How many gallons in a shower?

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Just a tip I learned take a bucket in the shower and collect the water while your waiting for the hot water to come . And use it to flush your toilet
 
Rob&Deryl said:
Earlier this year I bought a water meter that i installed at the fresh water input. It was educational to see a weeks worth of usage..
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Those flow meters are eye-openers. I use one while flushing out the black tank. I’ll bet I was only using half the water that I thought I was before measuring.
 
I use a dishpan and rinse the dishes over it, so all the water collects in it. Then i dump it in the toilet because the black tank fills up more slowly than the grey one. And i figure I use maybe 2-3 gallons of water per shower, and that includes washing my hair.
 
Boondoocking water & tank saving things we do; have a container at each faucet to catch cold water before hot water arrives (reuse to cook, drink, or flush at night), use a collapsible dish tub & then water a bush with said water, Shower has a low flow head with cutoff GI showers (wet down water off, soap up, rinse off). For us we carry 140 gal fresh & 160 gal grey/black, have gone 3 plus weeks with room to spare
 
Hi Fun topic,

When my wife and I go out boondocking, it's for usually two weeks at a time. We have a 55 gallon tank and usually take ten to twelve gallons of drinking water. We do save water for other chores or flushing the toilet. We take showers about once every three or four days. We do sponge baths in between. I've never notices any smells from either of us, we seem pretty clean. We take a shower before we go out to boondock and take one after we get back into a campsite with electric, water and dump.

So that is about 4.75 gallons per day for us or 2.325 gallons per day each. We actually made it 15 days one time as we were too tired to dump and fill the water but we could have. Showers normally cost us about 3 gallons of water for both or 1.5 gallons when we shower. Water management is important when you camp.
 
well, I would figure you could time your shower.
Then turn the water on for the exact amount of time your shower took. Just put the shower head into a 5 gallon or so bucket.

There is your answer.
 
Shower head is ratred 2 GPM
So a 3 minute shower is 6 gallons
NOTE 3 minutes is NOT LONG ENOUGH for a shower as it takes 3 minutes for the moisture to penetrate the dead surface cells so they can be rubbed off.
(Various sources the 3 minutes to soak comes from Marilyn vos Savant)
 
I was a maintenance guy at a fairly large apartment complex and would often get a complaint of "I can only take a 10 minute shower - I need a new water heater". I'd go there with a 5 gallon bucket & a stopwatch. 5 Gallons in 1 minute? 40 gallon water heater? Yep, you're lucky to get 10 minutes. Management finally allowed me to install shower heads with non-removable flow restrictors.
 
Olyteddy said:
I was a maintenance guy at a fairly large apartment complex and would often get a complaint of "I can only take a 10 minute shower - I need a new water heater". I'd go there with a 5 gallon bucket & a stopwatch. 5 Gallons in 1 minute? 40 gallon water heater? Yep, you're lucky to get 10 minutes. Management finally allowed me to install shower heads with non-removable flow restrictors.
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I understand the math on 40 gallons but don't forget the hot is mixed with cold. This makes a huge variation in northern climes when cold water temp drops near zero.

I hate water restricted showers and usually crank the heater temp to near max. I've even adjusted summer/winter temps.
 
JayArr said:
During the summer we're travellers more than campers so this isn't a problem but in the spring and fall we like long weekends in the local provincial parks or just down a forestry road beside a river. Knowing I can go Thurs night to Monday morning with a shower each day helps a lot!

PS We also do the paper plate thing and cook frozen meals in their own containers in the oven (lasagne, shepards pie etc.)
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If it's not too hot outside and we're not getting messy dirty we shower every other day and do dishes the same day (not many dishes, we use paper plates but there is usually some utensils). My guess is it takes about 10 gallons for both of us to shower (seperately).
Our holding tanks are supposedly 29 gal ea but gray seems to be fairly full on the third day. Black is full every 6.
 
skydivemark said:
If it's not too hot outside and we're not getting messy dirty we shower every other day and do dishes the same day (not many dishes, we use paper plates but there is usually some utensils). My guess is it takes about 10 gallons for both of us to shower (seperately).
Our holding tanks are supposedly 29 gal ea but gray seems to be fairly full on the third day. Black is full every 6.
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You could probably save a bit of water if you showered (not separately). ;)
 
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With a 100 gallon fresh water tank and a 10 gallon water heater I removed the restriction from the shower head. Not overly concerned about using too much water. More concerned about fuel consumption while towing, so we carry extra. This is just a reminder sign in Northwestern Colorado that it's still quite remote country out where we boondock...

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Can't find the link now, but there is a company that sells a water recirculating set of solenoids for this purpose. It involves some plumbing skills, but basically, at each faucet there is a solenoid on the hot water pipe under the faucet. You hold down the 12V button to open the solenoid so it redirects the cold water back to the fresh water tank until a sensor detects hot water, then it closes to allow normal flow of hot water and you release the button.
 
Ray-IN said:
Can't find the link now, but there is a company that sells a water recirculating set of solenoids for this purpose. It involves some plumbing skills, but basically, at each faucet there is a solenoid on the hot water pipe under the faucet. You hold down the 12V button to open the solenoid so it redirects the cold water back to the fresh water tank until a sensor detects hot water, then it closes to allow normal flow of hot water and you release the button.
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Hey, that's pretty neat, but it would definitely need someone with plumbing skills to install as you would need an entirely separate fresh water line leading from the hot water line back to the fresh water tank. I see the feasibility, but rather time-consuming to install.
 
We are actually having a recirculating system (aka shower moser) added to our rig in September. There is an RV plumbing specialist in Red Bay, AL that installs them. As with most boondockers I know, it is the gray tank that fills first, so if we can get an extra 2-3 days out of the gray, it would be great! We talked about it a few times before, but when we got the UTV we realized we might need more showers. Those things can get you awfully dirty LOL! We were already going to be in Red Bay to replace our big Schwintek slide mechanism with a Vroom slide version, so we just added him to the list of vendors we will be seeing.
 
Actually I think I read about that system on the escapees.com forums about 20 years ago. It was used on every faucet in the RV, not just the shower.
If Kirk sees this thread he might remember more about the system.
 
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