Showering in Black Rock City

[Tealish]

How do you make your solar shower stall? Exploring various ideas and I'm curios to read what you've seen others do or what you, yourself have constructed?

[Savannah]

White PVC pipe from Home Depot, made to fit around a wooden pallet on top of a 10 foot by 10 foot evap pond. Search "grey water" on the main Burning Man site for the recipe.

It was somewhere over 6 feet high (necessary, to get the solar shower bag up high enough for two women of average height).

We chose not to stake down our shower structure in favor of pulling it apart into 2 pieces and laying it down after use.

[lemur]

for the great unwashed masses this is a luxury shower..


install one of those premanufactured square shower inserts on the floor.. install PVC pipe in the drain.. drain in to pumpable gray water tank (or figure out how to deal with graywater otherwise)..




i for one prefer a 'real' shower, with faucets and knobs and hot water and stuff.

[dragonpilot]

Don't get me wrong...I love a cleansing bath/shower at Burning Man, and have experimented with numerous designs...but it always strikes me how so many folks planning to come to the most unique event in the world want it to be as much like their normal home as possible. Honestly, I'm no different...I usually travel in an RV. It's just that there's this population that's always ranting about keeping the event "pure" but go to great expense and work to insure homeyness.

So...much of your bath facility depends on how you're traveling. If you've got an RV with 2-4 folks you're fixed up. More than that and you'll have problems with too many people bathing, backing up the hold tanks. My solution is to provide a 3-gallon garden sprayer filled with fresh water for spraying, soaping, rinsing...uses about 1 quart of water...and you'll feel great.

Then there's Savannah's and Lemur's suggestions if you're RV'less. You can modify those designs based on how much work you want to do. I've seen camps that set up the tripod design but leave off the privacy curtains...your campmates may be otherwise modesty-driven.

Lastly, consider dropping by the Human Carcass Wash in Polyamorous Camp. They offer a refreshing "hands-on" cleansing spritz wash once a day in the mid-afternoon...not for the modest or faint-of-heart ...but if one fit's that category, perhaps one should rethink coming to Burning Man at all...

[robbidobbs]

modest...schmodest. Get over it.
There is nothing motivating like necessity.

[CornMan]

For the unwashed masses, these are water containers - 15 gallons apiece.

[Leo]

I found that a rectangular mixing tub used for mixing grout makes a great solar shower pan. Mine is 30"w x 60"l x 7"d. I have cedar duckboards that drop into this tub so I'm not standing in a puddle. The black color of the tub aids in evaporation. The shower enclosure is framed with 3/4" conduit, and I have an overhead beam to hang the solar shower bag. The larger mixing tubs can be found at shops that sell concrete/masonry tools and supplies. A plastic kiddie pool also works as a shower base.

[CornMan]

My idea for 2012 is to take one of these (I can get one for $40), and cut the top off and cut out a door to make the lower half of a shower stall.

[Sail Man]

My idea for 2012 is to take one of these (I can get one for $40), and cut the top off and cut out a door to make the lower half of a shower stall.

Throw in some white phosphorus and you got yourself a hot tub

[Shambala]

The simplest way to get clean is to bring jugs of water and let them heat up on top of a car during the day. Use a plastic salad bowl and a wash cloth and wash until you feel clean. A tarp is a must to keep gray water off the playa.

[remi]

I go to this festival in a forest in Canada, and we had "Randy Showers," in honour of our friend Randy, who took too much acid and has some sort of undiagnosed mental disorder (So don't forget moderation folks)

Randy was tall.. He would stand on a chair with a huge bag of water and let it pour on you intermittently. I know this is not allowed at BM because the run off water would be considered moop, so I may try the same thing over a large evaporation pool.

Randy shower.. sounds dirty!

[Ugly Dougly]

You shouldn't have trouble finding someone interested in pouring water over your naked body. Possibly not the someone you're looking for but....

[unjonharley]

Dose UD drink bath water

[Ugly Dougly]

The only bath water I have at my place is mine, and yeah I drink it, cause I'm just that way.

[skibear]

Skip building a complicated shower structure.

*** Just visit the Human Carcass Wash !! ***

highly recommended.

[MyDearFriend]

I can HIGHLY recommend the garden-sprayer method especially when you work it with a friend it's really fantastic fun and gets you as clean or better than a regular shower, depending on the friendliness of the friend you select.

And, you can stand on a towel to wash, let it dry in the breeze and *poof* no grey water.

BONUS: A tablespoon or two of white vinegar in my gallon sprayer cut the dust quite nicely without leaving a salad smell on my skin or hair.

[Dr. Pyro]

It's really fantastic fun and gets you as clean or better than a regular shower, depending on the friendliness of the friend you select.

raises hand

[MyDearFriend]

It's really fantastic fun and gets you as clean or better than a regular shower, depending on the friendliness of the friend you select.

raises hand

*makes a note*

[Ugly Dougly]

without leaving a salad smell on my skin or hair.

Hmm, MDF salad! How are you with bacon bits sprinkled on you? Lettuce?

[5280MeV]

Somewhere between a complex shower stall and the human carcass wash is where I was.

We just had a sun shower draped over a u-haul trailer emptying into a tiny evap pond. At about 3:00 pm there was nothing more absolutely amazing than taking a shower right out in the open air. The best part is right at the end of the shower, when the quickly evaporating water sends chills down your spine despite the 100 degree temperature.

Default world showers are always in an enclosed stall - so it is a completely different vibe to have the big sky all around you.

The most surreal shower is at the truck stop after the burn. I never had a luxury truck stop shower before, it is like walking into a hotel room, but just the bathroom. Completely worth the $15 or so. Seeing gallons upon gallons of water just thrown down the drain seemed beyond decadent, but it did feel good.

[feistypenguin]

The self-watering methods I saw most frequently were:

• Water spritzers and camping body wipes to spot clean (the method I used)
• Bring a solar shower and find a tall friend to hold it up for you. Make sure you reward them because water is heavy!
• Perch an aquatainer over a ladder and put a evap pool under it
• Full-bore, plumbing-and-drainage shower stall built on-site
• Run or bike naked behind one of the road sprayer trucks that sweeps through every few hours. Yea the water is non-potable and you aren't supposed to mess with the trucks, but tell that to the naked guy running down the street!
• Human Carcass Wash; bring your own water and loofah.

I was too shy to try the carcass wash the first time around, but I fully intend to go this year with my girlfriend in tow!

As for greywater, I saw people employing a water disposal method that is so simple and obvious that the newer folk will smack their foreheads when they first see it. Some veteran burners clued me in while I was fiddling around with my evap pool. I'm not going to mention what the method is though, because I think the practice is frowned upon by BMorg and I don't want to encourage that kind of naughty behavior

[motskyroonmatick]

It's really fantastic fun and gets you as clean or better than a regular shower, depending on the friendliness of the friend you select.

raises hand

*makes a note*

The human carcass wash is always in the 9:00 realm. Come on over you Barbarians!

Buy an RV already Hippies!!!! Gah! Comes with a shower.....

[MyDearFriend]

At about 3:00 pm there was nothing more absolutely amazing than taking a shower right out in the open air. The best part is right at the end of the shower, when the quickly evaporating water sends chills down your spine despite the 100 degree temperature.

This!!! Absolutely fantastic, especially with a good friend so you can keep your RVs and enclosures and all that if you want them; I don't.

[Dr. Pyro]

I'm going to chime in again with my two cents. I've always gone to Burning Man in an RV, but in all those years have never used the shower. In fact, we pretty much forbid it. Years ago we built by hand the shower we used up until now, when it will be likely replaced with an "new and improved!" version. It's outdoors, open to the elements, and sure, we use a car battery for electricity so it actually sprays warmish water and you can get clean. BDC&WB also supplies loufahs because somebody should be holding the nozzle and loufahing your back in order to make the experience that much more, shall we say, Burningmanlike? Some will turn their noses up and say the we are the lap of luxury, and they'd be right. But we eschew the RV shower for one of the best outdoors showers at TTITD, and that seems more than a "reasonable compromise"; indeed, I should thing most camps would embrace it. We can recycle our gray water, people in tents and yurts can have full use of the system, and everybody seems pretty happy about it. Tell me I'm not missing something here?

[theCryptofishist]

As for greywater, I saw people employing a water disposal method that is so simple and obvious that the newer folk will smack their foreheads when they first see it. Some veteran burners clued me in while I was fiddling around with my evap pool. I'm not going to mention what the method is though, because I think the practice is frowned upon by BMorg and I don't want to encourage that kind of naughty behavior

Dumping your greywater violates the conditions of the permit. Too much permit violation and the BLM will stop renting the land to us. "Naughty" is far to cutesy a term for this practice.

[shykat]

We have a small camp 4 to 6 people, solar shower,rigged over a metal tub. All grey water gets put back into the 5 gallon water bottle it came from and hauled back to my house and i then dump it on my lawn.



If you brought the water you used into the event should be easy to bring it out again..

Funels are amazing....

[some seeing eye]

If you are using a solar shower for warm water, later afternoon is a perfect time for washing. But then sometimes the winds are changing. So skin evaporation can be chilling depending on how much wind sheltering you have. Suggest anchoring the sides and bottom of your shower curtain if use one - you don't want the wind to wrap you in it.

[Drawingablank]

A shower in BRC gets you sparkling clean - for about 5 minutes. Your hair still feels like straw and it doesn't take long to get that patina of dust back.

So this year we are traveling light and will bathe with wipes and no rinse shampoo.

Because essentially no matter what method is used, you will be just as grungy soon enough.

I suppose on exceptionally hot days a shower might be refreshing, but with such low humidity I don't find the heat opressive.

[48_love]

What if your evap pond doesn't fully evaporate? I'm thinking one of these might be useful equipment for greywater mgmt:



Pump Siphon

[theCryptofishist]

Yes, pumping greywater into the containers it came in and taking it home with you is a very good back up plan. In fact, you might think of it as the main plan, and the evap pond as simply reducing the weight.