (1 liter) once with the Puregreen aerator and once without the aerator. The faucet stands on warm and is fully turned on. After 9.38 seconds the glass is full with Puregreen, after 6.91 seconds without the water saver. Still makes a 27 percent difference, but it’s less than half of the advertised 60 percent.
A quick twist of the head and the Puregreen aerator switches to spray mode. After two minutes, the measuring glass was not even half full. The promise of 95 percent water savings should fit. Important: how much the Purgreen aerator actually saves may also be related to the water pressure in the home. And that is not particularly high in this case.
Let’s extrapolate the results: If a liter of water runs through the tap in 9.38 seconds, this results in 6.39 liters per minute and thus 63.9 liters in ten minutes. If you were theoretically washing dishes for ten minutes every two days with the tap fully open, you would use 11497.5 liters of water per year with Puregreen. Without the water saver it would be 15695 liters. That makes a difference of 4198 liters or 4.198 cubic meters of hot water.
A cubic meter of cold water in Hamburg currently costs 1.98 euros according to NDR. According to the chip, depending on the type of heating, hot water costs about “2.5 to 4.5 times as much” as a liter of cold water. Let’s take a value of 3.5, so we save 29 euros a year with the Purgreen aerator – if we turn on a full pot and rinse it hot, which of course shouldn’t correspond to reality. So if we subtract a good ten euros again to get a more realistic value according to Adam Riese, we end up with savings of 19 euros per year, which pretty much corresponds to the price of the aerator. The investment would have paid off after the second year.
Let’s do the dishes. The aerator is truly a blessing here. To be precise, it is its movable head, because the faucet can now be adjusted so that it is no longer in the way when washing dishes, but the water still hits the dishes in a targeted manner. A luxury you wouldn’t have believed you needed until you experienced it. As far as the water pressure is concerned, no difference could be determined. The dishes could be cleaned just as well as with a normal aerator. Nice.
The situation is different when washing your hands with the spray mode. This is ideal for moistening your hands. It’s also okay for lathering up. But if you try to get rid of the soap from your hands in the mist, then you wash yourself too long. It doesn’t work and you have to switch to normal mode with your hands lathered, which isn’t exactly comfortable.
Yes, the Puregreen aerator saves water. Not as much as advertised in the test, but still almost 27 percent. The rotatable head is always convenient when washing dishes. The two properties clearly speak for the water-saving aerator. The manufacturer could have saved itself the spray function. It is enough to moisten your hands. To wash your hands or anything else with it is not possible.
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