12v Portable shower pump died again

No Pedro, they've always got a limited lifespan. They are notoriously twitchy and have poor wiring. Also if you run the pump without water she no last too long (in my experience).

Mate instead of a bilge pump, buy a simple pressure pump from a caravan place like carac. Mount in the engine bay with a switch and when the time comes, drop one end in the bucket of water and have the other connected to a hose with a simple garden sprayer or proper shower nozzle. Being a constant demand type pump, it will stop once you release the trigger on the shower rose.

I've mounted mine inside the guard of my Tojo as per the blog. It's about 2/3 of the way down the blog page so scroll well down towards the bottom . A much simpler idea and the pumps come in various sizes and are a lot more robust (and not real expensive either).

Cheers

Mick

Fitting a shower pump to the cruiser

Pedro, Mick O's idea is good but not cheap.
A cheaper alternative, similar to your original shower pump but more reliable is a bilge pump like this. It can just be dropped in a bucket and will connect to your original shower tubing and spray head.
When my shower pump carks it I'll be using one of these.

After going through a couple of the drop in bucket type shower pumps we now use a 12v pressure cleaner as a shower! Its works really well with some warm water in and can be adjusted to a fine mist which under pressure really gets the soap residue off, got to watch your delicate bits but it's not over the top. They use bugger all water to due to the high pressure mist and we get 3 or 4 showers out of one fill. The one we have is the Carcube brand but they don't make them anymore, there are what look like identical units on ebay etc. Also great for washing the dust off the back steps on the camper etc and spraying salt off the fishing gear blah blah...
About $150

I like the bilge pump idea. It is a centrifugal pump and if you turn off the tap at the shower head it doesn't pump while the motor still runs. just turn on the tap to resume or when finished turn off the motor.

BCF have them around $27 and two different gal/hr pumps available.
Just scan your receipt and save as it is the same company as Super####.

After chucking several of the $25 bucket pumps I bought a bilge pump for $50.
It seized about a year later. So I salvaged the wiring & switch & shower head from a bucket pump..
added a Diaphragm Pump ($40..ebay) & it works great. Pump is like those fitted to caravans, & the same,I suspect, as referred to by guru, Mick O.
I had to fit an adjustable bypass to relieve the pressure. It operates off a Battery Booster, which means you can take it away from the car & camp..this often means
no screening is required...just add a bucket of water.
cheers....oldbaz.

Picking up on the thermal paper issue. I use my phone camera to take a picture of all the receipts for things I buy with a warranty and store the photos in a separate folder electronically. You can rename the file to show the product, and if needed, print out the receipt on proper paper when you return the product.

T

Hi Pedro

I have a 360 gal/hr bilge pump cut off the old elcheapo pump used the same wire with switch and plug , bit fiddly to fit shower rose pipe but at 2 metres head the flow is just right pump cost $25 at BCF

Greenant

Hi Pedro1

we have been using the $25.00 drop in the busket type for years, ( the last one has lasted at least 6 years ) and the trick to them lasting is to never turn them off, just pull the cigi connection out from the battery pack !! we fill the bucket and then just let the shower head recurculate in the bucke, we do not recycler the water the pump only ever see's clean water with no soap

anyway this is what works for us, maybe we have just been lucky?

pmacks

My 12v shower almost cost me a car on the weekend. Had it pluged in and ready to shower my two kids. Went down to the waters edge (beach) and started the process of draging them out of the surf. By the time I got to the back of the car smoke was pouring out of the pump. Pulled out the plug burning my hand in the process. The plug cable and motor was RED hot 40min later the motor was still too hot to touch. When I got home I pulled apart the switch to find that it had failed and turned on the motor which was out of the water.
In short DON'T leave them un-attended and pluged in or fit a fuse to the plug.

Craig

Interesting incident with " The plug cable was RED hot 40min later"
One would of thought the car fuse in the accessory circuit would have blown if the current had reached this point. Also a lot of cheap cig lighter plugs do have fuses in them .
I had a experience where the car fuse kept blowing but the cig plug fuse was OK .
After investigation I discovered the short was in the plug, but before the fuse .
Cheap chinese quality couldn't handle the corrigations

I've been using one of the drop in bucket showers for many years now & it is still going strong. The only problem we have is when we are getting ready for a holiday iI test it & it wont work....so just get into the pump & free it up. It sticks every time when not used for a while but does free up & goes on strong from there. Best $25 I've spent.

I've had a few of teh original 12V shower pumps and none lasted more than a year.
Replaced it with the Johnson 450 that Allan has mentioned above - used the 10mm tubing and was disappointed - the flow was very poor because these bilge pumps are low pressure, high volume pumps.
Bought a cheap Rule bilge pump, and used bigger diameter 1/2 inch tubing and it works pretty well and has lasted more than a year!

Another BCF pump at low price is here.
I have no idea of its performance specs or quality but may be worth a try for those of us who do not require a shower equal to the one at home. The higher performers after all use a lot of water which can be precious where we travel even though we have 120L tanks.
Our $25 shower provides 2 minutes of shower time from 4 Litres. Quite enough for us. One minute to get wet, shut it off, soap up, one minute to rinse off. Lovely!
When really trying to preserve water supplies we use the "H2No Towels" obtainable from the ExplorOz shop.
Incidentally, waterproof in-line switches are available from ABR Sidewinder.

Hi I've used one of these for 4 years still going strong 12v whale pump, got a straight thru
one from the watertank to the sink in our jayco camper.



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