Shower with no water pressure required or electricity

[DigitalMind]

My little sister lives in an off-grid home.  She has a VERY small solar power setup that I gave her last year for xmas.  Ever since they have had this home they've been sponge bathing out of a rubbermade container.  I decided this year to try and make the experience a little better.

I basically constructed a mini shower stall that folds into the same kind of rubbermade container they now use to bathe. It uses a manual hand pump to pump warm water from a bucket below up to the shower head above.  The link to the YouTube video is below.  I will post pictures once I have them.  It's pretty efficient on water consumption.  This could easily be adapter as a permanent installation in a cabin or RV, or could become a camping shower.  The rubbermade container and shower curtain could look a lot better, but this is just a prototype.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6415CCrgqPY

Thanks for reading, feel free to send suggestions or comments this way !

Jason

[zeusmorg]

 If you added a container above the shower head and pumped the water into it prior to the shower, you could have it gravity fed while showering, just a small improvement that may make taking a "hands free" shower a bit more pleasant!

 Mount container and shower head to the wall, and the shower curtain also.

 Of course there's a ton of ways to make it more practical, like an entire house gravity feed system, with a solar heated tank.. etc. et al..

 Maybe a passively heated tank of water, that is pumped full and you could even use two gravity tanks, one hot and one cold. It'd make doing the dishes easy too!

[zap]

I like it, nice job.  I'm sure you could find lighter and cheaper materials for the plumbing but it looks very usable in the Prototype A ver.1.3 build.

zeusmorg has some good suggestions, I'd add one...

If a gravity feed tank isn't in the works, maybe a foot pump for a "hands free" shower?

[scottsAI]

DigitalMind,

The driver of no power expect is driven by cost?

For my garden use an air pump sprayer, 1.5 gal unit $18.

larger ones available. Pump it up, then take shower hands free. Air blows out the lines when done!

Have fun,

Scott.

[DigitalMind]

Hi Zeusmorg,

  I like your way of thinking.  I was thinking most of those things too.  I didn't add a water container on top of the portable unit because then I would need 4 legs and a strong support.  They're so picky about how they use their 500 sq feet of space that I didn't dare build them a unit that would be permanently installed in the house.  This one fits under their bed.  However my suggestion to them is to have the pump mounted on a corner of the wall, a container in the attic that would temporarily store water, and a bucket on the floor with their warm water.  The shower head would stick right out of the ceiling.  Then they just need to put down a few tiles and drill a hole for drainage to the outside or something. The whole setup could be camouflaged.  

If they like the use of this, I'm hoping they'll ask to have it set up permanently.  

Thanks for your suggestions !

[DigitalMind]

Thanks Zap,

  yes now that it's all done I would have done things very differently.  It took me a really long time to track down a pump that was just right.  A foot pump with the same amount of pressure would have been perfect.  (I called it version 1.3 because this is the 3rd pump I tried)

Thanks for the comments and idea's !  

[DigitalMind]

Hi Scott,

  I tried with one of those garden sprayers once and It didn't have enough power to get the 5-6 feet of lift I needed before it dropped down. I also really wanted it to be connected to a real shower head. (I have no good explanation why other than for effect to be honest)   I realize I could have used it as is and had them spray themselves with it, but it's a little awkward.  (Not that sponge bathing out of a small tub isn't!)

I don't understand what you mean by "The driver of no power expect is driven by cost?" though.

Thanks for your comment !

73's and happy holidays

Jason

VE2RIF

[JamesJackson]

DigitalMind,

I watched the video - and will say that I like your idea. Sure, it could be in a container above the folks - for a gravity-feed, but that involves getting the water up there to begin with. If it's only a gallon or two, maybe... but if it's more - water can get pretty heavy and cumbersome.

If it's hot water (or even very warm water), that might hurt if spilled whilst trying to lift it.

Sooooo... I like your idea. Very well done. Sure you could make improvements - but you have to first try this idea - and see how well it is accepted - before you go off and try to improve it.

Actually - if you refined it a bit - I could see it being part of a camping package - for folks that go camping.

Regards,

James Jackson

[scottsAI]

Jason,

What were the design criteria of your design?

Why no electrical? Choices based on system cost?

On eBay bought RV 12v pump for $25, 2.5gpm plenty good for a shower!

Could not find hand pump for less.

I use RV pump for backup on my well. (bigger one cost $50, 4.7gpm)

Well water is only 6 ft below ground. The RV pumps go cheap in the winter.

12v 12ah battery ($9) supplies 40 minutes of water, turn it off when not needed, battery lasts couple days. Prices are very good, New stuff cost LOTs more.

Total system price I expect is on par with hand pump system?

My wife is very happy with the backup water system.

Have fun,

Scott. Analog minded by the way!-)

[Norm]

Pump an innertube full of warm water...a thick

piece of plywood with the plastic container on top,

 the persons weight would force the water up

 into the shower head a valve to regulate the rate of flow....

[DigitalMind]

Hi Scott,

  they have just barely enough solar panels to give them a few hours of light per day and  MAYBE (although it's pushing it) recharge their portable dvd player. I bought a water pump that worked on some D batteries just to see but it didn't have the lift required.

The main requirements for this were :

• It had to take NO power
  
• had to work with no water pressure
  
• They had to be able to hide it from site completely in the house (1 room about 500 sq feet)
  
• It had to be VERY water efficient because they only have a hand pumped well about 100 feet downhill from the house, which means they lug their water up by hand in containers. (Or they melt snow in the winter)
  
  

Take care !

73's de Jason

[DigitalMind]

Wow that's a genius idea Norm ... hmmmmm ... I will try that eventually and see if it works well.  I'll keep you posted.

Thanks !

Jason

[ghurd]

How about a half gallon inner tube bladder at the top?

Couple pumps gives some time with water flowing and both hands free to wash.

G-

[DigitalMind]

Hi Ghurd !

  The problem with water on the top is the much sturdier structure that is required.  I'm really hoping they'll ask for some kind of permanent setup in which case their will be a kind of "holding tank" in the attic. The hand pump would pump the warm water from the bucket below to the tank above, and then they would turn on the shower head.  

Also, putting the water directly on top means I need to make the whole thing shorter, it almost reaches the ceiling as is.  

I thought a lot about if I should put a container on top in this version, but I decided it wasn't really necessary.  I took a couple of showers in it before I gave it to them.  Basically you pump and get yourself all wet, then you stop and wash, then you pump some more to rinse.  Also, my sister and her hubby are joined at the hip so I'm willing to bet in their case that one person will pump while the other showers.

Thanks Ghurd for your input, keep'em coming !

Jason

[CmeBREW]

Thats a neat video Jason.  I like the KISS design. My brother has a nice cabin in the woods and something like that would be really good to have. Thankfully I talked him into letting me put a metal roof on it for rain water collection.

Years ago I was visiting friends in an underdeveloped country and that sponging off with a cloth certainly gets old really fast! (esp. when the water is ice cold!)

 Your sis and brother in law should be very happy.

I wonder If you could find a fixed shower stall and build it in a corner of a room. It would be more stable for a longer hand crank bar that comes around in an "L" shape to the left of the person toward the wall side.  Might make it a little easier to crank and shower??

When I saw your video, the first thing that popped into my mind was a children's water 'squirt gun' called a 'Soaker 100'.  It is actually quite a interesting design the way it uses a piston cylinder and pulls water AND air into a plastic 'pressure bulb' and it builds up like 40 lbs of pressure and then sprays out water really far when the trigger is pulled.

And it keeps spraying out the water for quite some time as the pressure goes down slowly in the pressure bulb.

So I think it would be cool if someone could make the shower pump similar to that, so one could 'pump up the pressure' with the hand crank in the shower and get something like 10 seconds at a time to wash with both hands and then pump it a few more times to get another 10 seconds and so on.

Maybe they already have them--I don't know.  

I know those simple vaccum hand pumps at parks work sorta like that.

But I like yours too because it is very simple. Good things to think about.

Good work and keep us informed with any improvements.

P.S.  You may want to make them a 100watt pedal generator for those days when there is no sun. (I recall they have no wind mill since they are in the woods)

I like mine. Even a quick 25 watt hours is useful on gloomy days.

[scottsAI]

DigitalMind,

Interesting.

The solar is expensive, how about using a hand crank or pedal power?

Bought a hand crank radio, 1 min gives 20 min radio.

Surprising how long 15 sec seems! Never made it a whole minute.

Yet I work out on an elliptical machine for 30 min 3 days a week.

Opened a Hard Disk drive, magnets are very strong, think can make a small 50 watt generator out of couple more. HDD motor is 3 phase brush less, even that could be a generator, 10 w or so.

Electrical power is so useful, worth some effort to get some going.

I lugged water to a cabin for few days. Later found the guy did not know how to install plumbing, before I left it was done.

My air pump garden sprayer is quite energetic, would be surprised if it could not work.

Idea is to use an accumulator like my home water system uses, pump up a bladder to some pressure then take shower? If a few gallon bucket is enough... some small tank would do it. Maybe pressurize all plumbing in whole home! The hand pump you have in the video looks like if mounted and longer handle would be easy to use.

Have fun,

Scott.

[Old F]

DM

What kind of lighting are they using ?

I noticed  a table light  on an two ceiling lights on  most likely for filming for you-tube vid

Oh an I have to add I scored  1200 points at field day this year running 2.5 watts QRP cw an psk31

Solar powered 73 DE N8QJU