I have seen the Promised Land and it looks like this:
A white metal box about 16" tall, 12" wide and 4" deep. It hangs to a wall or tree and is connected to a water source with a garden hose on one side, a propane tank in the middle and a hand-held shower on the other. It produces 1.4 gallons of hot water a minute, which means you can stand under a toasty hot shower until the propane runs out.
Although our camp has very nice adult showers, they're a good hike from our campsite. (The youth showers are much closer.) That usually means you are just as hot and sweating coming from the shower as you were when you left for it. And if I don't get to shower until all the scouts are settled in, it's often midnight before I'm back in camp. We set the rig up in our campsite, building a shower stall with a couple shower curtains (but black, 6mil poly would have worked). With six or eight adults using it, we could take showers all day long.
The unit is an Eccotemp L5 instant-on, tankless water heater. They retail for $149, but they're on Amazon for $112 all day. I got this one "used" for $92 and free shipping, but it arrived still factory-sealed in the box. If I had 12 I could have sold them all. Gas use doesn't seem bad -- about half a 20# tank after a week's worth of showers with 6-to-8 adults in camp. No electrical connection -- the igniter works on two "D" batteries. The only negative comment is the quality of the shower hose and head. The water pressure blew out the hose a couple time. The water cut-off when in the shower is the thumb switch on the shower head. We learned to cut the water hose off at the source to solve the problem, but replacing the hose is an easy, inexpensive upgrade at one of the big-box hardware stores. We'll also add a cut-off valve on the garden hose which will keep you from running to the spigot in nothing but a towel. After one week I can't comment on the long-term durability, but for $92 I'll buy one every year!
We're thinking about mounting it on inside of the troop trailer door (so it is outside when the door swings open) for use on car camping trips when we have access to running water. Although we don't necessarily need showers on weekend campouts, it will be a much more efficient means of producing hot water for clean up.
A white metal box about 16" tall, 12" wide and 4" deep. It hangs to a wall or tree and is connected to a water source with a garden hose on one side, a propane tank in the middle and a hand-held shower on the other. It produces 1.4 gallons of hot water a minute, which means you can stand under a toasty hot shower until the propane runs out.
Although our camp has very nice adult showers, they're a good hike from our campsite. (The youth showers are much closer.) That usually means you are just as hot and sweating coming from the shower as you were when you left for it. And if I don't get to shower until all the scouts are settled in, it's often midnight before I'm back in camp. We set the rig up in our campsite, building a shower stall with a couple shower curtains (but black, 6mil poly would have worked). With six or eight adults using it, we could take showers all day long.
The unit is an Eccotemp L5 instant-on, tankless water heater. They retail for $149, but they're on Amazon for $112 all day. I got this one "used" for $92 and free shipping, but it arrived still factory-sealed in the box. If I had 12 I could have sold them all. Gas use doesn't seem bad -- about half a 20# tank after a week's worth of showers with 6-to-8 adults in camp. No electrical connection -- the igniter works on two "D" batteries. The only negative comment is the quality of the shower hose and head. The water pressure blew out the hose a couple time. The water cut-off when in the shower is the thumb switch on the shower head. We learned to cut the water hose off at the source to solve the problem, but replacing the hose is an easy, inexpensive upgrade at one of the big-box hardware stores. We'll also add a cut-off valve on the garden hose which will keep you from running to the spigot in nothing but a towel. After one week I can't comment on the long-term durability, but for $92 I'll buy one every year!
We're thinking about mounting it on inside of the troop trailer door (so it is outside when the door swings open) for use on car camping trips when we have access to running water. Although we don't necessarily need showers on weekend campouts, it will be a much more efficient means of producing hot water for clean up.
Comment