The solar shower I set up earlier this summer has been working well in some respects. The water heats up to a nice pleasant temperature after a couple hours in the sun, and each bag provides for about 10 minutes of water flow. It has a couple of issues, though, which I wanted to fix. The short hose that comes with each shower is made of plastic that is too pliable, and so it tends to pinch easily. Also, by hanging the shower bag from a rope, I can only get it as high as I can lift, which is not high enough to stand under and still have decent water flow.
My first improvement was to replace the existing hose with something thicker. I found this nice braided hosing at the hardware store. It is the same inner diameter as the old hose, but is far thicker and stiffer.
I also decided to replace the standard shower head with something a bit fancier. I grabbed the cheapest shower head in the store. This is the kind with a low flow restrictor than can be pulled out and tossed, which is just what I did. I combined the head with a ball valve and a barb adapter for connecting to the new hose
The valve is necessary because I planned to raise the bag far overhead, where the shutoff valve on the shower bag would be out of reach. For this, I picked up some awning hardware.
And mounted the pulley high up a tree.
Shower wand assembled, I looped the hose through the same rigging from which I used to hang the shower bags. This allows me to stand under the shower without holding it up, but also to pull the shower head down for rinsing.
And here is the full set up, read to go.
The new set up worked great. The shower stall is no longer crowded with the bag, and the shower flows steady from head to toe. It is probably as good as a shower gets when camping out in the woods.
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