Three quart boondocker's shower: Oxygenics BodySpa

[profdant139]

California is in a bit of a drought -- you might have heard. And I heard that the Oxygenics can cut down on water usage. I was skeptical, frankly -- it sounded like hype to me. But since we needed a new hand-held unit in our shower at home, we bought a BodySpa unit, just as an experiment. I also added a simple in-line shutoff valve, which can not only shut off the water but can be tweaked to reduce the flow.

After installing the shower head (very easy), I did a time test with a watch and a one quart measuring cup. I adjusted the flow so that it was minimally acceptable: more than a trickle, but not a hard spray. It took 30 seconds to fill a quart, or half a gallon per minute.

On to the shower test -- it took me 15 seconds to get wet. Water off. Soap up, including hair. (Full disclosure -- I don't have much hair to wash.) Rinsing took one minute and fifteen seconds. Total water usage: 1.5 minutes, or three quarts! And this was with bar soap and shampoo -- when we are boondocking, we use diluted Dr. Bronner's liquid soap, precisely because it rinses off even faster than regular soap.

Obviously, we are not going to shower like this at home every day, unless and until the drought becomes really terrible. The difference between a three quart shower and a three gallon shower is trivial, at home. But when we are boondocking, the ability to conserve water while staying clean is a big deal.

Bottom line -- I hate to admit it, but the hype about the Oxygenics unit is apparently true.

[SteveAE]

In the trailer, I have a hot water recirculation system so our shower water gets hot "almost" instantaneously with the push of a button, a Oxygenics shower head to reduce flow, and collect much of the used shower water for toilet flushing. Water lasts a long time doing this.

On a recent river trip (no RV), four of us each took two hair washing "showers" (total of eight "showers") with ~6 gallons of water in the solar shower(~0.75 gallons per "shower"). Technology helps, but self discipline can do wonders too.

[dons2346]

If you guys in CA would quit watering the wacky weed plants, you wouldn't be in such bad shape. One plant takes 6 gallons a day

[profdant139]

Phil, yes we do dump gray water into the black tank. But it is messy to use a bucket.

And Scroller, while the water is warming up, we run it into a measuring cup and use it for rinsing dishes.

[scroller95969]

I wonder how many quarts it takes to get the water temperature comfortable on the first shower. We do the temperature settings by putting the shower water into the toilet.

[pnichols]

profdant139 wrote:
The real issue isn't the supply of fresh water - it is the capacity of our gray tank, which is only 25 gallons. That has become the limiting factor on our ability to boondock.

Dan,

Do you have a black tank? If so, does it fill a lot slower than the grey tank ... like ours does?

Our black tank not only fills a lot slower than our grey tank - our black tank holds ten gallons more than our grey tank. When out drycamping, we offload our grey tank into our black tank to extend our stay: We carry along a plastic bucket. When the grey tank is nearing full, we just fill the bucket a few times from the grey, take each bucket load into the bathroom and dump it into the toilet.

This works like a champ to better balance the fill-rates of the two tanks so we can stay camping longer. 😉

P.S. Our grey/black tanks' emptying valves system allows us to combine the tank capacities when camping to accomplish the same results as above but I prefer to keep the tanks separate, so we use the grey-water-down-the-toilet method.

[pconroy328]

I think saving water - at any time - is a great idea.
Means there will be more water for making beer. 🙂

[profdant139]

Korbe, I will admit that the measuring seems a bit odd. But I am trying to evaluate exactly how much water we use, per day, when camping. The real issue isn't the supply of fresh water - it is the capacity of our gray tank, which is only 25 gallons. That has become the limiting factor on our ability to boondock.

So if the two of us can shower on (let's say) three gallons a day -- one for me and two for DW (who still has a very nice head of hair, unlike me) -- and we use a gallon for dishwashing -- then we should be good for six nights without having to find a dump station.

[korbe]

I haven't measured my volume of water used while using our Oxygenics because it's going to take what it takes. But not much in conserve mode. On - rinse - off - wash - on - rinse - off.

[oldmattb]

Three quarts?? That is 1/133 of one avocado!

Seriously, we have the Oxygenics shower head too, and think it is great for our many dry camping trips.

Matt B

[downtheroad]

We lived in CA for over 40 years...Santa Barbara.
I remember other droughts. We captured our washing machine water in buckets and used it to flush our toilet. It got really bad. We hated it.

Maybe you can start capturing your shower water and use that to flush your toilet in your rig...

Seriously....yes, the Oxygenics shower heads are a vast improvement over the stock ones...