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Adding HOT WATER To Our Outdoor Shower!

Erin Longfellow

Two years ago I built this awesome Outdoor Shower in our backyard and it might be my favorite thing I’ve built so far. In the summer we use it every day. In fact, we haven’t used our indoor showers in months.

When I built the shower, I only plumbed it with one line for cold water, which is ideal for us down here in Central Texas with very hot summer days. But fall has literally just arrived here and this usually marks the end of our cold water outdoor shower season….. until now.

I’m finally adding HOT WATER to our outdoor shower!

It’s incredibly easy! And it can easily be added literally anywhere. Plumbing a hot water line from your house is tricky, so I skipped that and instead used an on demand tankless water heater mounted to the back of our shower. So easy!

Tools and materials I used for this project:

This image below shows what comes in the heater kit.

I built a simple cedar frame on the back of our shower and hung the heater.

Then I used the connections, two hoses and a propane tank to put it all together! Just like my original build, the water supply is still simply coming from our outside hose spigot.

With everything connected, all I need to do is turn on the gas and turn on the water at the spigot to create water pressure. As soon as I turn on the water valve inside the shower, the heater instantly kicks on and creates on demand hot water. It’s simple but I still find it amazing. Ha.

There are two knobs on the front that control the temperature. At the coolest setting, I can get the tank around 97 F degrees, which is perfectly warm for the days that aren’t too cool. When the temperature drops a little, I’ve turned it up to about 108 F and that seems to be hot enough. 108 is only about a quarter of a turn up on the temperature setting, so we could get to much higher temps if we wanted.

I show all of this in detail in the video.

I’m still amazed at how simple and easy this project was, and how big the results are.

Our Outdoor Shower season is now extended and we can enjoy it well beyond the summer months. We’ll use it comfortably in spring and fall, or even on chilly days, turning it into a year-round luxury. I’m looking forward to many more evenings showering under the stars with soft light from our outdoor string lights.

Oh and bonus: this heater could also be used to heat a Stock Tank Pool. Let me know if you’d like to see that process.

To see all the details of this project and the full tutorial, check out my video HERE!

Build Plans

If you’d like to build your own Outdoor Shower, I have build plans HERE to assist. The plans included a material list, cut list and step by step instructions.

What do you think? Ready to upgrade your outdoor shower? Follow this guide and let us know your results in the comments!

Happy to answer any questions below, or in the comment section of the video. See you on the next project!

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