FJ Cruisers of Northern California

On Board Hot Shower

Well after many years of wanting to build my own OBHS heat exchanger i finally did.As i found out it was alot harder then i anticipated.After many designs in my head and on paper and after building 6 prototypes and testing.I setteled on one that i was really happy with.As i found out real soon copper is really expensive :( But the results are well worth it for me.The heat exchanger is made out of 2" copper tubbing and is 12" long and has 20' of tubbing inside the 2" tube.The water has to pass 3 times inside the 2" copper tube before it goes out to the shower head.That is only running the water thru the heat exchanger only once.I spliced the OBHS exchanger using the bottom hose coming out of the FJ heater.The OBHS exchanger heats supply water 59F up to 120F with the FJ at only 1500rpm.Still working on a flip up shower arm from my ARB bumper.Let me know what you guy's think

Attachments:

OBHS1.jpg, 1.2 MB
OBHS2.jpg, 775 KB

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Permalink Reply by The Josh on April 3, 2012 at 9:50am

Yeah the heat exchanger is quite compact But very stout and weighty. I believe it has upwards of 20ft of copper line inside.

I haven't tried for a max temp yet, buy I achieved the 165 after about 8 mins of the truck running.ive heard it can get up to 180.

I mentioned in the video that I'm trying to find a smaller shower head. This one does use too much water. Which one do you have? Maybe share a link? I need one quick, I leave in a week haha

Thank you very much for Thr compliments. I definately took my time to get it all planned out well. On our coming up trip I plan to carry about 15 gallons extra. I guess it all depends on the location and duration

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Permalink Reply by paraextreme on April 3, 2012 at 2:49pm

Wow sounds like that works like a champ.is that recirculation?

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Permalink Reply by The Josh on April 3, 2012 at 3:03pm

Yep yep!

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Permalink Reply by Dave Crockett on May 30, 2012 at 10:55pm

Okay, I know that I'm about 1 1/2 months behind everyone, but I finally have my shower completely finished. I have a few pics on my profile pics. I have to take pics of the heat exchanger yet. The heat exchanger is large, but, it doesn't need to recirculate the water. My water pump is a 4 GPM pump that I run a gate valve on the intake and can control the water pressure and the water temp. I can also control the heat with my idle. I have all the water tubing running to the rear of the FJ and my supply hoses hook up via 3/8" quick disconnects,the same for the outlet hose. Those are mounted through my bumper in a very simple manifold. Can't wait to go camping. The water temp actually is controllable from cold tovery hot. Yeah, done. I'll post pics of the system itself this week.You can check out the shower stall that I came up with, like I say, on my profile here.

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Permalink Reply by manoweb on May 31, 2012 at 7:32am

I cannot find the pictures of the heat exchanger, pump, connectors...

On memorial weekend we went camping and we used the shower. Our setup is very simple but it just works. In your setup, I am not sure the curtain will work... if there is the slightest wind it might become quite inconvenient, have you tried?

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Permalink Reply by Dave Crockett on June 5, 2012 at 12:27am

I posted pics finally of the entire system. I did have a bit of problems with wind blowiing things around. I'm in the process of welding spikes onto the bottom of 4 of the clamps .The clamps are fairly heavy too, which helps.