A Quick Shower

Yours truly as a recently arrived Peace Corps Trainee

This is another in series of tutorial posts from last year about a community health project aimed at improved household water access. 

Going to live on a tropical island is a classic daydream for many of us in the global North, and far be it from me to throw cold water on anyone's dreams. The reality of relocating to the Torrid Zone is bound to feature some unforeseen elements for any new arrival, but I feel confident predicting one universal reaction: a heightened appreciation for showers. They won't necessarily be hot showers but that'll be fine.

Because, you know, it's gonna be hot. And even if your daydreams have you in full-retirement mode, you won't be spending all of your time in the shade sipping delicious beverages from a coconut.

My nephew Moses

Eventually there'll be things that have to be done during the heat of the day, and as we folks of the north like to say, when you're hot there's only so much clothing you can take off.

Moses practicing his bush knife skills* (see footnote below)

A shower can quickly go from being a semi-optional chore to an absolute highlight of your day.

Most people on Vanuatu's outer islands don't have a bathroom with running water. What they typically have is a little freestanding shelter that's called the "bathroom," not to be confused with their "toilet," which is a shallow pit latrine that's always located further away from the house for the easily guessed reason.  To take a bath, you have to bring water to the bathroom in a bucket and then use a dipper of some sort to dump water on yourself. It's not the easiest way to bathe, but once you get good at it, and when you really need it, a bucket bath can be gloriously satisfying. And if you're carrying your own buckets, you'll probably learn to be fairly efficient with the water.

Sister Brasila and more of the family

I'll resist the temptation to expound on best practices in bucket bathing, but that actually is a worthy topic on many of Vanuatu's islands where the only fresh water available is stored rainwater. But the island of Maewo is blessed with abundant groundwater and our village has a gravity-flow water system that, when it's operating optimally, carries ample amounts of water from a constantly renewing source, the nearby Naogugura Spring. That has really changed the bathing equation for us as it would for anyone with the same good fortune to connect their home to a reliable piped water system. In this post I'm going to share one option for delivering that running water: showers that can be fabricated in site. The showers, along with the kitchen sinks described in an earlier post, are part of the local water committee's efforts to promote community health through better access to water in the home. 

New friends playing football at the evacuees' camp.

When our village took in refugees from the volcanic eruptions on our neighboring island of Ambae, one of the things the government's disaster response team did was to set up a pair of public showers at the evacuee encampment in the center of town. They poured concrete slabs and used galvanized iron pipe and fittings with standard chrome shower heads. Because our water system was barely functioning at the time, water only reached the showers intermittently, but they still became the envy of bucket-bathers around the village, naturally leading to the question, "Can my family get one of those?" It seemed like the answer should be at least a definite "Maybe" but even that was assuming we would actually get the water running the way we were hoping to.

New friends chilling on the sidelines

Fast-forward a year and we were completing the pipeline upgrades that I described in this earlier post,  and there actually was plenty of water reaching all parts of the village. At the the very end of the pipeline we re-plumbed another tank to serve as a reservoir and ran new pipes to the Health Dispensary to ensure that it would always have running water available.

Marino's water committee chairman, Brevo

That tank also supplies water to several other houses near the Dispensary, including a new line down to a tap at my own house, and it was greatly appreciated.

A float valve turns the water off when the reservoir is full.

At that point we were considering the options for piping water directly to more people's homes, including into the bathroom. But the search for materials at the hardware stores back in the capital was discouraging.  Assembling showers like those the disaster team had brought out was going to be expensive. 

Things are expensive in Vanuatu:  US$ 31.

The cost of the galvanized iron pipe (with cutting and threading) and all the fittings and fixtures would run eighty-five US dollars for each shower. At that price the project funds could maybe stretch to include a shower or two as a sort of demonstration project, but any plan for extending that to more households in the future would have to rely on more infusions of outside money.

Long story short though, we developed an affordable alternative and it might be my favorite piece of appropriate technology yet.  Instead of using the very expensive galvanized iron pipe, the shower is made from the common HDPE poly pipe that we already had on hand. And instead of using the overpriced shower head pictured above, we can fabricate shower heads in site using the same inexpensive poly pipe.

I set up a prototype up at my house so that everyone who came by could check it out. Have a look yourself.

As you can see, it's a very simple arrangement, but the shower actually works great. And the simple design is completely in line with the simple bathing shelters that are standard in the village. The cost of the whole thing is less than US$10 per shower.

Everything is made using the thermoforming techniques that I described in this earlier post. The spray head section is made by fusing closed the end of a pipe and then bending it into a loop. Tiny holes drilled in the pipe establish the spray pattern. 

The riser and shower head combination is fabricated using the same 20 mm poly pipe that we are using for the small branch lines that run to individual homes.  That makes it very simple to run a branch line right up to the brass valve, which is the only other purchased hardware required.

Fabricating the shower head is fairly easy. 

Start with a one meter-long-piece of 20 mm poly pipe. Fuse one end closed by holding the last inch of pipe over a fire until it gets very soft, then sandwich that end between two boards and stand on the top board, squeezing the end closed until the pipe cools completely.

Drill a hole in the flattened end large enough for a nail to fit through, so you can secure the end while you bend the pipe into a loop. 

You need something to act as a post to bend the pipe around. A plastic peanut butter jar does a good job. Screw the lid down to your work surface and then screw the jar onto the lid.

Fill the pipe almost full with sand, leaving just enough room to plug the open end with a stick or something similar to keep the sand from coming back out. The sand will help you avoid kinking the pipe.

Mark the pipe at 35 cm from the fused end and then evenly heat that whole section by steadily rolling the pipe between your hands as you move it over a bed of hot coals. Once you feel that the pipe has become quite flexible move it to your bending jig.

The pipe will be too hot to touch so using leather gloves is ideal, but you can use rags if you don't have gloves. 

Secure the end over a nail and then very slowly bend the pipe by pushing the pipe very firmly straight in against the jar, inching your way around rather than pulling it around by the free end.

When the pipe gets all the way around, drive another nail in the work surface to keep the loop from springing open.  Leave it on the jig until the pipe has completely cooled down.

To keep the loop from ever opening, run a piece of wire through the hole in the fused end and tie it to the pipe. Copper electrical wire won't rust and is ideal for this. 

Mark and heat the pipe twice more to make the pair of 45 degree bends in the riser using the same technique. Use nails to hold the pipe in place until it cools, but this time, the pipe will be free to spring back slightly once you release it from the jig. To compensate for that you have to make the initial bends bends tighter, like around 60 degrees.

Empty out the sand and thermoform a socket onto the open end of the pipe. (See this post for how to make sockets.)

Drill a hole about every half inch all along the underside of the loop. A bit of 3/32 inch or about 2 mm works well. If you don't have a drill available you should be able to make the holes with a tiny nail.

Use an additional short length of pipe to connect the riser/shower head to a brass ball valve. You can vary the length of that second pipe depending on how high you want the valve to be.  A good thermoformed socket should be tight enough to connect the two poly pipes together since the joint will only be under light pressure, and that will only be when the shower is in use.

In the photo above you can see that we have threaded the socket directly onto the 1/2 inch nipple that sticks out of the top of the brass valve. A thermoformed socket just happens to fit and it doesn't leak since, again it's never under much pressure. 

On the bottom side of the valve however, where the supply line comes in, the joint has to hold full pressure whenever the water is turned off, so you'll definitely have to use one of these adaptors that threads onto the valve nipple. The blue end is the compression fitting that connects to the poly pipe supply line.

These adaptors are relatively cheap (if you know where to look) and you might want to use one of these on the top side of the valve too if you don't trust the way your thermoformed socket threads onto the nipple. But that's it. You won't need any other hardware. The 20 mm supply pipe is flexible enough for you to bury it right up to the edge of the bathroom so that it comes up on the inside and makes a sweeping 90 degree bend and runs directly up to the valve. 

That's all there is to it. As you can see in the video, the assembly can be attached to the bathroom wall in any manner that's convenient. The components of the shower are very durable and although my setup may look slapdash, this is one of those contexts where slapdash works just fine. 

And speaking of context, there's no need for any drain piping in these simple bathrooms. A small concrete slab to stand on nice, but optional, and a surrounding bed of coral (or gravel) is all that's needed for the runoff to dissipate harmlessly into the ground.

So there you have it. File this one away, because who knows, maybe someday you'll be throwing the cold water yourself and living the dream on a tropical island of your own.

*Footnote: It occurred to me that you might have thought I was joking with that photo caption of Moses practicing his knife skills. Far from it. That's actually how it's done here. I've been watching Moses use knives from literally before he learned to walk, and within a couple of years he'll be swinging one with a precocious finesse and frightening force that will amaze you (if you can bring yourself to look). Check out his cousins in their impromptu workshop. They were fashioning the axles for their sweet home-made wheelbarrows. Notice the aim of my little brother Eli when he finally finds the  stick he wants. 

(And definitely don't try this at home kids.)

Andi, Ali, Moses & Eli