Progress

60%

A good shower at the end of the day is worth its weight in gold! We aim to build a luxurious, comfortable indoor shower that provides warmth and comfort during the cold and windy winter. After all, an off-grid shower shouldn’t lack luxury. In addition to the indoor shower, we’ll eventually add a beautiful outdoor shower for refreshing rinses during the hot summer months.

This is one of the first projects we quickly tackled to ensure we could enjoy warm indoor showers during the upcoming winter. The temporary outdoor shower turned out to be comfortable enough that other important projects took priority.

The shower is being built against a rock wall, allowing you to shower partially under the rock. The frame is constructed entirely from pallets, which are filled with straw for insulation. The exterior is covered with a layer of COB (a mix of sand, clay, water, and straw), and the roof is covered with sedum. The skylights in the roof are glass oven dishes, which can be removed for ventilation during the hot summer months.

The interior will be fully or partially tiled and/or possibly finished with tadelakt. We haven’t decided on that yet. There is also a plan to have a basin where the shower water can flow into, filled with water plants to filter the water directly. However, it’s not certain if this solution will be implemented.

The shower water is gravity-fed from the highest point of the property and is already in use in the temporary shower. Ultimately, this shower water will be reused for the surrounding plants and trees, which is why only natural soap products are used.

Things to be done

On the outside, additional layers of COB need to be applied with a lime finish. On the inside, the electrical wiring and plumbing still need to be installed. After that, the tiling (and/or tadelakt) needs to be done, and a vanity unit needs to be made.