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RoughFN -> Shower, part 2 (9/18/2008 12:14:47 PM)
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I'd originally posted this back in May, when I first designed the thing, but I've since substantially improved the design. To recap, it's a showerstall. Hang my girl up in the middle of it, turn on the water, and she gets sprayed down from all four sides.
Shower stall on FlickR
It's the same as my original design, just with better designed piping. If you look at the original photo uploaded on May 13, you'll see that I had it come in at the bottom, snake up one pipe, across, down the next, up the next, down, and so on. Zig zag pattern. Didn't work well - insufficient water pressure to move it up and down the pipes like that while I had it spraying out of nozzles as it was going along.
So I repiped it slightly with my existing 3/4" pipe so it would come up a single pipe to the top and be distributed down the pipes on the corners. Better, but still not great. I still had too many holes. And because I was recycling pieces of pipe from the original cut, I had my intake line coming up the back and it really got in the way. So I redid it again. This one's a heck of an improvement.
Describing the photos in reverse order (462, 461, 460).
The first one is a shot of the floor. I connected all 4 standing corner pipes together and put a drain cap down at the bottom. When I dismantled the original rig, I discovered a lot of standing water inside the pipes, so I needed a way to drain it effectively. This way, the water just pools at the bottom until I'm done, then I unscrew it and it pours out.
In the second pic, you can see the distribution set up. Water comes up the pipe on the far left, over the top of the rig, and down to a center pipe that distributs it out to the 4 corners. In the middle, you can see the extra 2x4 for suspension purposes.
Finally, the full frame shot, you can see the intake pipe on the left side. I incorporated a valve into it to control water flow (though I have an additional valve on the hose connector). Below the additional valve is a capped off access pipe, for the connection of various water related toys to be used during showering. That valve there lets me turn off the shower water and just use an attachment, if desired.
The "walls" are basic at the moment, just a shower curtain loosely hung on, but I think I'm going to replace them with plexiglass type paneling. Gives the water better opportunity to bounce off and back at her.
The water pressures is amazing. Admittedly, I have good pressure in my house, but the changes I made were incredible. To sum up, it now pumps the water to the top and lets it pour into all four pipes. The piping is all 1/2" instead of 3/4". Each pipe still has 4 holes in them, but the top two are open whereas the bottom two have Mister jets in them.
So her bottom half basically gets a strong mist of water blown all over her, and the top gets the high pressure water sprayed right at her. That also reduces the amount of water coming out the bottom, increasing the pressure at the top of the rig. I think I can add even more holes to it, honestly.
Oh, and the piping is all screwed into place, not glued. So I can unhook the intake pipe, then unscrew the four corners from the top and bottom units, and slide everything out, leaving a standard support frame. I really like that frame, incidentally. It's just a simple standing box, but it has such potential!
We're already talking about adding additional paneling to it. So we can have plexiglass for showering, or bars for a jail cell, or plywood for isolation, or any number of things. Since she's so into water, she's also begging me to caulk on the paneling and seal it all up so the thing can fill with water. Preferrably while she's suspended by her ankles. But I'm not quite sure my skills are at that level...yet.
Haven't tried it out yet, but sure hope to soon. I'm sure those photos will be more entertaining. :-)
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