Eco-Shower: Rustic Outdoor Shower Made From Salvaged Antique Barn Stall Walls

Posted Sep 7, 09 -Filed Under eco-friendly living ideas, reuse wood/ lumber, seasonal: summer 

Eco-Shower with driftwood wreath

An Eco-Shower (in my opinion) is any outdoor shower that is made with mostly salvaged materials and uses solar power to heat the water.

I love my outdoor shower. You can see where horses chewed on the wood and I like the little worm holes in the wood. This eco-shower is perfect for us in Southern Maryland because this area is historically known for its barns/ farms (especially tobacco barns) and the Chesapeake Bay.

Outdoor showers are great for several reasons: they keep your inside shower cleaner- especially good when returning from the beach all sandy… or muddy from a kayak trip. Also using it instead of your inside shower will keep the extra humidity out of your bathroom –especially good for people who have bathrooms where mold is a problem. In addition, it will reduce your electricity usage because you don’t have to use your water heater to heat your shower water. Best of all, it’s nice to shower outdoors!

A driftwood wreath fits in nicely. Don’t you think?

eco-Shower Side View

How to:

Good friends of mine were renovating the inside of their antique Maryland barn. That is how I was lucky enough to get my hands on some barn stall walls. I recruited my husband to help me build a frame out of treated four by fours. I used the pieces of the stall walls for the walls of the shower. There was some reconstructing (rearranging) involved.

Paint on a coat of water sealer to help preserve the wood.

To add the lettering on the side, I printed out a font that I liked in a large font size. I cut out the letters, traced the letters on the wood, and then pained the letters with acrylic paint.

Set up a garden hose extending to your shower. The longer the hose is the better (within reason). I connected two long hoses and coiled them neatly in a sunny location. The sun will heat the water while you are getting hot and sweaty mowing your lawn or working in your garden.

I located the shower far enough away from the house to avoid water problems and the land slopes away from the shower into the woods. You might want to install a drywell, which is basically just a hole filled with rocks. We currently stand on a slab of granite while showering but someday I think I’ll add a gravel walkway to the shower and a gravel floor in the shower.

Admittedly, we only use the shower seasonally. I don’t like a cold shower. But in the summer it’s fantastic.

Eco-Shower Back View

Don’t forget to add hooks to hang up cloths or towels. I used cleats (found at any hardware store) because they gave it a boat house feel. Even better would be to find some old cleats and reuse them in this project.

Eco-Shower Back

For privacy, I ripped a few barn boards into strips and filled some of the gaps between the boards.

Home-made Soap On Rock Soap Dish

Here is some home-made soap that I made. It is on a rock soap dish.

Comments

6 Responses to “Eco-Shower: Rustic Outdoor Shower Made From Salvaged Antique Barn Stall Walls”

  1. Desiree Bell on September 26th, 2009 8:59 pm

    I absolutely love your eco shower and your site. Can’t wait to browse through your posts.

  2. jane on September 27th, 2009 8:12 am

    Desiree,
    Thank you for the complements. I went to your site and see that you have a post on making a journal out of a thrift-store plastic placemat. Nice re-use project!

    http://beyondagarden.blogspot.com/2009/08/recycled-placemat-scrapbook.html

  3. Glittermummy on October 12th, 2009 3:35 pm

    Hi

    Love this. Sadly wouldn’t recommend it in Scotland, midges AND cold. I really liked your homemade soap and rock dish :D Nice touch.

    What would be really good, and bear with me… would be to see a pic of some one using it… AH, see, I knew you’d think that… Nooooo… perfectly adorned in swimsuit, wetsuit, whatever, but just to give an idea of it how it works.

    Thanks for sharing it. Eco is good :D

  4. tango on October 27th, 2009 7:45 pm

    So charming and the wreath especially is a lovely touch! We live on Chesapeake Bay with two little ones, so this is almost the perfect shower solution for us. Do you have ideas on regulating the water temp? By the time you ran the scalding water out of our hose, you’d have about 30 seconds before the icy well water froze you out of the shower. Thanks.

  5. jane on October 27th, 2009 8:17 pm

    Tango,
    Try moving your garden hose to a less sunny spot. On a very hot day, the water in the hose might be just right (without extra heat from all day sun. Or, consider changing the time of day you use it.Say, late in the day for hot days and mid-day for cooler days. It works for us.
    Best of luck.
    Hester Jane

  6. Naomi Simon on May 8th, 2010 11:14 am

    This is perfect! we hold a charity concert on a family farm in somerset, united kingdom. its grown in the past few years where people camp. we have no showering facilities and have been scowering the internet in search of a rustic eco friendly shower, this framework is perfect!

    Just need to figure out how to get enough water to heat showers for more people! maybe a cold shower is better than no shower!

    thanks Naomi

Leave a Reply




  • Got Questions?

    Are you having any trouble understanding some of the instructions? Feel free to send me a quick e-mail at HesterJane@FunInTheMaking.net. I’ll do my best to answer your questions. Do you have any suggestions regarding a specific post? Maybe you have a better way and would like to share it with the other creative people visiting this site? -Hester Jane

  • Sponsors

  • Support Fun In The Making

    Like what you see? Consider donating a dollar. If you get project ideas throughout the year consider giving $10.