Shower option in Albin25

[tribologist]

We always viewed the lack of shower the biggest shortcoming of the A25. Last year i bought a shower tent, a inflatable pool and a small pump to allow for us to set up a shower in the pilote house but i had so far never used it. While docked on the wall in Ottawa i started to rethink it and decided to hook up the hand shower to the sink faucet. It worked great to wash the hair and then we just used the white terry cloth rags you can buy at the big box clubs to clean off the rest with. Did it two days in a row and felt as good mid afternoon as we would with a regular shower. Im thinking of replacing the floor board in the front cabin and possibly plug the drain tube to allow for a quick rinse.. Elisabeth felt so good she decided to put in a few hours of work.

[tribologist]

Cant get images up.. will try later

[LopezMike]

We've been using an inflatable wading pool and a couple of shower curtains hung from a hula hoop in the cockpit. Various pump setups. One was a rechargeable battery powered pump that was fussy and didn't always prime consistently. The new pump and water bag is a closed black bag with a foot powered air pump.

We are towing towards the Tofino area and maybe Nootka Sound starting tomorrow. Stopping at Ladysmith for the Albineers gathering. I'll report in when we get back in a few weeks.

60-65 deg. here in the San Juan Islands and 55 at Tofino. I don't envy most of the rest of the country just now. Drowning in the N.E. and cooking everywhere else. Suppose something is happening with the weather? (He, he!)

Mike

[tribologist]

Here is the setup. Was from a cheap rechargeable pump. We just take turns pumping.

[tribologist]

We've been using an inflatable wading pool and a couple of shower curtains hung from a hula hoop in the cockpit. Various pump setups. One was a rechargeable battery powered pump that was fussy and didn't always prime consistently. The new pump and water bag is a closed black bag with a foot powered air pump.

We are towing towards the Tofino area and maybe Nootka Sound starting tomorrow. Stopping at Ladysmith for the Albineers gathering. I'll report in when we get back in a few weeks.

60-65 deg. here in the San Juan Islands and 55 at Tofino. I don't envy most of the rest of the country just now. Drowning in the N.E. and cooking everywhere else. Suppose something is happening with the weather? (He, he!)

Mike

That sounds like the setup i planned to use besides that i used a pop up shelter. I concluded it was to much of a hassle. After terry cloth washing and just shower the hair two days in a row in 90 deg Ottawa and feeling no different than after a regular shower I think we will just stay with this system. Might swap faucet and put in an electric one. A water bag that one could drop on the engine in the evening might be an add-on for late fall trips

[Dieselram94]

Why not just add a tiny water heater and plum it into freshwater tank and let water drain to bilge. Bilge pump take care of it with a little spa foam down added to keep the soap bubbles from showing?

[tribologist]

Why not just add a tiny water heater and plum it into freshwater tank and let water drain to bilge. Bilge pump take care of it with a little spa foam down added to keep the soap bubbles from showing?

Been thinking off that but ” tiny” is relative. You need a few gallons. Some hook up to engine coolant too. I keep my bilge bone dry and like to keep it that way so i would use a separate pump in the front bilge

[SalishAire]

We use two options: 1) Clarice devised a shower curtain to surround the cockpit. We have a NEMO Helio pressure shower which we either fill with warm water or it heats fairly quickly just sitting in the sun. Water drains to the bilge where we confirm our pumps are working by pumping it out. 2) Our galley sink has a sprayer head on a hose. Since we have a hot water tank (5 gallons I think) that heats from engine heat or shore power I wash up in front of the sink and the front bilge pump gets lubricated.

Comment: We have bilge pumps with rubber impellers (like sea water pumps) - be careful about bragging about "bone dry" bilges as that suggests you aren't running water through your pumps for testing and lubrication which with our style of pump disables it (if it gets too dry).

[tribologist]

Freshly washed worker bee doing accounting for a doctors office…

[tribologist]

We use two options: 1) Clarice devised a shower curtain to surround the cockpit. We have a NEMO Helio pressure shower which we either fill with warm water or it heats fairly quickly just sitting in the sun. Water drains to the bilge where we confirm our pumps are working by pumping it out. 2) Our galley sink has a sprayer head on a hose. Since we have a hot water tank (5 gallons I think) that heats from engine heat or shore power I wash up in front of the sink and the front bilge pump gets lubricated.

Comment: We have bilge pumps with rubber impellers (like sea water pumps) - be careful about bragging about "bone dry" bilges as that suggests you aren't running water through your pumps for testing and lubrication which with our style of pump disables it (if it gets too dry).

What im thinking of doing is to bring a plug for the tube and use a whale super sub to pump it out and then dry the front bilge before taking the plug out. A second bilge pump is not a bad thing.

https://www.whalepumps.com/marine/produ ... ilge-Pumps

[tribologist]

SalishAire…. Reminds me about the blog.. how many pumps did the Nordhavn have?

[SalishAire]

"SalishAire…. Reminds me about the blog.. how many pumps did the Nordhavn have"

I can't find the reference Drifless is referring to in the blog but it was about counting pumps to go to sleep. I think the number of pumps (everything from the coolant pumps on the engines to spare sewage pumps came to about 32.

Hyacinth came to us with 3 electric and one manual bilge pumps. We set to testing them and found (as is VERY common) that the little ones with spinning hard plastic impellers were useless as they can handle about 3 dog hairs before they fail (a friend almost ended up on the bottom in his very new Ranger Tug as the factory had installed this type of pump and inadvertently drilled a 1/8th inch hole in the hull and once the pump ate some dog hair it got ugly requiring an engine replacement (factory provided)). Back to our pumps: We standardized with Jabsco Water Puppy pumps and a combination of mercury and touch style (Water Witch) switches. Problem is the rubber impeller sticking - I think my next step is to install a silicone style impeller I have in the spares. Sooooo have we overdone it??? Perhaps but again after another friend found his boat on the bottom at the dock after a single bilge pump failure I tend to over do things.