Temporary Indoor Shower

 

I built my tiny home paycheck to paycheck. In order to effectively use every dime, I moved into my tiny home long before it was complete. However, because I worked on the build each day after my regular work day, I wanted a way to get clean without running to some bathing facility away from my build site.

Therefore, one of the first items I installed was my bathtub and plumbing for the bathtub drain. I did not install the tub walls till much later. In order to protect the existing walls, I obtained vinyl shower curtains and tacked them to the walls. I also have a front curtain to keep the water in the tub.

I had not installed my water plumbing or my hot water tank. I live off-grid and planned an internal tank, see this article.  Before installing my internal tank, I used water totes to hold water. I used a garden sprayer to hold two gallons of water for my shower. The wand and nozzle was removable and made it much easier to use for my shower.

I would fill the sprayer tank with 3/4 of a gallon boiling water and 1 gallon of cold water. I used an electric water pot for heating the water. Because I was building my home, I was frequently using the generator so I had plenty of energy to run the water pot. Water could also be heated in a tea pot over a camp propane stove.

The same garden sprayer can be painted black and placed outside in the sunshine. The sun will heat the bottle so you have hot shower water. However, I live in an extremely cold region and I was building during the winter.

I used this system to take showers for six months. Even after I completed the basic plumbing of my home, I needed to use this system because I had not installed a water heater. I now have a shower head with an on/off switch and it is a water saving head, however it still uses more water than my former garden sprayer. I find I miss my sprayer. It was so easy to conserve water because the sprayer output was not excessive.

Maybe I will bring the sprayer back and use it. Life is good off-grid and it feels good to conserve water. 

Off-grid-Water for your home

Dealing with water needs can be a challenging part of being off-grid. If you have access to a well and a hose, it will be relatively simple to connect your home to pressure water. However, many of us will not have access to pressure water and will need an internal or external tank for water storage and some type of pump to deliver the water to faucets and other outlets. I am among the camp that has an internal water tank.
When I was building my home, I planned for my water tank under the kitchen counter in the corner of the "L". This is a space that is frequently difficult to access so why not put something in that space that does not need frequent access. One of the cheapest and strongest tanks I could find was a basic "spot sprayer" designed for garden use; mine is 26 gallons and approx. $60 with postage (from Northern Tool).

This tank has a mounting pad on top for a 12V pump. However it does not have an inlet for the pump siphon-a drill will open a hole and a piece of PVC (about 1/2" diameter) will work for the siphon. Make sure to vacuum out any drill debris before use as it will clog the pump. I purchased the flojet 2.9 gpm 50 psi water pump from amazon and mounted it atop my tank.

The left side of the pump with the inline filter goes to my PVC siphon tube in the tank and the right side goes to my plumbing lines. 

Below are a couple images showing the installation. The large diameter plastic hose is my water fill that hooks up to my exterior water fill panel.

The left hole is for filling the tank and the right side is for hooking up pressure water. The small round screen between the two fills is for venting the tank.

I have three plastic jugs, about 7 gallons each, that I use to bring water to my home. These are a bit to heavy to hold up while the water drains into the fill so I setup a 120V water pump outside my house to draw from the totes and pump into the tank. Because I live in a cold environment, I disconnect both hoses from the pump so no water is retained in the pump-freezing would destroy the pump and lead to a bad day.

My water tank services my kitchen sink, my bathroom sink and my shower. This is a labeled drawing of the rats nest of pipes that feed the various faucets.

Let me know any questions and I will try to help with better information. (Purchase of any of these items through our links will give us a few pennies to cover internet costs and allow us to continue providing additional content, thank you).