Navy Shower Water Use?

[er9]

removing 44gal holding tank from my v-berth and considering replacing it with a water tank">fresh water tank. while at a dock i would plumb it directly to the shower and use it just for that, at sea it would be a secondary backup freshwater tank.

im trying to downsize from the giant 44gal tank so i can get some of the space back for sail storage. im trying to determine what size i should make it. it be nice if i could get four or five 'Navy showers' from it before having to re-fill it.

Anyone care to guestimate how much water a single quick shower uses? I'm guessing no more than 5 gallons. If i could get away with a 20gal tank that would probably be ideal size.

[Lodesman]

Entirely dependent on your plumbing and shower head. Best bet is take a container of known size, say a 1-gal paint can and time how long it takes to fill it from your showerhead, to get your usage rate. Time a quick shower, and you have your factors for determining your tankage requirements.

[Gary Mc]

For us less affluent sailors we some times use the sun shower bag.
They are 3 or 5 gallon,it has been a while, but fairly certain two of us got by with one 5 gal unit but we were very stingy with the water.

[er9]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

Entirely dependent on your plumbing and shower head. Best bet is take a container of known size, say a 1-gal paint can and time how long it takes to fill it from your showerhead, to get your usage rate. Time a quick shower, and you have your factors for determining your tankage requirements.

thanks good idea. i will give it a try.

[er9]

Originally Posted by Gary Mc

For us less affluent sailors we some times use the sun shower bag.
They are 3 or 5 gallon,it has been a while, but fairly certain two of us got by with one 5 gal unit but we were very stingy with the water.

cool sounds like my 5gal guestimate might be ok then.

[skyhawk]

I've for a long time intended to measure this myself for my RV application.

My guess is I can take mine with about 1.2 gallons...call it 1.5 gallons. I could relax with 5 gallons.

My wife and daughters need much more, long hair.

The shower head makes a huge difference!
I have an oxygenics head in my RV, uses 1.8 GPM (by specification) and it blasts out with a strong flow.
I needed a lot more water for a shower when using the garbage shower head the factory put in.... I think it was a similar flow rate, just a weak flow velocity and took a lot longer to rinse

[Mike OReilly]

We use a 3.5 gallon cockpit shower, so definitely "navy" showers. But we easily get two adults showers out of each tank. We'd probably get three if we tried.

[a64pilot]

You can wash with a 1 liter bottle of water if you have to, I have several times, I’ve even cleaned myself with just wet wipes.
But that was miserable and not how I’d want to live.
You can wash with sea water and just rinse with fresh too and then a Liter ought to be plenty.

Other extreme is I’d guess 5 gls of water using a hand held shower with a trigger to cut water on when needed. That’s what I believe we used on average, but we made water at 30+ GPH so why conserve?

So I’d guess something between a Liter and 5 Gls, depending on just how bad you need to conserve, it’s a variable number though

[er9]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

You can wash with a 1 liter bottle of water if you have to, I have several times, I’ve even cleaned myself with just wet wipes.
But that was miserable and not how I’d want to live.
You can wash with sea water and just rinse with fresh too and then a Liter ought to be plenty.

Other extreme is I’d guess 5 gls of water using a hand held shower with a trigger to cut water on when needed. That’s what I believe we used on average, but we made water at 30+ GPH so why conserve?

So I’d guess something between a Liter and 5 Gls, depending on just how bad you need to conserve, it’s a variable number though

thanks for the replies so far. they really help.

its not really about conserving water so much as it is about not having to drag the hose out all the time to re-fill the tank. im only at the boat two or three days a week (at the dock) so only take a couple showers aboard a week. My hot water heater is only 5 gal so take navy showers so i dont run out of hot water mid shower. i dont really have space for a larger hot water heater.

on a passage or at anchor etc...the extra 20-25 gallons of water would be nice to have.

[Stewie12]

Most of the water having a shower is wasted. Wet your self and turn off the shower. Quickly soap/shampoos all over an turn on the shower. I would be surprised if you would use more than a gallon. and it will be a good shower. We used to have a solar heated shower on deck which was little more than a black plastic bag with a hose and a shower head. Worked well.

[jmschmidt]

If you are using 5 gallons you are not doing a "Navy Shower". Two gallons would be more like it.

[waterman46]

Those who use "Sunshower" apparatus will have the best information. We used one for a few years on our Cal29. They make them bigger now, but back then the one we had could only hold less than 2 gal. We could get 2 showers out of one filling.

So you can do a complete shower in 1 gallon. If someone has long hair and needs a wash, that will require at least double that amount.


A 5 gallon shower is what we do at home and completely un-necessary on the boat.

[oleman]

I have literally lived on a vessel for years at a time. Having a decent amount of water for clean shower is essential for a good life!! Longest I was ever at sea without contact with land was 66 days. I can not imagine what that would have been like without a good clean-up occasionally.

[Mike OReilly]

We used to use a collapsible solar shower bag, but a number of years ago switched to using a converted portable garden sprayer-type bottle.

I found a black one, which I then converted to a standard trigger-sprayer. It hold 3.5 gallons, so is fairly small. And the best part is it can be pressurised so you can get a nice directed spray. This means you can use less water.

Something like this:

[roland stockham]

Best way I know to reduce water use when showering is to have a shower head with an on/off switch built in. Turn on for a min to get wet, turn of and soap, turn on and rinse. Can easily be done with 2-3gal if you have short hair. If you want to be really stingy salt water wash and just use the shower for a fresh water rinse. Uses less than 1 gal