NBC25 NEWS - You could be saving water and not even know it.  It's all about a little piece of plastic called a low-flow shower head.

With it, you're saving money and water.  Without it, you're letting more than cash go down the drain.

"Normally I take about a 40-minute to an hour shower, because it's my only time to relax and chill out," says Valerie Overton.

Valerie washes away a hundred gallons of water every day.

Most of us spend half that amount of time in the shower.

Do the math and an average American shower equals about 50-gallons of water.

That's 18,000 gallons a year, or enough to fill a couple of backyard pools.

You could save half that water for about $10.

Low-flow shower heads are an industry standard, but many of us don't even know if we have one.

Chances are if you've changed your shower head in the last five years, you're using a low-flow model.

There's an easy way to tell.

"Well there's an adaptor in the majority of them that you can tell whether it's low-flow or not.  It's a little insert, and if it's in there it'd obviously be the low-flow.  If it's not then it's going to be pretty well the standard," explains Mike Antey, a bath designer.

We decided to do a little experiment.

Our goal was to test water consumption and pressure.

We started on a shower with a full-flow head.

We ran water full blast for two minutes into a five gallon bucket.

When time was up, we marked the water line with red tape.

Next we installed an inexpensive low-flow head.

Two minutes later we marked the water line again, this time with blue tape.

We could obviously see water was saved.

Our next test was for water pressure.

That's a common complaint with low-flow shower heads.

We put shaving cream on a mirror under the full-flow head, and 15-seconds later the mirror was clean.

We repeated the process under the low-flow head, and 15-seconds later the mirror was just as clean.

"You're not cutting down on your pressure, you're cutting down on your flow," Antey says.

You'll also be cutting down your next water bill.

Low-flow shower heads range in price from $100 to hundreds of dollars.

By the way, the water we gathered during our experiment was saved and used to water a few plants around the house.