Outdoor shower

Look what we have! I LOVE outdoor showers. There's something about short bursts of warm water to lather or rinse in, accompanied by warm summer breezes, that leaves me ten times more refreshed than a shower in some sort of indoor stall.

Most of the kids think that my penchant for outdoor showers is fueled by latent exhibitionist tendencies, or else just plain weird. But hey, we have a very private property. And they do appreciate that when I return from a run 10k run in 27ºC weather I can shower before I enter the house!

We have owned a solar water-bag camping shower for a while. It helped get us through the prolonged power outage three years ago due to forest fires. But to use on a daily basis it's cumbersome. You have to lower it, fill it, leave it in the sun to warm, and then hoist it up into the air somehow to use. Lather, rinse, dry, repeat.

We had a lot of extra poly pipe lying around in bits, left over from the years when we hadn't figured out how to optimally maintain our water system in the winter. The extra poly pipe could be used in an emergency to get us household water in the event that a segment got frozen.

So I snailed a bunch of poly pipe together, bought some hose and faucet fittings and rigged the whole thing up to a cast-off showerhead. The poly pipe lies in the sun and heats the water up due to its dark colour. It holds a few gallons of water, easily enough for a couple of quick showers. It refills itself automatically from the tap as water is pulled out of the other end. And for really sunny days, there's a way to mix in some cold water directly from the tap to prevent scalding.

Alas it has been mostly overcast and thunder-showery today. I haven't yet been able to give the shower a real test run.