Today we revised the outdoor shower plumbing situation by dropping the valve/handle location 5 inches and building a new wooden cover with integrated soap shelf that does away with the horrible escutcheon altogether.
It’s always surprising to me how small changes like this can completely transform the feel of a space. I could never be an interior designer because I don’t know what looks good I just know what looks bad, which is why I’m constantly rebuilding things. I’m still not stoked on the handle but that’s easy enough to change out later.
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The outdoor shower is fed by two 10 foot water heater hoses attached to hot and cold hose bibs that we plumbed beneath the trailer. These are attached to our hot and cold water supply inside the trailer and are isolated with separate ball valves so we can drain them in freezing weather. These hose bibs also serve as a low point drains for the entire water system. We sloped all of the plumbing in the house towards them so if the house is left unattended in freezing weather it can be drained completely.
We may or may not add a tub spout in the future, but for now I just plumbed a simple hose bib to the tub leg of the shower valve so at the end of the shower on cold nights I can open it and it will drain the copper pipe going up to the showerhead. If it really looks like things might freeze just taking a moment to unscrew the supply houses from the trailer and shutting off the ball valves inside drains anything that could freeze.
Can’t wait to see it all in action, for now it’s just another item checked off the punch list.
-Brian
