Project #2 - Bathroom Improvements: Shower Curtain, Soap Dish, Shower Head Shutoff Valve
This is probably one of my more basic projects and didn't really cost me more than $7-8 everything totaled.
I'll go over the really more interesting one, which was adding a shut off valve first.
My camper still has its original bathroom faucet which doubles as a combination sink faucet and shower feed. To change between them there's a little knob on the top that turned one direction, the water comes out the sink faucet end, turned the other, the shower head. Turned half way, its the really poor excuse for a pause, as the original shower head has no pause of any form on it.
The current setup really didn't work for saving water or pausing the water durign a shower, the pump would strobe constantly and a fair amount of water would wind up heading down the drain. Since I wanted to keep my existing showerhead (the bracket for hanging it on the wall is a permanent part of it) since it did a nice job on low water volume for rinsing, I had to devise a solution for cutting off the water going out the head during a shower without having to turn the faucet on and off.
My Solution:
A 1" diameter cutoff valve from the sprinkler plumbing section, a bit of teflon tape, and a stubby double male ended piece of threaded pvc pipe from the yard sprinker selection. The larger handle of the ball valve makes for very easy turning of the shower head on and off with soapy slippery hands and is just the right size to just couple directly in line with the shower head without having to change fitting diameters. This solution will work with any standard household shower hose and head and set me back a whole $3.00 to make from stuff I found at Home Depot.
Unfortunately, my shower hose leaks a little, but it was doing that before I put the valve in. The original shower hose was shot, so I took one of the used spares from the tool cabinet to substitute in. Eventually I get around to getting a new hose. For now, it works fine and the pump only strobes a milisecond every great once in a while, something that will be taken care of with the new hose.
My other basic things, adding a shower curtain and a soap dish. My camper's shower had no track for a shower curtain, or for that matter a shower curtain when I bought it. We tried one trip with having just put a stick on weather stripping around the shower door, but it really didn't seal very well and water still leaked out onto the floor. So, using a spare used shower curtain we had left over from the upstairs tub, I cut it directly in half and fitted it to a spring rod above the door. The old shower curtain had little suction cups on one end for sticking to the wall of the shower, which worked nicely at keeping the end next to the sink in place so that water can't get around it. When not in use the shower curtain tucks in the corner behind the toilet and stays put even after traveling down the road, albiet the spring rod has popped loose a couple times from some heavy jarring of the camper by the road.
I added both a suction cup hung squegee on the wall over the sink (Not Featured in photo) and the little soap dish in the corner for sticking my bar soap and shampoo bottle in. Since I have a smaller travel size bottle I use for shampoo during trips, they both fit perfectly in the soap dish so I can just hang my wash cloth on one of the many hooks on the wall inbetween scrubbing and rinsing and for drying out after shower time is over.
Thanks for following Project #2, I'll return with a rehash of my Fridge Fan Project in which I added both external and internal circulating fans to my ammonia absorption fridge.
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