Phil G replied:

I had an underbonnet shower, and used it for a couple of years, but I doubt that they are worth the money. I find it much easier to heat up the billy on the fire, add it to some water in the 10 litre bucket and use a $25 electric shower. The water temp's perfect and constant every time.

Member - Bradley replied:

Hey Dave, i have had a good look at these and they look ok, but they are fairly large with light weight tube for the shower head, the heat exchanger looks like it would grab all of the heat from the burner but they would take up a bit of space, saw a new unit from Primus the other day that is basically a small toolbox with the heat exchanger / burner in one end and a Jaycar style 12v shower pump in the other end, it would be a lot tougher and probably easier to pack. But you still need to cart around a gas bottle.. But i understand if you are from Tassie, then you will need a good hot shower, as it is bleep efull cold in Melb still, so i assume you guys are not much better !! I've got to come to Tas for a week for work soon but i am holding off until the weather improves :-) Cheers BradLife is short- but there's always time for a yarda.

Phil P replied:

Hi Dave,

I saw these being demostrated at the Wandin 4wd show, they work well but are quite large to carry. I ended up buying and installing the Helton Unit.

http://www.helton.com.au/

All up it cost me $180.

What I do is use it to heat up a large bucket of water & then use the turbo shower from the bucket of water that has been heated up. That way I am showering away from the car.

Regards
Phil P

chopper replied:

Dave, I actually have one of these!!

I have found that while it consumes a fair bit of space (incl gas bottle) it pumps out a serious amount of very hot water.

We went this way because we needed the ability to produce large quantities of hot water quickly (like 50 peoples worth)

As a shower, the water coming out is too hot for many people,
We mostly use ours to provide hot water for washing dishes (big group) and have the ability to provide hot showers should we need to.

As a side note, one of the students was getting water for wash up and he accidently stepped on the power cable for the little pump, this pulled it ever so slightly out of its socket and the pump turned off. Due to the noise that the burner makes (that's a whole hell of a lot of noise BTW) he did not notice until the unit had already run dry. So at the moment I have a very schmick looking blue tube with mangled, twisted and broken copper pipe running thru the middle of it, not happy.

If I had my time again, I would still have bought this unit for my purposes, however if i only needed to provide hot water to a family, i would probably just get the $20 shower sets and organise my hot water on the stove, much less mucking around, much less gear to cart.

that's my 2c