Water Saver Shower Head

I am loosing the plot a bit I think . The main reason for my post was to ask if anyone had found a good water saver shower head that fitted the metal hose type gadget on the shower of my BT . It would need to have an on / off button on the head too .

At present I seem to have Niagra falls or nothing as the options on my shower head .

Thanks ,

Willie .

i think i have the same problem, the rear tank seems to go very fast and then the middle tank takes a lot longer, havnt looked at that yet.

Hi Willie

The only thing I can suggest is fill both tanks, then drain them in a measured bucket and see how much useable water you have.

Regards
Brian

Hi Jigalong

The tanks may not be letting the air out fast enough to get a good fill, BUT when we are on the road, to shower; we have a quick rinse, then turn off the shower, wash with a flannel and soap, then rinse off again. We stand in the plastic bowl we used to use as our 'bath tub', which is ideal for soaking and scrubbing feet while showering. Both of us use around 9 - 10 litres (the big Rooster uses a greater share than i do).

While we went camping with the F250, we did miss the shower! However using the same principal (without shower to rinse off), we could get scrubbed up and clean with a kettleful of water. Trouble is, as we were outside we waited till after dark and just before bed time, and by then the wind was rather cold!

Happy Bushtracking

Motherhen

G'day Willie,

As Motherhen suggested, you may not be filling your tanks due to the air vents being blocked or restricted by those nasty mud daubing hornets. I was caught out early on when I thought the tanks were full when water overflowed back out of the filler neck. Now I check to see the vents overflowing and have also fitted bits of fine mesh over the pipes to stop the hornet problem.
We usually get 2 showers each and 2days washing up etc out of each tank using the on off system. As we don't have flick mixer taps one of us operates the pump switch as required to save changing the temperature setting by using the taps.
We met a guy in our travels who has a shower head with an on/off button (he actually showed us so they are/were obtainable) but we have asked and searched all over the country with no success so hopefully someone will reply with where they can be bought.

G'day Rick,

Thanks for that site link, that inline valve would certainly do the job but the one I saw in Giru was an integral part of the shower head in that there was a slide button on the handpiece.

I haven't been able to find that particular one anywhere including several Reece outlets so will go for the set-up you found.

This note for Willie, you may not see the hornets busily "daubing" but around here the buggers block any orifice and even build their mud cocoons on my yard overalls hanging in the garage and plug the telltale hole in my outboard.

cheers
graham

Hi Willie

We have a shower head with a built-in shutoff valve & it works well. The bad news is it came from Japan. I happened to stay at a motel in Gloucester on the way to see our BT being built. They had these on every shower. The owners wife is Japanese, I asked her if she could get me one. A couple of months later there it was at $30!

To see just how much water you both use & need for a shower, here is a simple test. If you have a suction line on your A frame, (every BT should have one of these) drop your suction line into a 20 litre bucket & have your shower. Have a look & see whats left. We find by adjusting the flow on the shower we can get water savings when using our tanks.
When you are camped beside a freindly river or bore, we have the luxury of a full 20 litre shower! Its amazing that with a little practice you can have a good shower on 10 litres, & a 5 litre shower is more than adequate when you are totally reliant on your tanks.

Neil

We had one tank which we thought was filling properly (ie water was overflowing at tank inlet), but the tank always ran out very quickly.

After getting under the van, and spending a fair bit of time looking around, I found that one tie strap under the chassis was too tight, with the effect of crimping the supply line to that one tank. It was difficult to spot, as the crimped line was intermingled with other tank lines which were all ok.

Removed the tie strap, straightened out the crimp, and all fixed.

We normally get 4 to 5 showers out of a tank using the wet down/turn off/ lather up system. If water is a real issue we can stretch it to 6 but 4 is more enjoyable.
We have an efficient water head on the shower that came from Bias Boating in a pack including a hose line, the shower head has an on/off switch which we hardly ever use as it is more convenient to just bump to the off position the Flick-master shower control.
Nothing like a good shower at the end of the day.
Gus

I have found that you can "break" the airlock by wrapping a hand towel around the hose where it goes in to fill your tank. Push hard to make a seal and you will hear the overflow hose "blow" as it clears the air lock. The air is then pushed out to enable a fuller "fill"

On our BT #1 we had one tank that indicated that it was full, i.e, the water came out the breather pipe when filling, but the tank emptied quickly.

I measured the content by draining the (full?) tank into buckets and only got about 60lt.

I removed the tank and found that the breather hose had been pushed in too deeply and the end was 1/3 the way down the tank.
The tank had a hole drilled in the top to accept the breather which was pushed in and sealed with Sikaflex or similar.
Not sure if BT have improved on this fitting.

Another recommendation that has been put to the factory by many owners is to extend the length of the breather and bring the end out at the side of the van.
Easy to see which tank is full, easy to clear by blowing back with a hose.
But we will just have to wait until it becomes one of Steve's brilliant ideas that he invented before it happens I suppose. (LOL)

Bob

When I fitted two extra tanks(6) I removed the silly loop in the vent hose and brought all of them to a common point just in front of the off-side wheels. A 12mm low density poly valve is fitted to each with a small piece of plastic fly screen over the end. This will stop mud hornets blocking up the end........not nice to have your end blocked by mud hornets!!!!!!!!

It is the loop in the vent hose that causes most of the problems of filling the tank fully and also prevents draining as well.

cheers and beers
Ernie

we always had problems knowing what was full and how much there was so we put in a full set of rvelectronics tank guages.
Now we know exactly(?) how much water we have and if the tanks are filling proper.
They were a bit difficult to put in the tanks as an angle drive air drill with a short hole cutter was required then ran all four leads thru conduit up thru the van floor.

It was worth the trouble as far as we're concerned.

HI Willie,

Agnes Lifestyle is indeed Agnes Water. Most people say Agnes Waters but there is no S on the Water.Even on maps it is sometimes listed as Agnes Waters.Sounds nicer.

Must tell the truth!!! We do not shower everyday when water is scarce!! The gas on the hot water system is only turned on for a few minutes on those momentous occassions. It's amazing how refreshing a little wash down( about 500ml more or less) is.

Dianne

Thanks everyone who helped me in this post .

Today I finished the plumbing on my hose that feeds from a bucket outside - for showers .

I filled all tanks until they overflowed .I had to close off the front tank breather as it was overflowing before the back tank was filled and the back tank would not fill completely till I did this . I am going to install a cock on the front breather .

I believe my biggest problem with filling the tanks was the hose pressure was too great . This time I used only a small amount of pressure and it worked .

I got my shower water saving head ( had to buy the whole shebang - hose and fittings ).

From Reece I got the on / off shower tap , help save water .

None of these would have been easy without your help .

Cheers ,

Willie .

PS . Today Elvis went to Barnes Caravans to have a diesel heater mounted in the rear hatch . That will be great in the WA goldfields next winter .

Hi grey gnomad,
We have an 1999 model. Original setup was 1 filler inlet for 2 tanks (on non potable system) with a valve on each filling line. Open 1, close the other, only fill 1 tank at a time, worked well but valves were so inaccessible I fitted another filler inlet in side of van (1 each) works great, no valves to fiddle with.
Always had problems with stupid idea of the looped plastic tube on the breathers, water spashed out while travelling, lost heaps. A following vehicle thanked us for the mobile car wash. Solution: run breathers all the way up the filler inlets. (ours had a little fitting inside the van on the back of the inlet. Bushtracker filled these little breather fittings with silastic. I cleaned them, out fitted the breathers. Problem fixed! Done that years ago, no problems. You can hear the tank "breathing" when you fill it and if there is water in the breather tube (I used 12mm plastic tube) it spurts out as the air pressure builds up.
Crikey even Jayco breathes their tanks properly! not some rinky dink bit of plastic right down there in the mud, dust and stones etc. (yes on removal of tanks I found gravel in them.)
I also found the way Bushtracker glued the breather into the top of the tank was a joke and on looking at the new vans they are still doing it! Just have to wait for Mr Gibbs to invent it! Ha!
Hope this helps
Max

Willie,

I think you've got it arse about ;-))

The valves inside are for changing between tanks when one runs out....(use from back to front)

The valves you may or may not have-though I've not seen one without, are inside your cargo door next to the fillers.

Matt

Willie,
After following a friends van fitted with the Green 60 litre tanks (forgot the brand name) every time they took a left turn the centrifugal force caused water to flow out the breather/overflow pipe, so we fitted extensions to the breather pipe as Turist has mentioned that end on the right hand side of the van and put the same irrigation type stop tap on the end of the line. We have the standard 80 litre black tanks and did the same to our van. When the tank is full I turn the tap off and keep the water inside. Problem is that you have to open them when you want to get water out of that tank.

I think Turist has hit the nail on the head with the vent tube being too far inside the tank, as you then have the syphon affect until the water drops to that level. Just look at how much water comes out of the overflow after you have stopped filling the tank.

A very easy way to see how much water you are using for a shower, or anything else is to collect the water at the drain pipe.

Brian

Hi All,
Our BT is10 years old and only has an external shower so our solution to saving water is a little different.
We save water by using a 6 l/m flow restrictor from Bunnings (a small coloured plastic disc in the hose fitting plus we use a good quality metal garden hose attachment with a trigger. The hose attachment also has a flow rate lever and a number of water patterns to chose from. The original plastic shower head that came with the external shower had a push button on/off tap but it was useless and leaked all the time. We turn the taps to adjust the temperature then use the trigger to control the water. I reckon we can get down to about 5 litres each if we have to.

As for water tank breathers the original tank only had a hole drilled in the top as a breather/overflow so the grey tube sealed with sikaflex in the 2nd tank installed at a later date by BT was major a improvement. This second tank has a separate external lockable filler fitted by BT at the same time.
I fitted the third tank myself and drilled and tapped a 3/8 breather hole in the top corner of the tank and fitted a fitting from Camec. At the same time I fitted separate breathers to all three tanks and sealed the hole in the original tank.
The BT installed pig tail in the breather pipe is gone.

We have three separate inlets all common keyed after spending half an hour going thru the caps at Camec. Each breather tube goes to its own respective filler.
Cheers

Hi Wille,
Look at the trigger shower head at Camec.
Peter.

TRIGGER SHOWER SET

Features heavy duty chrome finish. Complete with on/off trigger incorporated in handle. P/N 3545-705
Wall bracket to suit 3545-730.