Homemade Solar Shower

[Sir William Goes]

What do you mean 4in cal?

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[brien]

I love this idea! I might try to do this as well some day. Have you considered adding a weighted line to the outlet on the inside of the tank? Here's a quick sketch of what I mean:

This should allow you to get rid of the need for the 45deg angle at the back as well and you'll have more room for error in where you mount the outlet connection, since the weighted inner hose will always sink to the bottom of the tube, submerged in the water. Years ago I flew RC helicopters, and I would put a "clunk" inside the tank so fuel would be slurped into the engine no matter what angle the tank was at:

You might even be able to take it a step further and add an internal rigid curved tube/pipe to your positive pressure connection. This would possibly allow you to remove the T connection at the front and just have one long straight pipe. In this depiction you're positive air pressure or fill valve would be the "Vent Line" with an internal rigid tube almost touching the top of the 4" pipe, and the "Line to Engine" would be your water outlet. There might be a way to make a one-way check-valve to put on the air input line to avoid water coming back out during connect/disconnect for when it does happen to get submerged

I'm looking forward to seeing the future iterations on this! Subscribing!

 

[brien]

Just had more thoughts on this, with clever mounting location of the outlet connection, you could have the clunk pickup line directly at the rear end of the tube. as long as you are always at a slight angle when you park, that will be the lowest spot so the hose should stay submerged until the water is almost completely gone. Just mount the outlet connection on the bottom of the tube a few inches from the end of the tube, like so:

 

[brien]

@SirWilliam man, your thread has got my brain going into overtime thinking about this now, hah!

I just remembered that I have this RinseKit shower that I used to use for post-surf parking lot showers. It has a quick release hose connector on the outlet hose so that you can also use it for quickly switching between "fill up" and "shower" mode. By making use of these quick connects, you have a whole world of options when it comes to both connecting with hoses and filling with water. My initial though is that the hose would have female quick connections on both ends, then both the outlet connection on the tank, and the spigot on your house would have male quick connections. additionally, you'll need a male connection to attach to a shower head (garden sprayer).

The quick connects work the same way as air line quick connects, where they are closed when disconnected and open when connected. With something like this you could fill and refill from the same connection. In order to let air escape you'd either have to have a valve on the air pressure intake connection that allows air out, or, possibly easier, just have a separate air valve at the top of the tube at the very front that you could just swing open to relieve pressure when filling and then close when done.

 

[brien]

I just remembered that only the female ends hold pressure while disconnected, so we would have to just swap the male connector on the tank with one of the female connectors on the hose and be good to go. Probably don't want water trapped inside the hose anyway, so with one male and one female, the hose would be able to drain when disconnected.

 

[Sir William Goes]

I just remembered that only the female ends hold pressure while disconnected, so we would have to just swap the male connector on the tank with one of the female connectors on the hose and be good to go. Probably don't want water trapped inside the hose anyway, so with one male and one female, the hose would be able to drain when disconnected.

Man that's allot!!! I like all your ideas and I felt the same way after looking at someone else's designs!! My concern with the weighted line setup is that it's not sucking water out so I'm concerned that the water may not flow as well? Does that make sense? I thought about drilling on the bottom as you suggested but figured that to be more room for error with my extreme lack of knowledge and patience!!!! The hose idea I had seen somewhere as well, my thoughts behind how I did it was I figured hooking it up to other connections would be easier since it's a very widely used system so I could fill up at random spots if needed. I really feel that making it a straight 7ft, or however long will fit without sticking past the roof line, 4in pipe. Capped at both ends with in being Schrader valve and other being the faucet at the very bottom of cap (no 45) and a smaller cleanout, properly mounted to the top would be the best and simplist design.

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[Sir William Goes]

This is what I was thinking

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[brien]

with both the model helicopter fuel tanks and my RinseKit the liquid is pushed out by internal pressure as opposed to sucked out, same as in your design. so i suspect the internal weighted line should be no problem.

You make a good point about your design with respect to filling up. With my idea I had the assumption that there would always be a regular hose spigot available, where as in your design you have the ability to fill it up from anywhere, even just pouring in bottles of water, hell, even from a river or lake, which no doubt makes it more versatile in that respect.

I also haven't figured out how the internal weighted hose would be connected. I might take a trip over to the home improvement store tomorrow to hunt around and see what options are available.

 

[brien]

Just ran across this guy's DIY version over on /r/overlanding

 

[LandCruiserPhil]

Move to Phoenix the water stored inside your rig is plenty hot (maybe too hot sometimes) for a shower

 

[brien]

Hah, true down here in Tucson as well, at least during summer