Abandon the internal shower

For five minutes of getting wet it is a costly exercise to keep a shower inside. The space it uses, water consumption, enigineering required, it doesn't add up.

Finding a comfortable hygiene routine on the road can be a challenge, but I’ve found a setup that works for me. For the time being, I'm using an external EverShower.

The beauty of this rig is its flexibility; it packs down tightly into a travel case, but can easily be deployed inside the van if I need privacy or shelter from the elements. Because it recirculates water, I get the luxury of a long, relaxing shower while only burning through 3 litres of my supply. It is not perfect as there are considerations like drying the material after a shower, and keeping feet clean after a shower when outside and the hose connection to the housing is a bit sloppy.

To complement my off-grid setup, I break up the journey by stopping at community bath facilities, beachside public blocks, or fuel stations. These quick pit stops are essential for knocking out a load of laundry, doing a general cleanup, and replenishing my supplies before the next leg of the adventure.

The math on standard van plumbing is pretty wild when you actually break it down. Take the common SHURflo water pump: it pushes out 11.3 litres per minute. If you have an 80-litre tank (which realistically holds about 75 litres with an air gap), a standard shower will drain your entire supply in under 7 minutes flat! To make it work, you'd have to be incredibly frugal or lug around an extra 100 litres of water, adding massive weight and burning more fuel.

I’ve spoken to heaps of fellow van lifers who confirmed exactly what I suspected: they rarely ever use their onboard showers, opting for holiday parks or river swims instead. More often than not, that beautiful van shower just becomes a glorified storage cupboard.

I spent a lot of time trying to fit a traditional shower into different zones of the van, including the rear and over the wheel arches, but the compromises were just too high:

The Storage Sacrifice: A permanent cubicle eats up massive amounts of internal space that I value much more for storing my bulky sporting gear.
The Domino Effect of Modifications: Installing a fixed system meant investing in custom water tanks, relocating the spare tyre, and modifying the chassis.
The Constant Threat of Rot: Waterproofing every single entry door, plumbing inlet, and seam is an unforgiving task. Having looked inside a few rotted-out, water-damaged caravans over the years, I know that even a tiny seal failure can quietly ruin a build from the inside out.

Placing the shower unit at the rear and using it dual purpose as storage and shower is an impractical solution due to the constant need to remove gear, drying up the wet room and climbing up and into it via the rear step.

On the other hand, using the portable shower was a fairly minimal effort.