3 Must-Have Features in a Portable Shower for Family Camping
What’s not to love about family camping?
It’s a great opportunity to have loads of fun as you take the time to bond with your family.
The best part? You don’t have to pack a whole lot to keep everyone entertained. Not when there is a whole range of simple activities your household can engage in while enjoying the great outdoors.
Table of Contents
- 1 - Adjustable Water Temperature and Flow Rate
- 2 - Ability to Filter and Pump Water
- 3 - Easy Set Up and Operation
- Bonus Features
If you’re hoping to gently introduce your family to what it means to become one with nature, you can engage in:
- Birdwatching
- Bug collecting
- Rock cataloging
- Animal watching
- A camping scavenger hunt
You might also want to engage in some serious sporting fun with your family. For instance, if you’re close to a river, lake, or some other water body, you can stay active by boating, canoeing or kayaking, swimming, or even diving and snorkeling.
You could also choose to play:
- Tag
- Soccer
- Football
- Baseball
- Hide and seek
- Capture the flag
Of course, there’s always listening to nature, daydreaming and napping, stargazing, or playing card and board games. These activities, along with snuggling and storytelling, are excellent when you’re winding down. Or stuck in your tent.
There, we’ve said it.
You’ve got to drag your partner and kids away from binge-worthy TV shows or video games every once in a while.
They might not thank you for it right now, but you’ll be able to create wonderful memories that’ll last them a lifetime.
Naturally, you may need to give your family members certain assurances before they fully commit to the idea of spending a week or few days out in the wild. That’s because there’s bound to be tons of sweat and stink where there are outdoorsy fun activities.
Fortunately, half the battle can be won when you assure everyone you’ve got their shower concerns sorted out. Here are some of the features your portable camp shower must-have if your family is to stay fresh:
1 - Adjustable Water Temperature and Flow Rate
HOTTAP V2 ESSENTIALS Portable Hot Water Kit
They say one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
In the same vein, some people like their shower steaming hot while others like it pleasantly lukewarm.
There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to accommodate everyone’s preferences. Especially not when you’re trying to make your family camping trip fun and enjoyable for all.
Thankfully, you can get a portable shower that lets you adjust your water temperature and flow rate. Doing so will open a world of possibilities for you and your family—while eliminating any last-minute objections to camping.
You can set your shower to provide a rich spray at full blast and a precise temperature. That’d be an ideal scenario when you want to luxuriate in your shower. Or you can reduce your shower’s flow rate when you have a mind to conserve water.
With a portable shower such as the Joolca HOTTAP, you get a flow rate ranging from 0.6 to 1.6 gallons per minute. And yes, you still get a rich spray at the lower flow rate settings.
Meanwhile, adjusting your water temperature anywhere from hot to warm will have an impact on energy consumption. For that reason, you can conserve energy by precisely heating your shower water to a degree that just suits you.
Now, there’s such a thing as water that’s too hot to shower in. That’s why you want to go for a portable shower that has safeguards in place to prevent you from accidentally cooking yourself.
Joolca’s HOTTAP again comes to mind. It has an internal microprocessor that prevents the water temperature from going above 122°F. Meaning, there’ll be no first or second-degree burns or scalds for you and your family.
2 - Ability to Filter and Pump Water
You never know what exotic location you might find yourself in next when you and your family embrace the camping life.
You might happen to camp near a river, creek, or lake, for instance.
If you do, you want to maximize your shower fun by drawing water from these water bodies.
After all, why limit yourself to drawing water from a jerry can? Certainly not when you can pump it from a nearby creek right into your shower!
Get yourself a portable water shower that allows you to pump water for a considerable distance from the source. It should also filter out dirt, rocks, and everything but the finest of sediments, while at it.
When camping with a limited supply of water, you risk damaging your pump on the off chance it runs dry. That can happen when you inadvertently empty your reservoir’s supply.
In such cases, an Off Grid Plumbing Kit can help filter water and pump it up to anywhere within 100 feet from where you’ve set up your shower. It’ll also run dry without getting damaged.
You’ll be glad to know that the pump has a thermal overload pump protection feature, too. This ensures the pump automatically turns off if it’s at the risk of overheating.
Naturally, it’s alright to be a little concerned about powering this pump. You’re out camping, after all, not trying to be worried about power.
Fortunately, you should be good to go when you connect the provided cigarette power lead to your car’s battery or cigarette lighter port.
3 - Easy Set Up and Operation
HOTTAP V2 ESSENTIALS Portable Hot Water Kit
After a day that’s chock full of activities, all you want is a hot shower and a happy meal around a crackling bonfire.
Nothing could be more inconvenient than struggling to set up your portable hot shower when you’re all grimy and aching to get clean.
That’s why the ideal portable shower needs the following:
- Snap-on fittings for gas and water. These ensure you aren’t left to fiddle around with spanners and thread tape whenever you want to shower.
- Color-coded snap-on fittings. They ensure you won’t miss a beat when setting up. It’ll be easy to connect the blue and red hoses to the corresponding “cold water in” and “hot water out,” plumbing on the heater.
- Flexibility. You shouldn’t have to decide whether your portable shower’s heater, for instance, should be freestanding or mounted.
The Joolca HOTTAP comes with a solid stand provided with the Nomad Kit or detachable feet with the Essentials and Outing Kits that permits use on all kinds of surfaces in the freestanding mode.
Alternatively, you could buy a mounting bracket for your water heater if you’d prefer to mount it.
The mounting bracket lets you easily fix your HOTTAP anywhere you like. Since this can be on your car or trailer, it’s quite effective for when you want to take a quick shower next to your vehicle.
Bonus Features
When you’re going on a camping trip, space is a premium.
You’ll find yourself agonizing over what to pack since you can’t quite carry everything. For example, do you pack wash bins or do you pack some camp chairs instead?
It’d be good, therefore, if you found yourself a portable shower that happened to serve more than one function.
Imagine your portable shower’s storage container doubling as a kitchen sink. Not just any kitchen sink, but one that’s served by a pivoting and tilting faucet with hot water to boot!
It’d mean having much more freedom to pack some other essential camping gear. Plus, a hot water kitchen sink can be pretty reassuring for any germophobes on their first family camping trip.
Now, imagine that your storage container was also waterproof
It’d save you the trouble of having to always completely drain your hoses before packing them up. That’d be convenient, especially if you didn’t want residue water in the hoses creating a mess in your luggage compartment.
You’ll enjoy these features should you choose the HOTTAP Nomad Kit option as your portable shower for your family’s camping needs. The video below captures these and other amazing features you’ll find in the Joolca HOTTAP:
Caption: Joolca HOTTAP - Portable Water Heating System
A summary of the must-have features in a portable shower for family camping is also available in the table below:
| Feature(s) | Benefit(s) |
| Adjustable water temperature and flow rate |
|
| Water filtration and pumping |
|
| Internal microprocessor |
|
| Run-dry protection |
|
| Multi-purpose storage container (waterproof) |
|
