For those of you without power and taking cold showers.

[seedspreader]

I won't post my whole post over here, but I will give you a snippet.

It's from my blog and how we dealt with cold showers when our well wasn't working.

You can read the whole thing here: "THE RULE... and a trip to Home Depot"

So I thought about it a bit and remember a friend of mine online saying that he had showered with a deck sprayer.
Deck sprayer… hmmm, I think Home Depot had those… So I did a little search and found this. Hmmm, black (solar warmth), poly (hard, durable plastic), 2.5 gallons (big enough to hold a good amount, small enough to handle and move) and only $19.99. Time to make a trip to Home Depot.

Hat Tip to Cabin Fever (My online friend who I remember talking about this shower set up)

Let me augment this also by saying that the newest design of deck sprayers are really cool.

The spray tube will mount into the handle and the handle locks down to help tighten or loosen the sprayer. There is nothing so divine as hot water when you've been without it.

[Alice In TX/MO]

When we used to go camping on the beach with small children, I made a solar water heater out of a five gallon bucket, painted black on the outside. By the middle of a sunny afternoon, I had five gallons of very warm water for washing faces, dishes, and heinies!

[seedspreader]

Yes, that is the simplest I am sure.

The nice thing about the above is the water pressure, oh and one other thing when you mount the sprayer on the handle you can set the trigger to spray automatically (say if you need to turn and wash your heinie).

[no1cowboy]

being off grid and powerd by solar I dont have a problem there, but being on the water system of this little hamlet when the power goes out in the hamlet i go without water.

[Bearfootfarm]

I once made a "camping" shower with a 30 gallon barrel, some PVC pipe, and a 12 volt "bilge" pump that cost about $15. Flip a switch and you have running water.
You can let the Sun heat it, or use propane.
Be sure to add a "ball valve" to the pipe, or it will pump the barrel dry in just a few minutes.

[JGex]

When the power comes back on and things get back to "normal," I highly recommend purchasing for the next time the power goes out a Sun Shower similar to:

http://store.sundancesolar.com/sosh5ga.html

And another real darned handy device is the propane heated hot water heater by Coleman:

http://www.nextag.com/Coleman-2300A7...A1722EF07F73CF

It has to be charged, but can do this with a generator in short amount of time.

[Watcher48]

I got two old church coffee pots. (da big ones about 3 gal) And a battery operated shower from cabela. Plug the coffee pots in take the temp to 107 (for me) and shower. Being in the Navy taught us to take two minute showers Lived like that on the road for two years. nice when you have no sun or its cold out.

[sgl42]

And believe this or not, all six of us can shower with the 2.5 gallons… (less actually) and get an ACTUAL shower

thanks for the info. i'm amazed that the fine spray does such a great job of showers. definitely worth having around for emergency water conservation.

--sgl

[Traci Ann]

I will tell dh about this.

I have used the solar shower as needed for the last 7 months. However with no hot water heater in our near future this would be nice!! (the 5 boys will think this is real nice as dad has said we girls could get the "hot" showers, but him being an ex marine...well mama feels for these "poor lil boys!")

[mammabooh]

Great suggestion, Bob!

Our electricity was out from Sunday afternoon until late Tuesday evening. I didn't mind much, but Hubby likes to be clean (he actually leaves our place and goes to work). I hauled buckets and buckets of water from the creek to flush the toilet and heated some on our grill burner for dishes. I'll have to tell Hubby about the sprayer, though...that would be a fun "couple" activity...hee hee hee!

[freegal]

Is that powered by electricity? How does it work?

[seedspreader]

No, you twist the lid off, fill it with water and pump it up with the built in handle.

[seedspreader]

Originally Posted by mammabooh

Great suggestion, Bob!

Our electricity was out from Sunday afternoon until late Tuesday evening. I didn't mind much, but Hubby likes to be clean (he actually leaves our place and goes to work). I hauled buckets and buckets of water from the creek to flush the toilet and heated some on our grill burner for dishes. I'll have to tell Hubby about the sprayer, though...that would be a fun "couple" activity...hee hee hee!

Ah, sounds like some rain barrels are needed!

Yes it can be a fun couple activity.

[NickieL]

Sometimes when I am backpacking a friend of mine brings a "solar shower" which is simply a bag set out into the sun someplace warm (like the top of a rock, or if by the car, on top of the car) then hung up and used as a shower.

[Cabin Fever]

Originally Posted by seedspreader

....Hat Tip to Cabin Fever (My online friend who I remember talking about this shower set up)....

Here is WIHH taking a graden sprayer shower just off the front porch. I converted our sprayer by removing the wand and replacing it with a dish-rinsing sprayer.

[mammabooh]

Originally Posted by seedspreader

Ah, sounds like some rain barrels are needed!

Yes it can be a fun couple activity.

Hee Hee...I read your response as one thought...like we needed rain barrels to hold all of the water for our "activity"!

I've got an even simpler solution than that.

Take a plastic one quart yogurt cup or equivalent container and drill eight 1/8th inch holes in a circle in the bottom. The hole size is important. Get them too big and the water runs out too fast.

Heat the water any way you find convenient. We used our propane gas grill or camp stove. One gallon of boiling water is quite sufficient to bring four gallons of cold well water up to pleasant bathing temperatures.

Presuming your tub drain still functions get in the tub with your five gallon bucket of warm water. Dip the yogurt cup in the water then hold it over your head to allow it to run out on to you. Bathe as you normally would rinsing as needed. If your tub is out of commission then do this outside where ever you can rig up some privacy.

I've taken a complete shower including washing my hair and shaving in four gallons of warm water. If I was really tight for water I could do it in a single gallon, but four gallons is more pleasant. Five gallons will feel extravagant.

Dead simple, not much to go wrong with it. All you have to do is drill the holes. If you don't have a battery operated drill then make a couple up before the storm hits.

Back in '04 the wife and I used this after Frances and Jeanne to get ourselves and the girls clean so that we could go to work or school every day until the power came back on.

If I didn't have the propane I'd have built a fire in the yard. There is never any lack of fire wood after a hurricane.

.....Alan.

[seedspreader]

We enjoyed just filling it and putting it in the sun and forgetting about it until later in the day. We consider them an important part of our preps now. It's nice to carry and move around, no sloshing water in the house. Let it heat up, carry it inside the tub and you're good to go. Of course, most of our showering was done outside on the patio, where we had a large tarp hung over a rope.

You could have never convinced me that we could all have taken a shower with only 2.5 gallons before and actually feel clean, but I was glad to be shown the error of my ways.

[katlupe]

In the summer, we use about four 2-liter soda bottles that sit out in the sun. Then take them in to the bath tub (our drains work in the sink and tub, just don't have water in the house.....yet) and pour them over yourself as you take a shower. In the winter, we heat water on the woodstove for either a shower or my bath. We use very little water for showers, that's including the fact that I have long thick hair which I wash and condition and shave my legs too. I usually have water left.

katlupe

[michelleIL]

Wll, when my piped froze this winter, I still had my electric....so I bought gallons of water and nuked some in the microwave so that I could wash myself off. I ws only getting strategic areas, but it sure beat going without, and I didn't stink!