Here are some tips for your Nosefish shower:
- Hoisting the shower bag
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The top bar might not take the force of hoisting a large shower bag full of
water. Playa dust may cause a lot of friction. You don't want to break
the top bar. So, we always lifted the shower bag while taking up the slack
in the rope until the shower bag was as high as it could go. Then we held
the tension on the rope and secured it to the base so the bag remained at
the top of the shower.
- Soap holder
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Take a plastic coffee mug. Drill a hole in the bottom (about 1/4"). Use a
hose clamp to secure the handle of the coffee mug to one of the vertical
shower side tubes at a comfortable height. This is perfect for holding a
small or medium sized container of Dr. Bronners biodegradable soap.
- Towel hook
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Take some spare 1/2" PVC and buy two 90 degree 1/2" PVC slip fittings. Cut
three 6" sections of 1/2" PVC. Join them with the two slip fittings
all in one plane (e.g. flat on the ground) so they make a shape like
this:
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Then use a hose clamp to attach the bottom to one of the vertical shower
tubes at an appropriate height (e.g. aboe the shower curtain and facing
outside.)
Or, just hang a bungie cord over one of the horizontal
sides of the gantry and a hook on the other end an hold your towel.
- Shower bag rope tiepoint
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You need something to tie your rope to. You can get fancy and buy a
mooring cleat at a sailing shop (e.g. West Marine) and attach it with
a hose clamp to one of the vertical side tubes. Or, you can take one of
those 99 cent carabiners and attach that to a vertical side tube. If you
do the latter, you'll want to tie a loop in your rope at just the right
spot to hold your shower overhead. But, don't cut the rope there! It needs
to be long enough to let the shower bag down without zipping up and over
the shower bar.
Tip from the playa:
After we installed our shower on the playa, we attached
a carabiner to the same screweye that held the bungie ball for one of the
legs.
We put a large carabiner on one end of the rope, to hold the shower bag. The
other end of the rope we tied to a leg adjacent to the one with the small
carabiner. It worked out so that when we hoisted the shower bag, the rope
just fit into the small carabiner. When we let the rope out of the carabiner,
the shower bag came down to a level that we could detach it and attach another.
So, all we ever had to do was push the bag up and put the rope into the
small carabiner at the base to hold it. We never had to tie or untie the
rope.
- Shower curtain
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You can use sarongs as a shower curtain, or any fabric you happen to have.
You can buy 4' wide fabric for 99 cents/yard at discount fabric stores.
Attach it using binder clips, which you can buy cheap at a "dollar store."
Attach the binder clips using hose clamps. You'll need two binder clips
per vertical support tube -- one about knee-height and one about neck
height. The hose clamp holds one of the "handles" of the binder clip.
The other is free so you can use it to clamp onto the fabric.
Note: Secure your shower to the ground before attaching any kind of shower curtain. A gust of wind will certainly blow the shower over and perhaps break it!
- Non-slip shower base
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Mix some course sand into some paint and paint the shower base to make it slip
resistant. Playa mud is incredibly slipperly, and you'll get a fine layer
of playa mud in your shower after its very first use.
- Signs and training
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You will probably be sharing your shower with multiple people. Make some
signs with instructions on how to use the shower, and insist on showing
each person who will use it how the shower works. If you aren't careful,
people won't empty their own water from the catch jug. Then, when the
next person showers, their water will spill over onto the playa. If you're
going to let that happen, why bother making the shower to begin with?
- Mark your shower bags
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Many shower bags look similar. Have people attach something unique to
their shower bags (like a piece of schwag) and write their name on their
bag using a sharpie. Conflict avoided is the easiest peace to keep.
Back to the Nosefish Shower Home Page
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