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

We have decided a camp shower of some sort would make our stay up on the land more pleasant and have come up with this idea:

We heat the water in a large stock pot(Turkey fryer pot so it is probably 4 gallons or so)

An electric pump(we have a small submersible pond pump) is placed in the pot AFTER it is removed from the burner.

The pump is connected to the shower head that is hanging from a 's' hook.

Voila,a hot shower after getting COVERED in red dust from working up there.

The only thoughts are if the pump can handle hot water and how to shut off the flow of water...

We have everything to do this with except the shower head and hose and odds and ends but we could buy an inline pump so it would not be submerged in the hot water.

I can't think of a way to stop the pump from running even when you shut the water off,any ideas?

Or if anyone has a better plan we would be interested.

Why get so complicated? Buy a new 2-gallon garden sprayer and replace the spray wand with a dish-rinsing spray nozzle....the kind you have on your sink. Just pour the warm water into the garden sprayer. Pump in some pressure and viola! A pressurized spray shower with no electricity! The dish-rinsing spray nozzle has a pushbutton on/off switch, too!

Here is WIHH using my garden sprayer shower (hee hee...I'm dead agin!)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6.../Us/shower.jpg

The little 12 volt pumps in RVs have pressure switches to maintain pressure but shut the pump off when the pressure is reached. As for the spray nozzle, a garden hose sprinkler head with the hand grip control would work very well. Also if you pour the heated water into a larger container, you could add enough colder water to bring the temp to just the right degree to be pleasing to you little pink bodies. That way the turkey pot can be heating more water while you are singing in the shower.

I just did a search and found the thread where you described your shower,as well as the picturs of your better half.

I see she didn't kill you. :p

And I also see you still want to be killed....LOL

OZ, She threatened to skin him alive yesterday.
I'd still like a patch of the hide with whiskers on it!! LOL

Some camping stores have a "solar shower." It is basically a five gallon collapsible heavy plastic container with a "shower head." You place it in the sun and voila, a warm shower. You can hang it from any tree limb or something you've built.
That's probably even cheaper than the sprayer, takes less space when not in use, and heats the water using the sun. How wonderful! I got one for Y2K. Thought it was a neat idea.
Ann

OZ, wouldn't it be nice to have shower water that didn't scald you, or bring up goose bumps as big as blueberries??

Well anything would be better than being covered in a fine red dust... :p

We are discovering the joys of red clay soil.

We spent our first night up on the land this past weekend and it was wonderful...well except for the red dust,and one of the puppies having to go outside every two hours during the night...

We got to experience the incredible quiet of the land and all the stars. :)

We would just like to be able to do it while not covered in red dust.:D

Hi,
Here are some solar heated outdoor shower plans for ideas:

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...ng.htm#Showers

Gary

you must like sleeping on the couch cabin fever...lol.

Being cheap...oops I mean frugal,:D a solar shower would be nice to have.

By the time it starts getting cooler we will have the apartment finished up.

The barn sits pretty much on a north-south axis-if you face towards the barn,the sun rises on the lefthand side and sets on the right.

So where would we want to set up a solar shower?

Whereever you want to take the shower. The bag is heated by laying in the sun. Don't try to heat it while hanging as any wind will keep it cooled down. Just hang it when ready to shower.

We've always used those black rubber shower bags. We each have one of our own and we fill them up each morning and hang them in the sun. We built a little slatted platform in a back corner of the house where the back wing joins the main house and put up some lattice work for privacy. When we are ready to shower we usually take a bucket of warm water and the shower bag with us.
The shower bag hangs on a hook in a cross beam. We soap and wash with the bucket water and use the shower bag to rinse off good. Simple and easy. We also hang one of those bags next to the kitchen sink and use it to rinse our dishes after we wash them. I like cabin fevers idea about the pressurized garden sprayer. Might try that out this summer. :)

Cabin-when WIHH sees this, you may be spending some time in your guest cabin!

Oz,

We have used solar showers (the bags) in the past and I wouldn't recommend them. They are great if you are camping once in a while but if you are using them on a regular basis they don't hold up well. The plastic tends to stretch from hanging them up and then they tear where the plastic bar (the rope is inside that) fits through the plastic bag.

My recommendation would be to get a dark colored (or paint the outside of one) plastic barrel (food grade 55 gallon drum) and get it up high enough to gravity feed your shower head. Have a little float switch that activates a pump when the water level gets low. If the barrel sits in the sun all day you should have plenty of hot water for showering. Put a little valve by the shower head to turn the water flow on and off.

If you prefer to have the barrel closer to ground level then just have a little pump to feed the shower head. I highly recommend using solar energy to heat the water.

Mike

we just put a big plastic 55 gallon drum on legs high enough to stand under and painted it black. Hooked a hose to it with one of those hand held shower heads and it would almsot get too hot in the sun all day. Has plenty of pressure just from the top of the barrel being that much higher than your head

Have a look at www.zodi.com. It's all the camp shower you'll ever need off a small Coleman gas cylinder. You can get a gajillion showers out of one small cylinder and the small shower head is close to regular shower output.

This heats cold water from a five gallon bucket, a battery pump in the bucket pumps the water. I hooked ours up to a rain barrel water supply and a 12v pump. A small solar panel keeps the 12v battery happy. We never tried the small battery pump as it was always going to be a permanent thing so set it up with the 12v battery.

I'd recommend the zodi shower, it's simple and pretty bullet proof. Small and compact if you are transporting it too.

When we were sailing, we used the garden sprayer painted black and did not change the nozzle since fresh water conservation is so important-we carried 35 gal and that had to last a couple of weeks sometimes. Anyway, if you paint the sprayer black it will get too hot, so don't fill it up so you can mix some cooler water in. Both of us could have a nice shower using 1 gal. water, using sea water as the first rinse. So you might want to figure 2 gal fresh per person on land. Wash hair first in a bucket like you would in a sink, use that water to wash with and your clean water to rinse-this last are suggestions for those who may still have to tote fresh water.

Dripping Springs- Bob was wondering how and how much for the drum stand?

So as this was originally posted in May 2002, what happened?
Did you get'er done?

Oz joined in '02. His/her post was yesterday. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Doug

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.

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

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

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

Using small propane heater
 

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.

http://www.abceltd.com/pics/Web/WaterSystem-0016002.jpg
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

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!

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.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...3/PICT0065.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...3/PICT0066.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...3/PICT0082.jpg

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....:D

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!

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

Heheheh.

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.

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).

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.

:D

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 :hobbyhors

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