Recirculating shower warm up time

1. Water capacity USED, not the system capacity of you are only partially filling it.
2. GPM of your pump.
3. Wattage / Voltage of your heating element.
4. The all important question, rough heat up time. From fairly quickly, to go out and pick up a sandwich while it's pumping and heating up.


Thanks in advance for the info!
I have been where you are. 3 gallons is enough to lather up your hair and body and rinse several times.

1. Water capacity USED, not the system capacity of you are only partially filling it.
Ans: 3 to 6 gallons.
2. GPM of your pump.
Ans: 3 to 4 gallons per minute for a small RV water pump like a Shurflo.
3. Wattage / Voltage of your heating element.
Ans: I don't think you really understand how much energy it takes to heat water. The largest heating circuit in vehicles today are rear defrosters and heated seats. They consume lots of energy from your alternator and could never really heat water effectively. If you were ok with a 2200 watt suitcase generator in your van and could set it outside for a while and run it, you could have a feasible system. Purchase a pump, shower head, generator, 2.5 gallon or 3 gallon or 6 gallon water heater. heating elements in those are about 1400 watts to 1600 watts. A larger tank can be used and if the heating element is too large, it can be swapped out for a smaller element but would take a bit longer to heat the water. Heat the water, use the water and throw water away. Another option would be to use Ten 12 volt AGM batteries and bank them in series to get your 120 volts. Sounds dangerous to me and I would not recommend that.
4. The all important question, rough heat up time. From fairly quickly, to go out and pick up a sandwich while it's pumping and heating up.
Ans: 20 minutes to 45 minutes depending on size of the tank you choose. a single tank of fuel in a Honda EU 2200i generator (Which I own and absolutely love) could run 3.2 hours at full load, long enough to heat a small water tank for 6 showers. You can also run a generator in the bed of a truck while in motion but I don't recommend that due to station wagon effect.
 
I did find a Vanlife video that explains the problems they had with their system and why they decided to remove it. The link to older videos about the build itself.


As I suspected, soap removal, clean rinsing to get the soap off of you, and maintenance costs were deciding factors for them.


I didn't look at the older videos of the build, but I think they would be pretty complete.


 
Recirculating shower is certainly possible if designed by chemical engineer or chemist. Just filtering is not enough to remove chemicals, it will only remove particles. Activated carbon could help but is expensive and short-lived. UV light (it is not a filter) just kills bacteria. Reverse osmosis would work but cost would be ridiculous.

There is a lot of u-tubers advertising a free energy devices, simple to do: just connect a generator with a motor and it will run for free, simple, no batteries needed ever. It is called by some a perpetual motion machine. Recirculating shower would fit into the same, rather naïve category
 
Recirculating shower is certainly possible if designed by chemical engineer or chemist. Just filtering is not enough to remove chemicals, it will only remove particles. Activated carbon could help but is expensive and short-lived. UV light (it is not a filter) just kills bacteria. Reverse osmosis would work but cost would be ridiculous.

There is a lot of u-tubers advertising a free energy devices, simple to do: just connect a generator with a motor and it will run for free, simple, no batteries needed ever. It is called by some a perpetual motion machine. Recirculating shower would fit into the same, rather naïve category


As is mentioned in the video, the soap is the killer as it plugs filters very quickly and if not backflushed right away to remove it, you will have solid filter in a short time, especially if you try to go fine filtering or R/O.


One place I worked built high pressure pumps for pressure washer, car washes, etc and the soaps or other additives like rinse agents were added by a venturi soap injector on the high pressure side of the pump. I am not sure what the carwashes are doing now days to reuse the wash water, as I have been out of that business for over 20 years but they were struggling with it back then, often wrecking very expensive pumps in the process.


Of course it doesn't address the issue of rinsing yourself off to get rid of the soap residue. Soap film makes me itch like poison ivy would, so a non starter for me and DW would be even more against it.
 
Advanced RV created a recirculating shower, but I don't recall any long term update or any update. Did I miss it?
 
Advanced RV created a recirculating shower, but I don't recall any long term update or any update. Did I miss it?


I looked at the video today but didn't note the date on it. It was a B Box class C.



It appears it was the variety that bled off some of the used water and added some fresh water to replace it.
 
Recirculating shower - Why?

I was initially puzzled by the ask for re-circ, tho I think I get it - kinda like being on the Space Station, where all water is recycled. Which would be really cool! But at what cost? Unlike being in space, you can readily get more water anywhere for free. And if the systems can't handle soap, that's a deal-breaker.

I appreciate the idea of pushing forward the envelope of possibility, but if you only need this capability ~20% of the time...

I'm a bit surprised I hadn't heard of such a thing til now. It would have been good if the OP had posted some YouTube links.

Not sure how the fact that this is a "work vehicle" makes a difference. Please elaborate.

I would guess that a work vehicle could expense a propane system and larger water tank?

That said, I get not using propane. I would like to do so myself, but it's such an energy-dense resource, especially for an occasional-use application like you describe. To me it makes no sense to keep water heated all the time if you'll only use it occasionally.

In any case, thanks for helping push the envelope further.

Scott
99D190P
 
I was initially puzzled by the ask for re-circ, tho I think I get it - kinda like being on the Space Station, where all water is recycled. Which would be really cool! But at what cost? Unlike being in space, you can readily get more water anywhere for free. And if the systems can't handle soap, that's a deal-breaker.
I appreciate the idea of pushing forward the envelope of possibility, but if you only need this capability ~20% of the time...
I'm a bit surprised I hadn't heard of such a thing til now. It would have been good if the OP had posted some YouTube links.
Not sure how the fact that this is a "work vehicle" makes a difference. Please elaborate.
I would guess that a work vehicle could expense a propane system and larger water tank?
That said, I get not using propane. I would like to do so myself, but it's such an energy-dense resource, especially for an occasional-use application like you describe. To me it makes no sense to keep water heated all the time if you'll only use it occasionally.
In any case, thanks for helping push the envelope further.
Scott
99D190P

Kudos to the author of this thread. It highlights the value of forward thinking discussion. IMHO, such a recirculation system will soon become an option , e.g. the arrival of RV lithium solar systems.
 
Last edited:
It also appears that there are quite a number of off the shelf versions of similar premise.


Search for "portable shower", "shower in a box" type things and quite few come up. The appear to be fully self contained, but many/most don't use hot water.
 
Kudos to the author of this thread. It highlights the value of forward thinking discussion. IMHO, such a recirculation system will soon become an option , e.g. the arrival of RV lithium solar systems.

With "lithium" it was/is mostly just cost.

With "a recirculation" it is not cost, with the idea being out there as long or longer than lithium.

Is there a link to a 'successful' installation in a B without issues, over time?

I find it odd Advanced RV has never had a follow-up, but maybe I missed it? I am not going to buy one, so not appropriate to pick up a phone and ask.
 
With "lithium" it was/is mostly just cost.

With "a recirculation" it is not cost, with the idea being out there as long or longer than lithium.

Is there a link to a 'successful' installation in a B without issues, over time?

I find it odd Advanced RV has never had a follow-up, but maybe I missed it? I am not going to buy one, so not appropriate to pick up a phone and ask.


The searching I did didn't bring up anything that really had any substance when looking for successful systems in B's or other RVs. Only information I found that looked like it was reliably pretty accurate was the ARV video and one about the unsuccessful system.


The portable ones have all kinds of great reviews, but stuff like that always does. Mostly fake or first time use enthusiasm before the it really soaks in about how it really will work over time.


The home systems I have seen that were gaining attention 20 years ago were massive systems resembling mini treatment centers for waste water. Big tanks, self flushing filters, dosing pumps to kill foam, etc.


I would think if there were usable, convenient, systems available the marine folks would be all over it by now.
 
The searching I did didn't bring up anything that really had any substance when looking for successful systems in B's or other RVs. Only information I found that looked like it was reliably pretty accurate was the ARV video and one about the unsuccessful system.


The portable ones have all kinds of great reviews, but stuff like that always does. Mostly fake or first time use enthusiasm before the it really soaks in about how it really will work over time.


The home systems I have seen that were gaining attention 20 years ago were massive systems resembling mini treatment centers for waste water. Big tanks, self flushing filters, dosing pumps to kill foam, etc.


I would think if there were usable, convenient, systems available the marine folks would be all over it by now.



So it appears that it is a boondockers pipe dream at the moment. Still, desalinization has come quite aways. I would like one.
 
So it appears that it is a boondockers pipe dream at the moment. Still, desalinization has come quite aways. I would like one.


AFAIK, most R/O systems will desalinate. We used to make pumps for the R/O industry where I worked for 10 years.


From what I gathered then is that the big deal is having a membrane system that had very effective backwashing ability so the filters don't plug up too fast and make it all too expensive.



Of course you actually waste a lot of the water used during processing, but it on the salinated side so not usually a problem like it would in an RV with limited water carrying ability.


We have an R/O system at home for one drinking water faucet. Very low flow even with a booster pump. It definitely removes salt as we can tell the difference between the softened water that goes in compared to the water that comes out. Softened water is not very high salt content, so not the same as doing sea water.
 
Last edited:
It also appears that there are quite a number of off the shelf versions of similar premise.


Search for "portable shower", "shower in a box" type things and quite few come up. The appear to be fully self contained, but many/most don't use hot water.

What a rabbit hole.

Searching for "portable shower" yielded many results that are just a pump and a heater – no filtering. When I added “recycle” to the search, I got some results listing specific devices. Then I went on to search for the device name and “with soap” and found:
For the EverShower, when asked if you can use soap the reply was: “Yes, although rinsing the pump with fresh water afterwards is recommended. For water-scarce situations, consider skipping soap.”
For the Hotaru, I found this: “The Japanese are really big into LED UV light sterilization of air and water. My guess is that they are filtering the water and then running it through a UV light sterilizer. This could be adequate for rinsing off, but in most cases, will fail if you use soap. In a camping situation, this is still better than no ability to clean yourself at all.”
For the Showerloop, they say: “With Showerloop but it’s still better to let soapy water go down the drain for the longevity of the filter. Our goal is to find or invent a way to filter out all kinds of soap with 100% reliability but that will require way more time and funding than what is currently available.”

Searching for "shower in a box" did not yield much besides many shower enclosures and one bucket-sized tank with a pump and hose. I then searched for "shower in a box" "recycle" "soap" and nothing came up.

None of these are relevant to the OP’s posting.

Looking into the ARV system, I eventually found this link:
https://www.classbforum.com/forums/f5/shower-water-recycling-12274.html
So this has been discussed here before.
As the video goes on they describe the system as three particulate filters with activated carbon and UV. I do not believe that this system will filter soap out of water. Even if the media in the filters could adsorb and remove soap with adequate efficiency, they would quickly clog up or fail in some other way, with the only potential way to restore them being backflushing with a solution that can remove whatever deposits the soap and everything else causes. But backwashing, even if one could find a solution that worked well, would negate the whole concept the OP proposed. I did not see anything that suggested backwashing on the ARV schematic. I suspect that the ARV people are offering a water-only, no-soap solution to rinsing off and that they just replace the filters periodically rather than backflushing. Putting the following search into google yielded no results: advanced rv "recycle" shower water system "soap"

It seems obvious to me that filtering dirty/soapy water into something that I’d want to reuse would, in the context of a B not hooked up to water, take some combination of too much equipment (weight/volume/cost), too much water to backflush/rinse, and probably too much energy if the other two constraints could be satisfied. If you don't have a shower in your rig, you should probably just use some combination of sponge baths in your rig or finding a campsite/gym/truck stop/hotel room shower, or even a gas station bathroom sponge bath, to get clean.

Maybe the OP should just get a class B with a working shower and then refill/dump like everyone else.

Some people in this thread have written that they have seen other people doing this, or that you can find links to other people doing this. Please provide us with links to actual systems that allow one to recycle (really recycle) soapy water in the way the OP described.
 
Last edited:

The OP wants a shower that can clean very oily skin and hair, with little water, that recirculates, and that uses electrical power for both heat and for moving the water. This wishlist requires soap and some way of filtering/recycling soapy/oily water. Particulate filters will not remove soap and they won't like soapy water if they are fine enough to get small particles. UV filters disinfect, they do not filter. Ozonators disinfect (and oxidize), they do not filter. Activated carbon filters will be clogged quickly with oily/soapy water.

The Hamwells product contains two particle filters and a UV - hardly fullfilling the wish list of the OP.

Perhaps you did not see that i already discounted the EverShower.

Your third link points to a guy who is fabricating some sort of multimedia filter (various grades of sand and activated carbon) and a UV filter. Again, this will not handle someone using soap with very oily skin and hair.

Your last link is to someone who is just putting up a bunch of other links. The first of these other links is to the Loopz - perhaps you didn't see that i already discounted the Loopz. The second link was to something that looked like it was for home installations and i couldn't find out what it actually did except that it does offer "Earth, Moon, and Mars" "modes."

Booster - I have enjoyed many of your posts and thank you for them. But really, did you even look at these links and compare what they do to what the OP wanted to do?
 
The OP wants a shower that can clean very oily skin and hair, with little water, that recirculates, and that uses electrical power for both heat and for moving the water. This wishlist requires soap and some way of filtering/recycling soapy/oily water. Particulate filters will not remove soap and they won't like soapy water if they are fine enough to get small particles. UV filters disinfect, they do not filter. Ozonators disinfect (and oxidize), they do not filter. Activated carbon filters will be clogged quickly with oily/soapy water.

The Hamwells product contains two particle filters and a UV - hardly fullfilling the wish list of the OP.

Perhaps you did not see that i already discounted the EverShower.

Your third link points to a guy who is fabricating some sort of multimedia filter (various grades of sand and activated carbon) and a UV filter. Again, this will not handle someone using soap with very oily skin and hair.

Your last link is to someone who is just putting up a bunch of other links. The first of these other links is to the Loopz - perhaps you didn't see that i already discounted the Loopz. The second link was to something that looked like it was for home installations and i couldn't find out what it actually did except that it does offer "Earth, Moon, and Mars" "modes."

Booster - I have enjoyed many of your posts and thank you for them. But really, did you even look at these links and compare what they do to what the OP wanted to do?


Snowy, I don't know why you think I am pushing these systems as you can see from past posts that I pointed out pretty much all your concerns. I stated numerous times that the soap was the big deal in all of this as it is very, very hard to remove without complex processes like floculation done with chemical dosing and separation.


All I tried to do is present the information that supports or doesn't support the particular issue at hand so everyone can decide for themselves, and that is what I did here in the request for links to products. Of course I read them, and understand them, but it is for others to decide if they agree or disagree with them. My links were in no way stating I disagreed with you on any part of it, or that I agreed, as the links are just information for others to consider. Not surprising you disagree with them, but now everyone can actually see what you are referring to. Some might focus on the one who claimed his system worked great and claim it proved the theory works, but of course they ignore that it was stated it had started to smell and that it plugged up too fast so that coarser filtering was going to be tried.



If you want my personal opinion on what the OP wants do, I would say it is likely a very difficult thing to do in a portable, small scale, setting like was proposed and have it work without large maintenance needs and the associated costs. I perpetually go back to how bad a grey water tank smells, legionaire's disease from cooling towers, and such. Clean out a bathroom sink trap and it is full of all kinds of ugly and smelly stuff.


For reference, we live with a well and septic system at home, so it sees all the waste from the house, including soaps. Our system is 3 tanks, with two being settling/digestion and the third the "clear" water pumping station to the drainfield where the final digestion is done in a gravel bed via bacteria. The finest filter in this system is about 1/16" opening mesh, so very coarse. It is on the discharge side of the final tank after the lift pump. Both the other tanks have what might be called "gunk filters" as they prevent the floating scum layer from moving on the next tank. They have probably 1/8" openings. The early tanks can get the scum layer thick enough and dried out enough to harden into a barrier that has to be broken up by hand at tank cleanout and pumping if the tanks aren't maintained. Scum layers are mostly soap and grease and are not allowed into the drainfield as they will ruin it quickly. Based on tank sizes and our water use, it probably takes 60+days for the entry water to make it to the outlet of the tanks, so this is not a quick, in use type thing and the soaps and oils are still not removed anyway and have to pumped out and taken to the sanitary sewer system for disposal.


I clean the three filters twice year as a maintenance item between the 3 year code required pump outs. First tank smells somewhat "sewery", the second one more like a grey tank, and third barely smells at all and doesn't even have any floating layer on it. It appears that all the soap is out of the water that enters the third tank, but it is still trapped in the floating layers in the previous ones. Tough to do quickly and in a small system, I think.



I wish the OP the best in his quest, but I do wonder about all the mentioned systems that are in use in conversion vans when no links or references are given. It would be good for all of us to see the systems and how they are used in the real world, so all could decide for themselves the viability of them.
 
This guy built a shower recycling system in his class B:

https://youtu.be/oXmx-cusu5g
https://youtu.be/3bkXL9Fp3JY

>Modified our plumbing to recycle our grey water through a filtration system giving us a huge boost to longevity on the road before we need water.

In his first video, he ran recycled to the galley and bath. In the second video, he plumbed the galley from fresh only. Shower and toilet are switchable - can be either fresh or recycled grey water. If grey, the water is filtered by a series of in-line filters (sediment, charcoal, and UV).

Creative - at least.
 
This guy built a shower recycling system in his class B:


>Modified our plumbing to recycle our grey water through a filtration system giving us a huge boost to longevity on the road before we need water.

In his first video, he ran recycled to the galley and bath. In the second video, he plumbed the galley from fresh only. Shower and toilet are switchable - can be either fresh or recycled grey water. If grey, the water is filtered by a series of in-line filters (sediment, charcoal, and UV).

Creative - at least.


I always pause and any modification of design is then stated to "perfect", presumably before any long term use....:D


The author of the video had a huge flurry of videos 3 years ago, and appears to have nothing since, and that would need no followup at least on Youtube.


Grey water use for toilet flushing is getting more common in water starved areas of the country, I think. Makes total sense for that.
 
Last edited:
Grey water for flushing makes perfect sense. And should be relatively easy to package in a ClassB. Not so certain I'd shower in it however.

RO systems (DeSal) are dependent on two key elements. Membrane filter sizing and pressure. Both come with a cost, but certanly dropping. Membranes are no longer covered by the previous patents, so prices have dropped from 800-1000 each to nearing a few hundred.

Pressure pumps (CAT) hold their value as you need to get to near 1000psi, but require significant amounts of energy. Also with sea water, the cylinders and seals take a beating, so replacement or exotic materials required. You could use a pressure washer in a pinch - but the pump would become "disposable."

A clever engineer developed a "hydraulic amplifier" that could convert 12v 100-120 psi to 900-1000 psi. That system hold its price due to the significant energy reduction required to desalinate. I can imagine a similar amplifier system to "scrub" grey water from a shower, but you've still have a price to pay for the heating.

Least cost - a packet of baby-wipes.

Cheers - Jim
 

Try RV LIFE Pro Free for 7 Days

  • New Ad-Free experience on this RV LIFE Community.
  • Plan the best RV Safe travel with RV LIFE Trip Wizard.
  • Navigate with our RV Safe GPS mobile app.
  • and much more...
Try RV LIFE Pro Today
Back
Top