primus portable shower units

I havent had any experience with the primus but a lot of others have said they are not to flash.
Have you seen the Coleman Hot Water on Demand. You can get a shower attatchment for it. Water heats up in 5 secs. Comes with a 10 yr warrenty.

Peter

Likewise

I have the Primus. It is a little frustrating to use as the boiler cuts out when the temp gets to around 55 deg C. This is a good saftey aspect but it doesn't automatically restart, so in our case, for our family to use it, I monitor the operation while SWMBO & The Kidz have their showers and then heat up a bucket for me to use.

We use it like this;
fill a bucket with water, the pump goes into the bucket and we light the burner and recirculate the water till the bucket is at shower temp....... then the shower head gets passed into the shower for whoever is in there to use. Repeat the process till all are showered. As the temp rises the unit will cut out, not necessarily when the bucket is warm enough, just when the boiler is hot..... so there can be tepid water in the bucket and no flame! My job is to re-light the boiler (just a button push) when this happens, till the bucket is at shower temp. Then SWMBO will shower, usually one of the kidz will shower after her, then I re-fill the bucket and start again. Second kid showers and then I shower.

They work very well, just have a few limitations. The Coleman unit is more user friendly apparently, several people I know have them and are very happy. I shied away from them initially as the Coleman has a rechargeable battery involved and I seem to have no luck with rechargeables... :-(

I have toyed with the idea of selling my Primus and paying the extra for the Coleman, since I have learned from others how good the Coleman is.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Brian

Hi guys,

Primus have just released a new version which has a pilot light that stays on, and it's also alot easier to light.

I would still recomend the coleman one over the primus though just for it's extra features and simplicity, but they have also dropped the warranty on it back down to 3 years.

Cheers, ToNy!

Yep the Primus is a PITA to operate, the coleman, when we were looking for a shower was the better unit, but look at the new Primus cause if it has improved it's a very handy unit mainly because it is easier to pack or mount permanently than the Coleman.

Another unit to look at is Aussie Hot Camp Shower this unit is supposed to be excellent, albeit a bit noisy.

Baz.

we also have a primus, we did the toss up on what to buy primus or coleman and went with the primus because it's size, it was made to heat water not as an urn, we didn't need to buy more parts to use it as a shower etc. yes we to had trouble lighting it at first when we followed the instrutions but once hubby tried it his way we can all light it first time every time. unlike the others above that have a primus we don't reheat the water, we tried once when it was quite cold weather and found that the water was miles to hot. we are very pleased with the preasure and operation of the unit. we use an old stove stand at the back of our shower tent to stand the unit on and the gas bottle on the shelf underneath with the hose and shower head tied into the tent, we use a large black drum for the water on the bottom of the drum there is a block to stop the pump sucking up any sedament and when we are on the murray we strain the water through a few layers of teatowels (it's amazing how dirty they get). we were also suprized at how good it was on gas it work out to be quite cheap showering. good luck with your choise hope all goes well.