Outdoor Home Shower

Published by julia | Filed under Buyer / Seller Tips, Market Trends, Miscellaneous, Real Estate, Shout Outs

By Billie Cohen

SUMMER means the beach, the sand, the sun, the pool — factors that prompt many second-home owners to think about installing an outdoor shower. Whether the goal is to wash off the ocean brine after a swim, to prep for the pool before you jump in, or to serenely bathe au naturel outdoors, an exterior shower can be a beautiful thing. But building and maintaining one takes planning.

The first question is where to put it, and that often relates to use. Is this going to be a shower right next to the house? Off in the woods? By the pool? Most locations are workable. The choice just affects how you’ll run the piping, which most of the time can be tied into your home’s existing system.

“A person needs to plumb the water out from some part of the house through the wall,” said Ethan Fierro, who wrote “The Outdoor Shower” (Storey Publishing). “It could come out a basement window, or a bathroom or kitchen or somewhere where there is accessible water on the inside of the wall.”

For a more remote shower, he added, you might need a separate hot-water heater, but no matter where you put the pipes, just be sure you have the plumber install shut-off valves. “You want to be able to isolate the water going to the exterior, because it’ll freeze and burst the pipes,” said Tony Mammano, a cabinetmaker and plumber in East Hampton, N.Y. “So you want to drain them.”

Location, of course, goes hand in hand with privacy. Not every member of your household, or every guest, has the same level of comfort.

“I recommend people build their shower to the most prudent of bathers,” Mr. Fierro said. “Some people have no problem being nude outside, and there are people on the opposite end of the spectrum.”

To ease fears about who can see what, Mr. Fierro suggested looking for sight lines from second-story windows or neighbors’ homes, and taking into account the surrounding environment.

That environment isn’t just a hurdle to be overcome, though, it’s an asset, too. “The Japanese have a wonderful term called borrowed scenery,” Mr. Fierro said. “And it’s typically the scenery that you don’t have to pay taxes on, but that’s there nonetheless as a part of your landscape. And so making the most out of those types of attributes and the landscape — an outdoor shower is great for that.”

To that end, you could locate the shower near a garden or overlooking hills, and then put a little window in, one that you can see out of but that neighbors can’t see into.

Materials are another consideration. For pipes, copper is the standard. “Typically, I recommend using copper if you’re going to create a permanent shower,” said Mr. Fierro, who prefers recycled materials. PVC, the hard plastic polymer polyvinyl chloride, “is not a long-term, ultrapermanent material,” he said.

Mr. Mammano agreed. “PVC isn’t completely UV stabilized,” he said. “Plastics really take a beating in sunny locations. I’m still a purist. I still use copper.”

That takes care of bringing the water in, but what about getting the used water out?

“Typically, someone has a stone or wooden platform that gets them off the ground, and water percolates into the ground,” Mr. Fierro said. “You can dig a dry well, which is basically a big hole filled with gravel, and put your platform on top of that, and that allows for the water to immediately seep into the gravel and not stay on the surface. You don’t want standing water on the surface. Insects breed in it. It creates a nasty little environment.”

In a more urban site, he added, you could connect the drain back to a waste line in your house or into the municipal septic line.

If you’re building the shower against a wall of your home, consider installing marine-grade plywood beneath the exterior of the house to prevent rotting. If your home is already built, Mr. Fierro noted that extra layers of sealant will do the trick. As for the shower itself, resilient hardwoods like teak, cedar or mahogany work well.

And be sure to build the shower enclosure and platform to allow for air flow — by spacing the slats or leaving a gap at foot level — so the enclosure can dry. As you’d expect, mold and odors do not add to the idyllic ambience.