Designing and building a camp shower....thoughts.

Hey wonderful OZ, do you have or expect to have plenty of wood/brush to burn? If so you could make yourself a outdoor water heater. When I was a commander in the Royal Rangers we made a portable water heater out of a 30 gallon steel drum barrel and a coil of copper tubing. We made it to where the very ends of the copper tubing was attached to the barrel. Don't unroll the tubing except for the very ends. One end is attached down low and the other end was attach up high on the barrel. The water would flow out the bottom of the barrel through the coiled up tubing which was place several inches over a fire. The water would heat up and rise up the tubing and empty back into the barrel. On the opposite side of the barrel we had a water spicket attached about 1/3 up from the bottom. When the water got heated up we would have plenty of hot water to do dishes and take showers.

As for the shower part we filled a 3 gallon metal pail bucket with water. Out of the bottom of the bucket was attached a hose with a shower head on the end. The hose was long enough so that we could hook the shower head to the top of the bucket. When using we would hang the bucket up high in our makeshift shower stall, unhook the shower head and let gravity flow down and soak ourselves right fast and then hang it back up. Scrub ourselves with soap and a washrag and then rinse off. No need for electricity.

We had the copper tubing fixed so that we could easily unscrew it from the barrel when packing it up for traveling.

I'll see if I can find a royal ranger website that might have the plans for the hot water heater.

A broom stick,Y line hoist rope, 3 two gallon garden sprinkler cans with pull lanyards and a limb wih sun exposure and you got a cheap $10 6 galon camp shower.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

I think someone should check on Cabin Fever.

Absolutely love that picture, CF.

When I was in Nepal, I used the Nepolise version of "sun showers". Basically it was a tall wooden stand holding 1/2 a 50 gal drum or something of that sort (whatever size you want) with a faucet attached underneath.

Keep water in it all the time for the sun to heat it or haul heated water from a fire to it. Rig up a shower curtain or build walls around it & you're good to go. Turn on to get wet, turn off, soap up, turn on to rinse off.

25 cents.

Oops sorry, my bad, thought it was another thread that was talking about something similar.

Still will be interested to see how it turns out.

You might be able to build this cheaper.
http://www.bargainoutfitters.com/cb/...?a=267550&pn=2

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'It Is A Wise Father Who Knows His Own Child'
Shakespeare
A WOMAN MUST NOT RELY ON A MAN TO PROTECT HER, SHE MUST LEARN TO PROTECT HERSELF.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY

Ther are some more here you might be able to make.,paula
http://www.bargainoutfitters.com/bro...asp?c=13&s=438

__________________
'It Is A Wise Father Who Knows His Own Child'
Shakespeare
A WOMAN MUST NOT RELY ON A MAN TO PROTECT HER, SHE MUST LEARN TO PROTECT HERSELF.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY

CF, I'm having trouble visualizing your setup. Could you provide pictures from more angles, please?

All ideas shown are great.

This is what we used for the first two years at our log cabin, summer and winter, and it works fine.

This could be combined with Solar. Since this is gravity, there are many possibilities, some as simple as laying 50 or 100 feet of black plastic on the ground during the summer, up stream of the propane heater.


Our water heater was a small RV type, vented outside, and propane tank outside. While we built our log cabin, we had this equipment inside the 3tn truck the 4 of us lived in. We had the shower on the outside of the truck, so you showered in the sun, we had a curtain for privacy, but it didn't matter much out on 160 acres.

I don't have any pictures of Nancy in that shower to share, and that's a good thing for me.

Cabin, you have some guts, though your picture of her is quite proper and respectful of her, and if it helps, tell her for me, I think it is OK you posted it.

Enjoy,

Alex

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Thou art That

I'm working on building an outdoor shower to use this summer. I'm using a 250 gallon water tank, the opaque plastic kind that's square and in a wire frame (I think the tank originally had some sort of food product in it). My horseshoer is building a 7' tall metal pipe framework to set it up on. I plan to paint the tank dark grey or black to absorb as much heat as possible. The pipe framework will make the shape of a rectangle to shower in (approx 4 ft x 6ft) and we'll attach rustic looking sheet metal to make the shower walls. Then we'll cut out some shapes to let in a little light and make it pretty. I'm thinking we could have a couple little corner seats to sit on or to set shoes/ clothes on. It will be great to not have to trek into the house every time I need to rinse hog mud off my legs when I'm working around the farm in shorts!

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"Perhaps I'll have them string a clothesline from the hearse I am in, with my underwear waving in the breeze, as we drive to the cemetary. People worry about the dumbest things!"
by Wendy

I built one similiar to r.h.--------use 3 barrel/buckets fitted with bottom hose connecters-----a coil of copper tubing like r.h. described for the fire---(1)one barrel is for cold water---(2)another is for heated water to go into---(3)the last is for cold water to be heated----set-up----number 3 barrel is to be hung higher than number 2 barrel-----with number 1 and 2 a little higher than your head----using regular water hose---hook hose to barrel 3--put a ball valve in the line between barrel 3 and the copper coil----hose leaves copper coil and goes into top of number 2 barrel----when the fire gets going open valve some to allow water to free flow through coil and up into barrel 2---adjusting the valve so the water is moved through the coil not to fast or to slow---so the water is heated good, but not boiling. once the water is heated the copper coil can be removed from the fire-----very carefully----get a old shower head and hot and cold water valves---hook this up just as if it was inside your house---hot side going to hot water barrel and cold to cold water barrel----now you can open the valves and water will free flow to your shower head, that you took your drill and inlarged the holes so you get a good flow out the shower head-------Works good without using a pump----getting the shower valves with the center knob that allows you to cut off the water between soapings is a Nice Extra. Good Luck!! Randy

Here's some pic's of of the system in the "TajMa Shed".
Rain water to blue barrel, pumped/filtered with transfer pump as needed to "pulpit" barrel w/ sprayer pump 12 v powered by inverted/cooler adaptor, to 2-1/2 gal (now elec water heater), to shut off shower head. (shuts down pressure switch in pump.
Was blue barrel mounted to posts above roof for "solar gain". Didn't work too well.
Have elect now, so went to water heater.
Did have a Zodi propane heater sitting on top of barrel in "pulpit" for a while, drawing water from barrel, but had to keep pumping or Zodi would overheat.




Porch closed in w/shower curtains, wife's request.
door behind shower contains sawdust toilet.

Okay I went to Lowes and after a bit of searching found the various fittings to attach to the water container.

I found a garden hose attachment that has an on/off lever as well as settings for various spray patterns.

I have fittings for the bottom of the water container.

I just need a couple of hose clamps,a short piece of hose and a container.

Do y'all think a 5 gallon container will give enough 'pressure' with just gravity or will we need a bigger container?

As stated earlier,we are taking up the turkey fryer to heat the water and we have a pump from a pond kit that we will try out and see if that will pump the hot water(not TOO hot) up to the shower container.

We will take pics....

As to the shower enclosure,we have left over siding from the barn-sawmill lap siding and I will make a frame to nail it to,a shower curtain on one end and we should have bathing/toilet facilities....

The pressure comes from the height you hang the 5 gallon pail. Figure 1 psi for every 2.31 feet distance as measured from the top of the water level to the bottom of your hoze nozzle. Oz, you're only going to get a few pounds pressure. IN other words, the "spray" coming out of your garden nozzle will be more of a trickle. My advice is to stop making this more complicated than it has to be. A simple 2 gallon garden spray, a dish-rinsing nozzle, and a large pan to heat the water over a fire or stove is all you need for a hot, pressurized shower that's ready in any time of the day (even cloudy, cool days were solar does'nt work). You don't have to lift 5 gallons of water 15 feet up a tree or whatever to get 5 pounds so pressure and you can store all the "gear" in a minimal amount of space when you're done. In other words: KISS!

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

Soooo...yer still alive CF????

Heheheh.

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

So what kind of water pressure could we end up with based on the description I posted earlier? 250 gallon tank, 7 ft off the ground. Plan to use 1/2" hose to connect from tank to a standard shower sprayer.

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"Perhaps I'll have them string a clothesline from the hearse I am in, with my underwear waving in the breeze, as we drive to the cemetary. People worry about the dumbest things!"
by Wendy

Assuming the top of the water in the tank is 3 feet high, and your height is 5 feet, you would have (7+3) - 5 = 5 feet of pressure, or a little over 2 psi while rinsing your hair. Typical home water pressure is between 30 and 60 psi.

The volume of your tank and diameter of the hose does not influence water pressure (other than friction losses).

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

Well we are back...

We ended up doing the following:

Bought a 12V on demand pump from Northern Tools,hooked it up to the shower head we had bought and it worked like a charm.

A 5 gallon pot of water on the burner heated up in less than five minutes.

We use a little over half of that for one shower.

Now the crowning glory of our shower unit is the actual showerhouse....

I will have Mrs oz posts some pics for you all to enjoy.

Hey Cabin Fever...I'm still not clear about your shower rig...perhaps if you could post more photos from other angles as well...LOL

cabin...theres something about that pic I like...I just can,t put my finger on it...sorry couldn,t resist :0)

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Gord in Ontario