Shower in RV [survey]

You need to realize that if we have a full hook up site, we can shower as long as the hot water lasts. The key to shower length is not the hot water as much as the holding tank. When we do not have a sewer connection and must hold our waste water for days, the length of the shower shortens so we can hold longer by using less water. We have a gas/electric hot water heater that is 10 gallons. With a flash hot water heater and a full hookup site (ie one with sewer hookup) the length of the shower is almost unlimited.

You should also look up 'sea shower' or 'Navy shower'. As stated, when in a campground with hookups, shower time is limited _only_ by hot water supply & recovery time. When camping off hookups, the fresh water supply and waste tank space can be greatly extended with these techniques. Two gallons, maybe less, will provide a surprisingly good washup.

Jim, "Mo' coffee!"

server not found. too many variables to make this a valid survey anyway. my last MH had about a 46 inch long shower tub. I have looked at TCs etc. with wet baths. all depends on size of unit.
bumpy

With full hookup and water heater on gas and electric I can and do take a shower as long as I want with water running constantly...

Only difference with dry camping is you can't let water run constantly...

Interesting project.

I might suggest that there are a number of other areas you could/should be exploring in your shower research - wet bath vs dry bath, privacy, size of shower, type of shower head, type of shower, importance of conserving water, size/type of hot water tank, type of RV, size of RV, importance given to type of shower relative to other RV amenities etc. etc. etc.

Good luck.


Jay

if you could design a higher pressure finer mist shower head. that would clean and give the relaxing feeling we are used to. you could sell them to all markets. as the water saving feature would benefit everyone.

a better endeavor would be to design a heat pump system that would take care of all heating and hot water requirements. along with all space cooling and food storage requirements. must be compact and energy efficient. preferably able to run off two golf cart batteries and solar panels.
a super light-thin, insulated structural panel would be another option to research.

carrying resources for comfort and the structure are the two worse energy offenders in a r.v. (weight and size of structure and comfort systems)…

You have to be smart about RV showering. Wet yourself down and cut the water off while you shampoo or lather up and then turn water back on to rinse off. This is not how I shower at home but I waste a whole lot more water at the house than I do when in the RV. The RV showering technic is more environmentally considerate but not as fulfilling. It gets the job done!

Yeah - sounds like a little more understanding could improve your survey. Here's a summary of the above, with a some added ideas.

- Many RVers camp with full hook-ups, so water supply and waste tank supply is unlimited.
- Even if the hot water heater capacity isn't sufficient (which is rare), there are on-demand water heaters where tank capacity isn't a problem.
- When dry camping, freshwater supply is a limiting factor. In this case, creating a higher-pressure and lower-volume shower head would really improve shower performance for a given level of water use. Check out Oxygenics brand shower heads.
- Also when dry camping, many people just use water to wet themselves down, then they turn off the water to soap up, and turn it back on to rinse. That's a Navy shower, military shower, sea shower, etc...but I think the intent of your study is to have a more comfortable traditional shower with no behavior modification. Still, something to be aware of...some RVers don't care about this, and some would prefer a traditional shower all the time, and that could skew your results.

Hopefully something good will come from your study (better than "just an A")!

Your survey was one sided. We had to answer your questions which may or may not be the right question. I would suggest you redo the survey and add a section at the end for the one doing the survey to write a comment.

@ Botts: Yes, but that assumes a full hook up site. My concern is that this is not always possible, and that's where I'd like to design for :)

@ Handbasket: I've read quite a bit about the navy shower. Turn it on for a minute to get wet, turn it off, use soap and shampoo, turn it on for another minute. Quite effective/ efficient, but it is my challenge to look for more luxurious ways to shower

@ RangerJay: thanks, that are some interesting suggestions. I did not look into the wet/ dry bath issue yet. It's quite a challenge since there are so many different types of RV. Plus, I don't get to design a whole RV (which is unfortunate, but maybe one day I will). I am still exploring if it is possible to build some kind of shower which can be built-in existing RV's.

@ Tempforce: Thanks for the tips, I will definetely look into those systems. The main challenge is indeed the amount of resources available in an RV, therefore I am also exploring options on re-using the already- warm shower water (with a water filter)

Thanks for the replies ! :)