Practical Blog #5

Solar Showers!

Solar showers will be a quick topic because, to be honest, we haven't made much progress on this design element. The Town of Taos operates a recreational facility, called the Youth and Family Center, that offers hot showers for $1 per entry with a pass. Our land is around 2 miles from this facility, so it has been convenient for us to use the public facility and put off developing our own.

We do have some Solar Showering experience to share, however, but before we get into those, let me remind you all that private baths at every residence is a fairly recent and modern phenomenon. Traditionally people did use public baths to get clean, relax and visit with their neighbors. Here, around Taos there are also a number of hot springs, on Public Land with free access, that continue to serve this purpose. One of the biggest obstacles to Deep Sustainability is the conventional notion that every individual needs to own privately, every available consumer good for themselves. This kind of thinking feeds the Corporations, whose profits increase with the breakdown of our families and communities.

Turning back to Solar Showering, our first attempt came our very first Summer, when we simply purchased a "shower tent" from a camping outfitter. The tent arrived with a 5 gallon shower bag and a hook to hang it from. This set-up was actually one of our most workable ones. The design was well thought out, so that water pressure was good, right over our heads, and with reliably consistent sunlight here, almost anyways warm. I was even taking warm showers into the Fall on cool mornings well after the first frosts had arrived!

The problem with this shower tent idea was that the intense sunlight and strong winds, common to Taos, shredded the nylon fabric by the middle of Fall. We saw clearly that this approach was not sustainable. I hauled many trash bags to the landfill full of debris from that first Summer camp.

Our second attempt at a Solar Shower came with an eye towards something more permanent. We designed and built a semicircular/half moon space, enclosed by a curved straw bale wall with an opening on the straight side for entry. Our colleague, who had experience with plumbing, offered to design the shower parts for us. We agreed and he put together a system which included a large black container for water with a long hose and low-flow shower head at the end. Together we built a platform for the water container to rest on. as well as a small foot deck for us to stand on while showering. We also poured enough pea gravel on the ground within this enclosed half-moon space to raise the floor 3 - 4 inches.

This second Solar Shower never functioned so well. The water flow was very low and took much longer to warm up in the large container than water did in the smaller solar bags. We used it occasionally, for a quick rinse off, when there was not time for a trip to the public showers.

Our colleague confided to me that everything he had learned about plumbing was based on the assumption of pressurized water (either from a pressure tank in the house, or inherent in a municipal system), so he was really not sure how to base his design with gravity being the only force acting on the water. This kind of occurrence has happened to us more than once now, as the people that we think will have quick easy answers actually don't know what to say, or unintentionally give us misleading information, because we are working from a different set of assumptions than they are. As mentioned in earlier blog posts, our assumptions are based on values of Deep Sustainability and Radical Simplicity. Nearly everything that builders today have learned in their trades is based on the assumptions of wasteful conventional systems. Which brings us to our most important point for this week:

When beginning your own land-based project, be cautious of the advice of the experts. Always reflect on the paradigm that they are thinking out of, and check how closely it fits with your own set of assumptions and values. While experienced builders can be very valuable in explaining how to do specific tasks, expect yourselves to remain solely responsible for keeping the work within your own big-picture design and vision, if you are creating something outside of the conventional mainstream.

In the Summer of 2017 we had an opportunity to work on our Solar Shower again. Seeing the need for our Project to begin earning some income, we began taking guests, through AirBNB, in our Big Tipi. We had promised the availability of a Solar Shower. By this time, the old second shower had fallen into complete disuse, and we had taken away straw bales as we needed them for other purposes. Starting again, with essentially only the pea gravel floor, in that half moon/semi-circle space, we purchased 3 straight red cedar poles, each 12' long, from our local lumber mill. We sanded, sealed and tied them together near their tops with a clove hitch knot, spread out their bases to form a tripod very similar to that formed in tipis as their "foundation", onto which the other poles rest.

Next, we compromised and purchased a 'shower stall' from a camping outfitter, and hung it from a clove hitch, with a solar shower bag once again. This shower functioned well, similar to that first Summer with the 'shower tent', only now somewhat more permanent with those red cedar poles. The nylon shower stall did survive that Summer without any major tears, but it indeed did not last much longer than that first shower…This shower has also fallen into disarray, and we are once again looking at the best system for showering, rinsing off after a long day of work, on our land. We will keep you posted!

Please do send us your questions and comments!