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Wetter, Hotter, Doucher

Megadouche is back in business, it has been since early April. We’ve learned that we can deploy it early and get some use regardless of small frosts. We have it for almost half the the year now and its deployment is cause for huge celebration. The kids are very excited about it.

It comes with several major improvements this year too, I’m not sure we’ll be able to top that.

Bigger tankless heater

This guy can heat double the amount of water the previous one could at 3.2 Gallons per minute.

Bigger pump, bigger shower head to go through all this water, and a better platform to step on

Output Switch

We now have a choice between the shower head and a longer hose that can reach places like the tub or laundry spot.

Continuous Propane Supply

It used to suck, when a tank became empty, to go get another one in the middle of a shower. This “auto change-over” contraption comes from the world of RVs and will alleviate that. I still need to make all this a little more stable.

Lights

We’ll often be out there after dusk, and so instead of playing with flashlights I found some outside 12V DC string lights I could hook up to the little solar system we have out there to move water. It’s extra magical.

The very fancy control board

Pest repellant

last year a mouse built a nest right in the water heater one night. I imagine it must have been traumatic how its house turned into a sudden inferno. I had to disassemble it and clean it, no thanks. Also one day the water switch was just pulled to the “on” position, and we’re just not sure what happened but we blame squirrels. In any case, this thing there emits ever changing ultra sounds and LED blinking to hopefully keep all this away.

What’s the same

The siphon & sediment tub are the same, the formula works great. I did add an old battery to the solar setup, but it wasn’t really necessary, I just had it laying around.

This very well may be the final incarnation of megadouche, it’s become a fixture we all love.

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Megadouche Back in Business

The intermediary seasons between Summer and Winter have always been a challenge for us. When it’s not cold enough to make a fire, but it’s cold enough to not take a cold water shower outside. With Megadouche‘s ability to deliver infinite hot water, it really is not an issue to bathe outside even when it’s cold. It was evident immediately after “inventing” it last year, that it would remain as a permanent fixture of our homestead. This year I set it up as soon as possible in April and I polished it a bit. And boy has it been nice, it really is the absolute best thing we’ve made. It’s not just nice as taking showers outside is really pleasant, it also changes the dynamic of our day completely. When it’s too hot, or when we work hard, we can just hop under and just get a refresh. No longer are showers something that needs to be planned, moved with buckets, and kept for the end of the day.

The solar setup is all scrap lumber and spare parts. Old panels, old batteries, old charge controllers. It looks funny but it performs well. This year I added 1 panel because we started moving a lot of water right off the bat and I could tell the batteries were getting depleted.

The sediment tub with the siphon coming from upstream. A great formula.

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Scary Math

Our lives just took an enormous leap in comfort as we now have running water. It isn’t fully installed yet, and I’ll post more about the pump when it is.

I estimate that in the past 5 and a half years, We pumped and carried 248,930 liters (65,760 gallons) of water from the well 100ft away. I’d love to know how many joules this represents, and how much ingested Ben & Jerry’s this translates to, but I don’t need to go down this rabbit hole right now :).

It isn’t yet perfect, I’m still figuring out a few things around priming and proper plumbing. But it’s still an enormous improvement. Running water, which we took for granted most of our lives, is the culmination of not only all the projects surrounding it (well work, frost lines, piping, et cetera), but also all the projects surrounding electricity. No wonder it took 5.5 years to get here with our starting point being zero understanding of any of these things. We often run into the people we once were, who have no concept of the fact water can move outside of pipes, in buckets for example. It seems evident when you read it, but I can guarantee we were met with confused looks more than once.