Hot Showers in the Woods

For those of you who travel the back roads and camp far from the comforts of home, you can still have a hot shower. Here in Bancroft we built a "watershed" some years ago. We installed a shower stall and composting toilet and both have served us well. We always had to carry water and fill the bucket if we wanted a shower. Now we are able to collect the rain water, store it, and use gravity to fill the bucket if we want a shower. I'll explain:

Our water shed is very basic, just 8x10 with a solar light, toilet, and shower.

This week we installed eavestroughs along one side .........................................................

and a rain barrel to collect and store the water. It has an overflow spout at the top, a screen cover to keep out leaves and a tap at the bottom for a hose that runs into the shed and fills another container there.

Inside the shed you can see our set-up. The green hose brings rain water into the plastic garbage can, while the grey machine on the table pumps and heats the water to the shower head.

 We can control the temperature of the water by the dial on the front of the machine.

This is the pump that we place in the bucker of rain water, turn on the machine and hot water comes out the shower head. Oh, one other feature is the ability to charge the battery, which runs the pump from your car's cigarette lighter.

Under the table you can see the propane tank, our source of fuel to heat the water.

That's our set-up, simple, functional and it feels so good to get cleaned up after cutting trees all day. We bought ours at Canadian Tire, but I'm sure other retailers carry them as well.