Van Life Essentials: How to Build a Shower

[Music] welcome back folks today we're going to do part two of our series on showers and staying clean if you live in a car van or suv even an rv if you have a van like debra does then you have a built-in shower enclosure in the back door we've talked about how to actually take the shower but now this is where will you take a shower and debra you've discovered you have this shower enclosure right here at the back of your van yeah how do you turn this into a shower enclosure well thanks to you bob i learned how to do this i'm going to show you my tools um i start with a pole and bungee cord and really then just some spring spring clips and a mat and a tarp that's it so it's really easy and you want to go ahead and show them yeah okay really simple stuff it is it has to be for me so you just put the pole up here and that keeps the doors from blowing in on you but like you taught me uh to keep them from them blowing out away and everything collapsing then find find a way and find the right size bungee cord and find a way and now it's stable so if we if we move it around not too much it it will come undone if you do it more than that it it will because i was testing it and i bought myself on the head but it would take a lot of both ways to to knock it down under any normal circumstances this is going to work just fine absolutely absolutely even even in winds because now we have to add the tarp and that gives it even more security so right it would stabilize it even more yeah yeah but i did do that to test it and [Laughter] well this is this is really fancy high-tech equipment where did you get a dowel just like that uh i think that now cost me a dollar fifty at home depot well i guess you most of us can afford that yeah and i cut a little bit off of the end of it and that was that okay yeah so and and uh uh this came from a batch of bungee cords at walmart good so okay so so far it's not too terribly expensive no that's it i already had that and just had to go buy that and then right now i'm kind of on a on a slope and so i have this little folding stool excuse me um and so i'll use it uh but the first thing i do is this is just my yoga mat out here you taught me well to try to make everything have a dual purpose right and so i use that to stand on and just throw it down and because i'm on a slope right now to put that tarp up i'm going to use a safety stool right so that and so then i'm just ready to clamp the tarp up and over and then i'll be set i will say that um i started off by putting another tarp over the bed to protect it and all that and it's just so totally a waste of time and and not necessary this is my little shower bag that if i go to a truck stop or something i take in with me so i just get it out of the drawer and i set it there and i can shower with one gallon of water but if i'm going to do my hair um i use another two so out here a lot of people think that's pretty wasteful but i do i do use three gallons of water when i i shower and wash my hair oh that's horrible i know that was horrible if you lived in a house and you took a shower what would it be 20 30 40 gallons minimum exactly i mean and i think even i read something about if you even if you have one of those turn off on nozzles and and then sticks and stones home um you it's still 12 to 15. so three is not too bad but out here i know a lot of people go three gallons so but that that's all i need um is all of this equipment and we're ready to put the track up okay now this must be some very special high-tech tarp uh it is it's a 5x7 real cheap uh blue tarp at walmart okay so it's probably five ten dollars at walmart um i i honestly i don't remember but yeah not no you know my budget so not not much at all and then this is um this is how i keep them stored but this is just that size uh spring clip and i just need five of them yeah okay all right so i get those ready i just i had them like that to show how to store them okay um i'm actually not sure how you want me to do this just like i normally do yeah well if you if i weren't here if the camera and all those there's nobody out there pretend they're not there you can't be out there if i'm gonna shower right okay um well i uh just unfold it and get started and i find the middle which is fairly easy sorry about all the noise [Applause] and um [Music] i just grab the middle and i step up on my stool and hold on to something and i come up and over and then once i take it up and over you're not going to be able to to see but i take it up and over and i attach it to here with spring clips one two three and then i do another spring clip here and here and that's all i do anymore okay and i'm holding on to the middle so i don't hi everybody so what i've done is i've just brought it up and over and i've done my two spring clips there i step here and i do my spring clip there and so that's that and notice how it covers the windows too i i would also probably have reflectix in the windows but um you want someone looking in i'd rather not and i would have my side door shut and my reflectix on the front uh so i would already be set up for privacy um and then um we may want to go back out and so i can show how i secure it to the doors and then i'm ready to shower okay let's do that okay so i just uh i pull it over and because sometimes it gets windy i've learned to just fold that in like that and boom that's done believe it or not that that holds it it's great and so i come over here and i do the same thing sorry that it's so dirty i had it on the ground earlier i'll wash it while it's up and then i do the same thing here and i now have a shower stall right so and then i just step back under and shower and wash my hair right and now uh it doesn't go down very low people could see you in here well uh they can see my legs right um so if you if that bothered you i guess get a bigger tarp right you can just get a lot of that let me just step in and you can see how much you can see [Applause] so that stays down and i would move that to the side so is anything showing that shouldn't be no no and like you said you are in a hill so we're lower than you we would normally be yeah okay and then you would just shower however you choose to shower and you just use three one gallon jugs i do i i've got uh my in that shower basket i've got my uh soap and and i i still use i know a lot of people out here don't but i still use the traditional um fragrant body wash and shampoo and conditioner and i use shaving gel and uh i i'm still total girl on that i haven't gone to being a nature conservative on that any of that yet that's okay and so i i this this just gives me my moment of a day spa in the desert or the forest or wherever we happen to be camped and and it works great for me and i know that at one time you did try out solar shower bags uh i did and and um the particular twice uh i borrowed one from you one time and then i borrowed one from my friends james and kendall and the the one uh at least i it had a spigot for off on and that just didn't work for me plus my van uh i have two van fans and the hood is right in the middle and so it kept sliding off on the side and uh that that just uh didn't work for me but i noticed in your last video that you have a new solar bag that has a big loop that i might could attach to the doors um and so i i might try that out but this this is hard to beat it's easy it's fast i already have all that stuff with me i don't have to carry anything extra um and i set the water out on my black uh doggy mat uh in the sun and the water gets fine and if it doesn't like you said in your video i i warm it up and um it's just easy and i like simple and easy right it's really helpful for you yeah uh and i should say that we're going to do a uh video our third in this series this will be a three-part series will be we're gonna wash your dog yeah family gets a bath yeah and uh just so you can actually see something being washed and we're going to compare test and compare uh four different methods of pumps uh let's see two mechanical pumps uh a shower bag and a a pressure pump you step on so we're going to compare four of those but today we're just showing you enclosures and this is a super cheap super simple stuff you already have on hand quick and easy you can make this as long as as you're comfortable with right you know usually i'm not on a slope and usually i don't have a camera filming me uh so this is more than secure enough for me but you can adjust it however you want and who knows after we do that video i may be buying me a pump or something but uh this has worked for a year and i'm uh it's great yeah good and you know just anything this simple we all should know about and so and i i don't get any credit for discovering this so everything i know about van dwelling i've usually learned from someone else and my friend wayne showed me this and uh there you go when uh when he showed me this i said this is the smartest thing i ever saw and as simple as simple can be yeah and then you showed me so thank you wayne and now you all get to know yeah and tell your friends so we will next we'll take a look at now if you don't have a van what do you do if you have a car you know back doors you don't want to this won't work for you or or or something else we're going to look at shower enclosures next so let's go look at those so we just saw how you can use the back doors of your van to make a very good shower enclosure for very cheap and very easy but what if you don't have a van what if you have a car what do you have an rv or you'd live in a tent uh then you can go to shower enclosures this is one uh i've been using shower enclosures for quite a while this will be the seventh rubber rendezvous in january in quartzsite arizona and in each one i have set up a shower enclosure for people who come in cars uh or tents and and or even vans and don't have a place to use the restroom they need some privacy so i set up a shower uh enclosure to use their bathroom uh go potty and so i've owned quite a few of them this is the latest one i've owned it's an ozark trail from walmart my experience has been pretty favorable towards walmart products i haven't owned this one long enough to give you a lot of feedback on its quality or how it will hold up but i think i think based just on my experience that it'll be a good one i've learned a little bit about shower tints over the years and i don't see any obvious design flaws that would like keep me from recommending this to you that's 45 50 bucks at walmart we'll set it up and show it to you and and you'll see it uh let me tell you about some of the other shower enclosures that i've owned um but while while we're getting this set up uh the first one i owned was a stansport i'm not a fan of stansport products most of them i've seen are not very good quality uh i was surprised by the quality of the stamp the the shower the potty tent it was 45 or 50 bucks i set it up for the first two years of the rtr and we had some tremendous wins i mean the biggest win storms i've ever seen and it instead withstood them all i was really very impressed with it uh at the end of the second year the zipper failed uh but again i you know i wouldn't even hold that against it it was incredibly bad conditions you wouldn't a lifetime of bad conditions so i didn't even hold it against it the that the tent the zipper failed i bought a second one for the third rtr it failed the zipper failed on it after the uh after the second year it had a design flaw and i won't try and explain it to you without the tent in my in front of me to see it it would be hard to do that when you assembled it it made it extremely different to disassemble difficult to disassemble it in fact i could not get it to take and taken apart so i literally cut one of the seams to get it to come undone it was where it assembled at the top was too much pressure that's as simple as i can make it and i literally had to cut it apart and and and jury rig it to work to make it more last the second year i wouldn't recommend the standsport for that reason i it was surprisingly good quality but uh i wouldn't recommend it okay so the second uh shower tint that i owned for the rubber trap rendezvous wasn't a shower tent in fact it would be pretty difficult to take a shower in it but it worked fine uh to go to the bathroom which is what really all i wanted it to do and it was a guide gear tp tent and i was pretty pleased with it in fact i still have it um i was up i believe for two years uh and again through some horrendous wins i loaned it to a friend after the rtr who set it up and i saw that tint last through 50 mile an hour winds again i was surprised by the quality it was 100 tent it was a teepee literally it was a teepee and so it shed the wind much better that's why i wanted it to shed wind the desert just has horrendous winds at times uh and it did it did really well it had one steel center pole that came out and you staked it i was actually pretty pleased with that tent and would probably recommend it uh you just can't leave him up in these winds you just can't think any cheap tent will endure the winds in the desert and it the zipper failed after the first year and then i set it up after the rtr for a friend and she had it up for a long time and i don't even know again i don't hold that against it uh it's incredibly difficult circumstances with that wind and so i don't hold against it that the tint fell that the zipper failed i set it up the second gear and jerry rigged with some velcro how to close the door so if you came in the door was velcroed closed you knew not to go in it worked quite well as a potty tent you could shower in it although i believe it had a floor and that would make it almost unusable as a shower tent if you sat you could not stand you could get inside and stoop uh and and do your business on the five gallon bucket which i put in my shower tents and so it wasn't bad and i would even actually set it up again as a shower as a potty tent only but not really what you want is a shower tent uh finally uh last year uh the sixth year of the rtr i bought a tech sport deluxe shower tent it was the most expensive i believe it was about 110. i am extremely pleased with that we didn't have any bad wind storms fortunately last year so it hasn't withstood any horrendous wins i can't tell you how it did from that in normal use a lot of use after the first year i would say it was like new so far i'm very pleased with it um i'll know better after my second year of of using it uh at the rtr how it'll hold up if we get any wins if we're getting a lot of rain very pleased with it so far i would recommend the tech sport you buy cheap stuff and you get they fail and so um what are you going to say you just get them and you do your best most people are taking these tents out for a week or two a year maybe a month maybe and setting them up in good weather in the national forest again if you set these up in the national forest they'll last indefinitely because you don't get those kind of winds in the national forest and that's what most people are doing i don't hold it against the tent that it doesn't stand up against the desert it's a cheap tent it's not going to do it you'd have to always remember to take it down in the wind and then set it back up afterwards for your use and if you do that even in the desert they'll last although they're all cheap nylon and the sun will kill them if you put it up for a year in the desert the sun will kill it after the uv destroys nylon uh so there's my been my experience and that's why i so strongly recommend if you have a van to set up the across the back doors it's cheap it's a cheap it's it's a five dollar tarp that's all you need and if it wears out you throw it away and you get a new five dollar tarp no investment no loss so but the shower tents do work and anywhere but in the desert they work quite well uh and so it's a very good option for you to consider this up real quick and then we'll probably put it on fast forward and just uh do speed demon through it so you don't have to endure it i mean it's just it's not much fun to watch these things going up just to show you an idea now i have not uh i'm no extra on setting this up so i'm probably not the one to be doing this this is my first time actually we set it up at the rtr in flagstaff but i had friends do it and i didn't do it i've looked at the instructions i've messed with it a bit so uh i've got an idea what goes on and their ball tents are basically similar but i have not set this up before i suspect it'll be pretty easy i do know it has four of these and they go together at any point here we're just gonna zoom through this and you'll lose my audio and that's fine hub see a hub i really like this it's attached i'm not going to lose it should make it very simple it's got little clips once they go in i think they'll hold tight so far pretty pretty self-explanatory and easy this is nearly universal among all these tents just a pin that goes up inside [Applause] i think that's it i think it's basically just done well you know then these tits are also similar that once you've set up a couple you've got the basic idea for them okay so that was it again very first time i've ever set it up i haven't looked at the instructions who needs instructions i'm a man i like the zipper it's not under any pressure the problems i've seen with nearly all zippers is they get under pressure and the pressure just eventually rips them apart and uh i'm not seeing that here so there you go it does have a floor which i do like and it looks like it's sewn in let me get this over a little bit for you better and we can pick this up and move it and of course you'd want to any kind of wind you'd want to stake out the stakes so it does on the floor it does actually have a floor which would be nice and you can see it's just mesh the idea being that when when you use it as a shower the water can easily just run out um no harm in there being a floor in here you'd have to let it dry before you were done it does have a nice uh tent window here get a little breeze no one can see in uh it has a completely open mesh and it does and these are nice these are nice little touches and it does come with a rain fly i doubt it oh you know what this this is to hold a shower bag and it might these are solid these are really solid uh uh poles this very well might help handle the 20 to 40 pounds of a shower bag uh all in all i'm impressed i think it's quite a good one my impression of the most ozark trails walmart product uh is pretty high okay uh that should be the end of this video on how shower enclosures for tents for van dwellers or our car dealers or even rvers uh tint dwellers and so i hope you've enjoyed it and learned something from it as always subscribe to our youtube channel like us on youtube and tell your friends all about us we hope to inspire and educate about how to be a nomad okay thanks much for watching and we'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 177,539

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, shower, enclosure, tent, potty, water, hot, pump, 12 volt, USB, Ivation, Zodi, gamma, lid, solar, Guide Gear tent, Nemo Helix, Yoga, Matt, Battery

Id: UC7Kwx0_ry8

Length: 23min 29sec (1409 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2016