Rocket-science-based showerhead soaking up the cash on Kickstarter
The mist-producing, water-saving Nebia showerhead has already been backed by Apple's Tim Cook. Now it's making a splash on Kickstarter as well.
For something we do pretty much every day, most of us don't give much thought to our showers. That's certainly not the case for the six people working at San-Francisco-based startup Nebia. They've spent a lot of time thinking about the way we get clean, how much water the process uses up, and how they can improve the situation. The result is the Nebia showerhead, which is now in the early days of its Kickstarter campaign and has already raised nearly a million dollars toward an initial goal of just $100,000.
Nebia (which means "mist" in Italian) is a ring-shaped showerhead and hand-held paddle users can install by themselves in their home showers. It works by atomizing water into millions of small droplets that, the Nebia team says, enable you to use 70 percent less water than a normal shower -- an important consideration in our increasingly drought-stricken world.
The showerhead uses technology that was designed for other fields, such as rocket science and agriculture. It rotates 45 degrees and also slides up and down a total of 27 inches on the futuristic bar it's mounted on. The wand can either spray directly at you from the wall, or you can detach it to direct the stream where you want it.
In Nebia's testing stage, lots of people compared the experience of taking a Nebia shower to walking through a warm cloud. In the video that appears on the fundraising page, one person says, "It's like a cloud that cleans you." That's a sentiment shared by Molly McHugh at Wired magazine, who got to try out the shower for herself. Meanwhile, Brian X. Chen at The New York Times said: "It made my hair feel flat and uncooperative, though my skin felt soft and relaxed."
Part of the reason this Kickstarter project has already gotten so much press is because Apple CEO Tim Cook has thrown some cash behind it, according to the Times. The amount is undisclosed and Apple hasn't commented as the investment was a personal one for Cook.
The mist-maker certainly isn't cheap. With all of the early bird rewards gone, getting the gadget will set you back $299, which represents a $100 discount on the eventual retail price of an even steeper $399. Still, that hasn't stopped people from splashing down their cash. There's still just under a month left in the campaign, and the team has raised almost 10 times its goal.
Nebia showerheads are expected to ship in May 2016.