on board shower or coleman hot water supply

Stan - is your vehice diesel or petrol? In my experience, diesels don't get hot enough to efficiently drive a heat-exchanger hot water system anywhere near as well as a petrol unit can.

I personally use a Glind in my petrol Patrol, and many others are happy with their Helton or Twine units. They are all much of a much-ness, and I don't believe that people have tried all of the units themselves before recommending their own till they're blue in the face. If you happen to own a Twine, you'd probably recommend one to someone else, as it makes you feel good when someone takes your advice. They all have their good and bad points. I haven't had any problems with mine.

I also run a Coleman Hot Water on Demand system and LOVE it. It's car-independent, so I can take it anywhere. I can leave the car in the camping spot and take the Coleman unit down to the creek to have a shower. I use a pre-filter on the intake so as not to ingest gunk through the unit. It's plenty hot enough for a good shower, but pressure is certainly down on the in-car units. I reckon it pumps about 4 litres per minute (which is the same as the smaller in-car Flojet units). It's also very handy for kitchen duty - it fills a large washing up tub in no time. I run ours off both the little LPG cartridges which give you around 150 litres of hot water, and the 9kg extension hose so that you have virtually unlimited hot water on site.

Whatever you fancy........

Cheers
Chris

Hi Stan

In my previous camping life we used to boil the water on the fire. We basically always had a fire, so no problem. For any other times without a fire, we boiled 2 kettles on the stove. We used a 20 or 10 lt bucket (that you can get from Sizzlers and alike) and we bilge pumped our shower from that. It was excellent, especially with a good shower miser head.

Now in this camping life, we have the Coleman, great for instant hot water (NOT and NO WAY does it get hot enough for tea and coffee unless you recycle it through the unit 2-3 times, then it may get hot enough, although if you are a non hot tea/coffee person then it might be hot enough frst time round???) We also find the colder the day is the less hot the water becomes through the system. It's great for the washing up (I LOVE IT - NO MORE WAITING) and a shower (hate the hose that comes with it, too stiff, twisty and tooooooo short), the stream of the water from the head is very weak too.

That is our opinion on them and having said that, I'm still glad we have one.

Good Luck with what you finally choose.

Cya
:)

I put the Piranha shower into my V8 100 Series and it works great, the missus is much happoier that her and the kids can shower.

Obvioulsy not as good as beign at home but certainly very user friendly.

We run it out of a jerry can of 20 litres and that is more than enough water for 4 plus showers. The head is not a huge rush of water but plenty to get you wet and it can easily pump to a height above 6 foot plus without a hassle. The speed being a slower than normal is good as you automatically conserve water which when away from a ready supply is sensible.

As others have mentioned you ahve advantages and disadvanteges of the onboard, i opted for onboard for teh follwogn reasons,
- it is always with me
- takes up no packing space (all parts are under the bonnet)
- carry two hoses, in and out in the boot (almost no space)
- carry a collapsible bucket and you can have shower anywhere water is avaialbe

Only downside we got caught on the first tiem is that you can't use the thermostat controls in the 100 sEries to control the temprature of the water coming out. TI was too hot the first time we used it that you had to ahve someone else hold it a good distance from you so it cooled by the time it landed on you.

To get past that you need to put a valve in the water returns somewhere so that not all of the water gets heated via the exchanger. You only need to reduce it a little bit but if you turned this all the way off you would have no water throfuh your engine and cook your block so be careful.

I bought the Puranha because that was the one everyone seemed to stock and have install knowledge of in Melbourne, whereas in Sydney TWINE seemed to be popular and in Qld i thgink it was Glind.

Differences between them i have only used mine and my mates is the same and neither have caused a problem so far.

Hope this helps.

MArk

Stan, KISS........ had a glind system on 4 cars since 1985 & have now upgraded to a canvas shower bucket. Boil the water on the fire or stove, nice & simple & only one moving part. Over the years there was always something going wrong, leaking hoses/heat exchanger, loose wires/switches, faulty pumps that wont prime, & always at the most innapropiate time :-(
Although some will swear by their Coleman hot water units the preasure & temp control is pretty ordinary & is yet another item to find space for in the back of the car. Possibly an item more suited to base camping than touring.
Cheers Craig.............
HZJ105

We bought a Coleman unit just prior to our last trip in the freezing hills. The bush princess loved it. Instant hot water for washing up and a reasonable shower.

3 things:

Keep the battery charged. If it goes flat it has to be recharged to make the system go - it will not run on 12V

The stiff hose and shower that come with it aren't flash. After we got home we kept the fitting and swapped the hose and head from a defunct 12V shower - much better performance. Some recommend just using a water saving head from Bunnings.

Get the accessory hose that will let you run it off a 4 or 9Kg cylinder. Or you can get a "MAC Coupler" from ebay and refill the little cylinders. We used a cylinder and a half over a 5 day weekend.

Wouldn't be without it now, but I still like my old ex army canvas bucket!

Cheers

Peter

We do it the easy way,,,,boil the billy pour a litre of hot water into a garden sprayer, modified with a shower rose on the hose, add 4 lts of coold water, good for a nice shower every time.

meow.

rick.

Thanks to all for your input we will have to think about this one most likley will go with under bonnet shower thanks all regards stan.

I have had the Glind shower fitted to the 4.2 turbo deisel and it get very hot and you dont need to lug a big unit around.

I would go for the in car unit

BBB

Stan
I currently run a helton engine shower but in the event that i does break I would replace it with a coleman unit.
The idea of running the car engine for 5 or ten people to have a shower can make a differance over a few nights in the way of fuel consumption. I know I sound like a tight @ss but it can add up.
Tim

Hi Stan,

We started out with heldron heat exchanger, and i had the rest including 5 LPM pump, and i use it on a 2h deisel, and it works great, good pressure and high volume as you like, and only takes less than 10 minutes from cold to heat up.
I have small brass taps on the heater hoses and direct all hot water through unit, and we circulate and heat until water reaches temp required and then switch engine off and then have shower.
Now recently we have also bought a coleman and it is great for camp hot water, which is all we use it for, but no way any kind of match for our car based shower, either in volume and pressure and temp.
As for fuel consumption that sounds like crap, as once engine is hot it only takes a few minutes to heat up the next shower , and a deisel idling for a few minutes wouldnt use bugga all, not to mention the fact that your batteries are getting a boost while its running.
So for a great shower get a under bonnet job.

Cheers Pesty

I always wonder how enjoyable a shower is when you have to stand in front of the vehicle in your bathing costume to shower when in mixed company.

When I have a shower, I want to wash all the "dirty bits" and that's bloody impossible if you are wearing trunks.

Will probably get a colman hot water unit eventually, but for the present, the $29.95 Coleman shower setup is more than adequate. I don't care too much how long it takes to heat the shower water from the camp fire and when placed in a large tub that you can stand in, we both get a shower from the same recycled water.

The portable toilet comes out of the "shower" tent and the tub goes in.

Works for us.