Last year we purchased a small (1200') older (1947) home in Boynton Beach Florida. The house originally had two bedrooms and one bath. Somewhere along the line the garage was converted to a bedroom and what I think was originally the laundry room was converted to a half bath (sink & toilet) This converted garage/bedroom has an outside backdoor that opens to a 6x12 foot pump room that now has a washer & drier in it. Years (and years) ago someone tapped into the sewer line and ran sewer and hot & cold water into the pump room. When we got it, it had no roof and no pump. We fixed it all: installed a new pump and put in washer and drier. Has turned out to be a very nice little washroom. Anyway back to the outdoor shower.
I love DIYing and the idea of a three bedroom house with only one shower just didn't get it. Unfortunately we didn't have the $10-15K it would take to try and put an inside shower in. I started looking at outdoor shower kits. The bottom line was that most would end up costing $1500-$2000 by the time I was completely done. All of them were also much higher (taller) than I wanted it to be, around 8'. So I said “what the heck”, I can teach myself to solder and I can build the whole thing myself for about $600 – which turned out to be completely true.
So here are a couple things I found out. Learning to solder copper pipe is fairly easy. The big box stores carry a very low grade of rough cut cedar. I was lucky in that I already had all the power tools I needed ( compound miter saw, circular saw, sander, table saw, various drill bits, all the stuff to solder, etc).
I found a picture of a copper pipe shower tree and copied that for water hook up. Have a rain shower head and hot/cold water outlets at bottom of shower for whatever reason may arise. I used rough cut 4x4 cedar (sanded down with belt sander) for corner posts. I used cedar 1x6 tongue & grove on 1x4 supports for walls. One side of the T&G was smooth and finished so had no prep work for the walls. I build the door out of left over scrap pieces of wall T&G and a 1x4 cedar frame. The floor is an area about 4'x4' filled with drain field stone and topped with a cedar platform. The shower door is about 10' from the bedroom back door. To top it all off we enclosed the area with a fence & gate for a nice little privacy area. All in all it turned out as a great little project and I love taking outside showers.
If anyone has any specific questions on this project just ask.
See photos in post #3
I love DIYing and the idea of a three bedroom house with only one shower just didn't get it. Unfortunately we didn't have the $10-15K it would take to try and put an inside shower in. I started looking at outdoor shower kits. The bottom line was that most would end up costing $1500-$2000 by the time I was completely done. All of them were also much higher (taller) than I wanted it to be, around 8'. So I said “what the heck”, I can teach myself to solder and I can build the whole thing myself for about $600 – which turned out to be completely true.
So here are a couple things I found out. Learning to solder copper pipe is fairly easy. The big box stores carry a very low grade of rough cut cedar. I was lucky in that I already had all the power tools I needed ( compound miter saw, circular saw, sander, table saw, various drill bits, all the stuff to solder, etc).
I found a picture of a copper pipe shower tree and copied that for water hook up. Have a rain shower head and hot/cold water outlets at bottom of shower for whatever reason may arise. I used rough cut 4x4 cedar (sanded down with belt sander) for corner posts. I used cedar 1x6 tongue & grove on 1x4 supports for walls. One side of the T&G was smooth and finished so had no prep work for the walls. I build the door out of left over scrap pieces of wall T&G and a 1x4 cedar frame. The floor is an area about 4'x4' filled with drain field stone and topped with a cedar platform. The shower door is about 10' from the bedroom back door. To top it all off we enclosed the area with a fence & gate for a nice little privacy area. All in all it turned out as a great little project and I love taking outside showers.
If anyone has any specific questions on this project just ask.
See photos in post #3
