Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Portable camp hot shower units.....?

I'm looking at the ZODI portable hot shower unit for our dry camps this year.

Anyone have experience with this unit or any advice on other products that may be worth looking into.

I used a friend ZODI last year on a pronghorn hunt and it seemed to work really well.

I love my Zodi shower and think it is one of the best pieces of equipment I have bought for my hunts. It is amazing how getting clean restores a person. I have a small tent enclosure and even when it is cold out the burner will make it manageable. Buy or make a platform to stand on and you are golden!

You can also rig a different handle on a common garden sprayer that will work nicely. Just fill it with hot water from the stove and pump it up.

Some off-roaders use a coil/heat-exchanger looped into their trucks' heater hose. It has a 12 pump that draws water out of a bucket. You do have to warm the truck up of course.

A hot tipi/tent setup in the winter is another option. Showering quickly with a hand-held backpack type shower in the cold isn't so bad if the water is warm, and you can step into a warm area.

I bought the Mr. Heater unit last year and I like it. It will do almost three showers on the battery before you have to plug it into the cig lighter. It's a good unit that might be a good fit for you.

We have one in our moose camp and it has been one of the best additions to our camp. Money well spent IMO.

Nothing better than taking a hot shower after chasing moose/sheep/bears/caribou/wolves for 10+ days. The wife appreciates it too. lol

A friend brought one along with a shower enclosure on our last few trips. The first time or two, I left it for the gals and took myself around the corner for a quick wash in the crick. Last time, when nobody was looking, I decided to try it out ... in the name of science, y' know. I approve. The only thing I'd do different is bring along a wooden pallet so there's a little more room for the water to escape rather than winding up standing in a puddle.

Tom

Too funny T O M !

We've been using a solar bag in the past. Just fill with shower temp water and go to it. But it's slow....

I already have the small utility enclosure and a roll up rubber mat with drain holes in it - SO, it looks like I need to pick up one of the ZODI's then!

Thanks for the reviews gang!

The solar bags ain't for chit, if a guy gets back to camp way after dark......

Here is another great idea.
http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/59357-Tyler-s-Shower-Build

What is the best portable camp hair dryer?

Wind

I have a Zodi, the one that looks like a concrete sprayer. It works very good. I added a kitchen sprayer to it for convenience. Just heat the water in the take till it reaches the 100 degree mark and you are set to go. only down side is that you need more rubber o-rings where the hose screws to the tank. but not a deal breaker.

Mine's broken. No one wants to camp with me.

I have no idea, but when you figure it out let me know. Haha

Broken wind.

I have the cheap version, jut the battery powered pump and hose/shower head. I usually just set a big pot on the camp stove and let it heat while I do something else. Dump in cold water till its the right temp and then I'm good to go. I usually go for 2 week of elk hunting in September,and its great to be able to get cleaned up regularly.

We used Sun Showers on the boat. There is plenty of hot/warm water in one for at least one person. We wore a bathing suit and took the shower in the boat's cockpit.

I bought one of the stainless steel presure-ize-able shower units that you put over a propane burner. I worked just fine, and you don't have to worry about batteries. I always wondered about those Zodi's.

What most folks don't think about is that taking a shower is one of the quickest ways to get re-hydrated - It sure helped me a lot when I went elk hunting... slept better too.

+1

I've been doing this for the past several years. Take a garden sprayer, chuck the wand and hose, install kitchen sprayer with hose.

IIRC, my sprayer is a 2.5 gal commercial type. Fill 1/2 with boiling water (1/4-1/3 is sufficient). The other half is usually ice cold. Enough for two showers, plus.

Zodi go's to elk camp always.

I have a Coleman instant hotwater maker and it works very well.

Put that rubber mat over a pallet, it will keep dirt and mud from getting on it. We put a piece of the green astro turf (boat decking) on top of a pallet and it works great and keeps you off the ground.

Years ago, I had a ZODI unit and sold it after one season. Don't care for the low water output or warm up time when it gets below 40 degrees.

I now have a home-made on-board hot water system that's much better for the type of hunting/camping I do.

I do very little cold weather hunting anymore. Mostly Aug - Sept archery elk/antelope/deer. Maybe a late Oct deer rifle or damage elk permit.... but that's right at home, so no problem.

We used a Zodi unit last year on an antelope hunt and man did that feel great!!

I think for the uses I have for it, the Zodi will do just fine.

A coworker got a Zodi last fall and was very happy with it, I will be looking for a Zodi heater shorthly for this fall myself, my wife got me a Cabelas Deluxe shower with the 5 gal solar bag but I expect that will only good for summer camping.

True - but put a couple gallons of hot water off the stove in them and they work fine.. And you don't have to pack in all that other stuff, if you are hunting off-road, away from vehicular access.

I've built a number of showers out of less, out in remote camps, occupied for several months.

Wasn't pretty, but a 5 gallon white gas can (now obsolete), on an overhead platform with 6 feet of tubing and a vice-grip kept me clean for 3 months out on the Alaska Peninsula a number of decades ago. Tundra ponds ain't all they are cracked up to be as bathing facilities...

Another innovation was up Good News River in Southwest Alaska. I only jumped in that river once! Then I innovated my dog kennel into a bath tub. Old style kennels didn't have side vents- it was solid. I placed the top and bottom portion doors end to end, overlapping, melted bolt-holes thru the plastic with a nail heated on the Coleman, put some weather-stripping between the lips for a seal and bolted it together. 5 gallons of water heated to near boiling on the stove with cold water tempering made for a luxurious (under the circumstances) bath! A little cramped, but better than the river!

The solar shower with stove-heated water hung (outside) from the wall-tent ridgepole, with a feed sack for foot rug did just admirably for 6 of us in the Frank Church Wilderness elk hunt a decade or so back. Opps- make that 2 decades...

Think outside the box...

las,

We've done the hot water, temp'ed with cold water in the solar bag for years. The convenience of the Zodi or others like it are what I'm after.

There's some pretty crafty ideas here, for a fella to get clean!

Mixed results with solar bags. Zodi has rocked our hunting camps for a few years now.

Convenience definitely has its place. That Lance camper on the back of the Ram 3500 makes the wife happy when applicable to the task. Especially after the end of a multi-day or week-long backpacking trip..

We ain't puzzies - we still remote backpack miles back in and tent-camp in our 60's. But we are getting older and more solvent... Both are more desirable than the alternatives. Might as well throw in some perks....

I have one of these. Works really well.

Portable water heater

A stock pot full of hot water, dumped in a 5 gal bucket tempered with cold water to desired temp and a sauce pan to ladle it. Get wet, soap up, rinse off, what else do you need. I have done this in sub freezing weather, just keep that water on the warmer side.

I built a shower for our moose camp. The frame is a hand cart, has a 50 psi, 2.3gpm, 12v RV pump, batter, solar charger, and an RV propane water heater. Its not that portable, but will be welcome this fall, and will be like showering in your own bathroom...

Water supply will be the rain barrel or the pond.

My vote is for the Zodi stainless steel pump-up tank model. I have experimented with all kinds of variations as well.

2-3 good showers per tank, heats very quickly, no batteries to mess with, and the propane stove unit can double as your camp stove! I have had no issues with "O" rings yet. Nice unit which should give many years of service.

I will also vouch for the standing rack and rubber mat. I use a folding rack made of teak... works well and stores compactly. A rubber mat and cheap folding camp chair w/o arms works well too.

Happy showers!

The ZODI Hot Shower arrived the other day.

I gave it a test run tonight and that thing works really well!

It'll follow me to antelope camp very soon

Got one of those too. Ditched the burner since we can set it on the woodstove to heat up.

We just heat the water in 5gal stainless steel pails on the firepit, dump into another 5 gallon plastic pail, mix with some cold water for desired temperature. We use a submersible pump and a kitchen sink style spray nozzle. Works great. We use to set up shower with a wooden frame and some thin poly, now we have a small tent that was made for an outdoor potty that you buy instead...works good.

I had friends come out to moose camp and said they never shower on their hunting trips. But after they try it, they say they will be doing it as well.

Funniest part is watching the guys come out of the shower and making a mad dash to the wall tent, especially when its cold out. Sure is nice to wash the shmag off your bag after hunting - walking/hiking/riding on the quads/rhinos.

On our 7 day (leave sunday morning) Moose hunting trip, we take 1-2 showers, usually the Tuesday mid day after lunch and same on Friday. If its the 1-shower trips, its on Wednesday.

I spent 3 yrs living in a tent in NW WI, a soup pot and a tin cup worked just fine. I would hang a blanket up a few feet from the fire outside and stand between the blanket and the fire and bath, just keep turning in late January. I grew up bathing in a laundry tub in the wash shed in the summer and we moved the tub into the kitchen in the winter.

I did work for an asbestos removal company and built a number of portable decon shower set ups with propane powered continuous flow water heaters on hand trucks and collapsible shower units. A few of them would disappear during elk season and magically appear the weekend after closing.

Do you know the model of submersible pump you're using?

Thanks.

I have this one, it's got a temp strip on the side of it so you know when it's hot enough

Thanks.

I'm looking for something horseback friendly. Right now I'm thinking about making one out of a pump-up sprayer as saddlesore has suggested in the past. Should be very similar to your setup and a bit lighter.

Not off the top of my head...just got at typical hardware store. I know ours is a small blue in colour. I use to have a small plastic tank and use an RV water pump, but it was something more to pack (tank). I would think any submersible would work. There are the SUMP-style ones and you can connect a garden hose to and use a spray nozzle as your shower head. Its sure nice to have the reach to wash everywhere....LOL.

Secondly if you needed to rinse off the quarters of meat hanging to clean them up if you got hair/shot blood clots/grass, the portable setup works great to help rinse and wipe down/off. My group - we are preety clean at dressing out the game but once in a while, the odd tub trailer flip over or dragging a dressed out moose/elk behind the quad , you get some dirt /grass, etc.

There are a lot of submersible pumps in the boating section of most sporting goods stores. They come in all sorts of volumes and are plastic, cheap, and run on 12 v.

Thank you both.

Hey CF, let me know where you're camped, I might have to stop in for a shower and a few beers!!

And hopefully some elk steaks!