A Garden Shower in ten minutes and less than 8$

Hot, sweaty summer. I love this season but I love it a lot more since I can throw myself under my new garden shower. I already had all the materials but if you need to buy them they'll set you back nothing more than 8 bucks or so (5 Euro).

Step 1 What you'll need

Here's a list of all the things needed for this project.

From right to left in the picture:

- A pole or a similar support of sort.

A used one of the T-poles that holds one end of the wires we use to hang laundry up to dry. Yes, you didn't know the sun can actually dry clothes? And it's even cheaper than your SupaDupa Energy Saving Dryer. :-) Here's a nice article from Nicole Martinelli (Wired) about laundry drying habits in Italy.

- A piece of a garden hose - Length may obviously vary, the length of the pole should be ok. (This was a surplus i had in my shed)

- A garden hose pistol with a shower mode. (3,60Euro)

- Fittings . One to connect the hose to the Shower Pistol and one to connect the shower hose to the main watering tube. (my two hoses were of different size but i realized it just after buying a 1:1 fitting, so I had to buy a new one. Always check that! :-) ) (0,70Euro x 2)

- A bunch of Zip ties
- Cutting pliers or scissors to cut the ties

Comments

[Sounds4cc]

I like your shutters, havent ever seen swing outs like that. How about some detail?

[Tidnull]

this is a great idea.. and to prank a sweaty person just turn it on jet setting when youre done using it as a surprise to the next user!

[Sounds4cc]

cruel, so cruel. I remember (as a kid, I must've been a lil chit) turning on the shower handle to full and pointing the nozzle out, was hilarious to hear my sister screaming when she got blasted. :)

[Fast Eddie]

Pretty cool!

This might be a neat add-on to heat the water before the outlet.
Solar-Thermal-Water-Heater-For-Less-Than-Five-Dolllars

[Camillo Miller]

Yes it could be... But then the shower won't be so refreshing with that add-on :-) I even thought of a completely usable shower, but since the water flows through the grass down to the rain gutter along the street, I can't use any kind of soap...

[Sounds4cc]

many soaps and detergents are biodegradable. IE: Dawn Liquid Soap can be sprayed in trees to kill webworms or anesthesize(ms?) bees and when it hits the grass it biodegrades and becomes fertilizer!!!

[Cat on my Lap]

You could also circumvent the need for added vertical support if you drilled into a rain gutter on the side of the house.

[benthekahn]

but then you could only use it while its raining.

[Optimus]

surely you're not suggesting routing the water from the drain pipe into the shower head? I think he means tie(or drill) the hosepipe to the drain gutter. Unless the drain water went into a storage tank first with maybe a filter.... Sounds like a great idea especially for summer! :)

[TATTERH00D]

But...it would be RAINING. Why not just rinse in the rain then?

[Derin]

you have an ironic point

[Cat on my Lap]

I meant attach the horizontal beam to the gutter...so you wouldn't need an extra pole holding it up. However, sequestering rain water in a black barrel for heating wouldn't be a bad idea either.

[benthekahn]

I thought you meant getting water from the gutter. At a summer camp I have been to, they use lots of black pipe coiled in an field to heat their showers. A hundred feet or so makes the water hot enough that it needs to be mixed with cooler water to be nice.

[Camillo Miller]

Yeah I understand what you mean, just using the gutter as a support. Well the pole i used as a support has been there for something like 15 years now. You can see the other pole and the wires between them. It's our laundry hanger (all year long, we have warm winters here). We just change the wires every now and then. So in fact, the pole was already there. It's even a T-Pole so i didn't have to drill anything to make the hose pistol hang out. Though i really enjoy drilling everything, this time I prefered to keep it as simple as possible. :-)

[Dino1981]

A perfect shower for two....:)

[Ian+Siobhan]

What do you do about drainage/runoff? I mean I guess you're not taking that long of a shower and all...I'm just thinking what happens if you decide to do it all summer, eventually won't the soil start to erode where the water is falling?...and this is just talking here, but for a slightly more permanent thing, you could in theory dig a few feet down, removing the dirt and hauling it away. Then lay small stones at the bottom, maybe less than a foot (deep) and then sand, and finally some of the original soil...this way if you use any kind of non bio-degradable product it can kind of naturally filter out...

[Camillo Miller]

Hi :-) That's not a problem. As you can see in first picture the water falls right into one of the tile of the path ;-)

[mowie]

great idea i live in australia and in summer if u turn on the hose the water can burn u and sometimes the hoses melt and the road goes squishy

[SheShe]

This is such a wonderful idea! It would be great to use after mowing the lawn, after sunbathing, before going in the pool... Thumbs up!

[Camillo Miller]

Well you know the idea came to my mind right after mowed the lawn for the first time this summer :-) Seaside's not far from where I live (4 miles or so) so now i use it even to wash off the sand in the evening when I come home from a day at the beach ;-)

[DWRead]

Manufacturers warn against using garden hoses for cleaning or drinking, because of the lead (Pb) content. Brass fittings also contain lead. Hoses designed to carry drinking water to trailers are lead-free.

[Camillo Miller]

I didn't know that, but I'm quite sure one of the hoses (the yellow one) was specifically designed to carry beverages, so it's ok. The green one along the pole is a common garden hose, but I didn't find such a disclaimer when i bought it (different laws on the question here in Italy? who knows :-) ). Don't worry, anyhow, we drink chlorine everyday... Anyway, I don't think with this shower you're gonna get Saturnism (lead poisoning) like the poor ancient romans (they used to cook in lead cookware and drank in lead cups, they even stored water in lead if I remember well...) :-) In any other case, like oakironworker said, I'm ready to sue the hose makers... :-)

[DWRead]

Oh, well, Europe is much better at dealing with the lead problem. Electrical products in Europe are required to be RoHS-compliant, i.e., free from exposure to lead during normal use. RoHS applies specifically to electrical products, but any country that bans lead in electronics is probably even more stringent with things that are used for food and water. Unfortunately, the U.S. is slow to comply with RoHS standards. I know that Dell and Apple have lead-free keyboards and mice; can't vouch for any other computers. Oakironworker, I hope you are correct, but if the U.S. government is concerned about lead exposure in household products, I figure it's a genuine problem. After all, the government doesn't have to worry about lawsuits. What I wonder is, why does brass always contain lead? It's not a component of brass, yet the government says that they've found lead in every sample. The only difference is the amount of contamination. The concern is all the brass used in plumbing fixtures. I try to buy products that are NOT made in China (there aren't that many!) because the quality control just isn't there. One package may be fine, but the next one... Recently, a friend and I were shopping for flip-flops (inexpensive sandals made of rubber). The ones in that store REEKED of something like gasoline. The smell was so awful, we were getting headaches. Okay, that's because there were a hundred pairs giving off odor, so it shouldn't be a problem once you get them home, but--you wear them next to your skin! Surely it can't be safe.

[greatpanda]

It seems that tin and lead are often hard to separate, so since tin is in brass, lead would be also. I wouldn't worry so much about it though, since it's trace amounts anyway, and it's all in solution with the other metals.

[lasersage]

not certain about brass but copper often has lead in to improve its machining characteristics. Not being a metalurgist I can't say amounts or anything, but I was analyzing a copper sample I was shooting with lasers at uni and couldn't work out what the deposits were until a turner caught a glimpse of the microscope and explained.

[DWRead]

OH NO! The top of our kitchen table is a sheet of copper. And that's the table we eat off of 95% of the time. Time to think about a replacement.

[greatpanda]

Nah, just use plates...

[oakironworker]

Your going to get lead poisoning from a water hose? You wouldn't get lead poisoning if you ate the hose. . These Manufacture statements are made so nut cases can't file frivolous lawsuits claiming they were poisoned by their garden hoses. If this was true my tomato plants would give me lead poisoning because I use a hose to water them. Great simple shower. Great idea. Not a toxic death shower.

[RetroPlayer]

I predict people are going to start dying of heart attacks from worrying so much about how nature is going to kill them. Seriously, people...let it go. Man has been around for thousands of years. I hear so many crackpot theories that 'sound' scientific and I'm sure it makes people feel all smart to distort and scream chicken little. Fact: The number one cause of death is being born. Embrace life, not be afraid of it.

[Sounds4cc]

(thumbs up) LIKE

[greatpanda]

Lol, thanks for the dose of reason...

[Rawben]

Yes, I too have seen manufacturers warning against using certain hoses for drinking. My yellow ones from wally world clearly state that, but once the large tag is removed, no one knows. Personally, they should have it stamped on the hoses so everyone can read it.

[Bearclaw_Michael]

I rigged up a similar shower on the post holding the netting around the trampoline.
It's a great way for kids to cool off on a hot day, I admit I get up there and jump around & cool off myself sometimes.
I like to set it on mist, that way it uses very little water.''

[Camillo Miller]

I forgot to mention that this pistol has a fantastic "nebulizer" mode that generate a moist you can enjoy sitting near the pole! :-)

[knarx]

Simple, in fact very simple - but also good, cheap, fast and easy. Good idea.

[Camillo Miller]

Many Thanks, knarx :-)

[acaz93]

looks , nice , neat ! you know , even if the price raises a little bit ,an in-line valve , for controlling the flow of water , may be a good idea

[Camillo Miller]

Thanks! :-) Yeah, where I bought the fitter they sell a hose to hose one with a valve, indeed. You can use it between the two hoses at the bottom or even better you can cut the tube along the pole and reconnect it back with the new fitter :-) I didn't do that because my garden tap is quite close to the shower.