Why Would Anyone Want an Outdoor Shower?
I know what you're thinking. "Am I really going to be taking showers outside, in front of my house? Won't my neighbors (a) complain, (b) call the police, and/or (c) send me creepy fan mail?"
While I imagine that there are few things more exhilarating than exposing oneself in the great outdoors, I freely admit that I have never used my outdoor shower for showering. But I have used it for a bunch of other things.
Outdoor Showers are Good for More than Showering!
1. Spray off muddy/sandy feat before going back in the house.
2. Dog baths. Way easier than trying to get the pups to stay put in our tiny shower inside a bathroom that's not much bigger.
3. Easy outdoor access to hot water for washing. Clothes, cars, you name it!
4. Convenient spot for a low point drain. It's much easier to winterize your plumbing if it all slopes down to a drain.
Does it sound like a difficult project? Good news, it isn't.
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The Easiest Way to Add an Outdoor Shower
There are a couple of different types of purpose-built outdoor showers for RVs, which work well not just for RVs, Buses, and Vans, but tiny houses, too.
If you don't mind cutting a big hole in an exterior wall, you can use a compartment style RV outdoor shower. Alternatively, with just two smaller holes, you can use a surface-mounted quick-connect outdoor shower.
Metal Outdoor Shower Valve
The biggest down-side of RV style outdoor showers is that they're plastic. Plastic fixtures tend to be pretty flimsy out of the box, and get brittle after years of exposure to the elements.
My outdoor shower is just a hot and cold frost-free spigot installed in the old battery box of our Airstream. There's no reason it has to be inside a compartment aside from aesthetics. The spigot could be surface-mounted. Since it's a frost-free valve, the closed valve keeps the water inside the heated envelope of the structure, and it's safe for the outside parts to be outside in freezing weather as long as the shower hose isn't connected.
If you don't mind doing some minor plumbing, adding a frost-free spigot is an easy retrofit to an existing tiny home. Just find a spot where you have access to your hot and cold water lines running along an outer wall, drill two holes through your exterior wall, mount the spigot, and connect to your water lines from inside.
If you do want to install your outdoor shower inside a compartment, but don't have an existing compartment to use, you can add one with a waterproof marine access hatch.
The frost-free spigot will need an adapter to connect the hose bibb to the shower head. There's lots of different thread types—you're looking for female hose bib (FHB) by 1/2" male iron pip size (MIP). Pick your big box hardware store flavor: Orange or Blue.
For bonus points, you could suction cup a shower head holder on to the outside of your house, put a teak shower mat on the ground, and spoil the neighbors' view with a privacy screen. But I'll just be happy to hose the dog down before going inside after a muddy day at the dog park.
