haha I've always wanted one too. And with our new(to us) home it would be easy for me to put one in. Someone already ran hot water throught the garage and put a spigot on the side of the house.....

Regarding your question, I've used them before at several beach houses. Reagarding installation in KY, my main concern would be winterizing the shower. Easily accomplished with a few shut off vavles where your water lines exit the home, the type with bleeder valves on them. So you shut them off, unscrew a little cap and the water can drain out of the external water lines....

Another obvious issue would be proximity to your house and potential water damage. Where would you want it?

If it's far away from your home consider elevation change and pipe layout, so it drains one direction or the other to allow for draining of the lines in winter. You would also need to bury the pipes to a certain debth which could mean a lot of trenching.....

I'll think of more...

Shut off valves with bleeder caps sounds perfect. The place I'm looking at is about 5 feet from the house foundation, adjacent to a high deck. I would attach the pipes to the deck structure and actually build sort of an arbor type of enclosure for privacy with vines or roses growing up it with a cafe-style door on the front. I want the feel of being in the garden. I thought about using flagstone and pea gravel as the base and letting the water percolate through. I might possibly need to install some sort of french drain underneath to help disperse the water though. The only issue I see is that there is a perforated drainpipe running under that area already that comes from a downspout on that corner of the house which daylights about another 5 feet away. Perhaps I can tie them together and lengthen it, with the outlet near another garden bed. I'd like to utilize the graywater in the garden if I could to save on watering. I have good positive slope there so there is no issue of pooling water, and the soil is very well-draining. I've never seen that area wet, even after a heavy downpour.

Perfect! What's a cafe-style door?

What's the purpose of the shower? Do you just want to be able to take a morning shower in nature? Is it purly fuctional meaning I just need to wash off the dirt before going indoors to my super clean and tidy home? Combination?

If you want the feel of being in the garden, without the danger, I would suggest you make your enclourse quite large. The reason being bees, wasps ect. visiting your plants while you or someone else is showering....I would also imagine a firm smooth surface to stand on would be a must. Could be flagstone but the pea gravel will be a nightmare as it easily moves around if touched and it hurts when you step barefoot on a tiny stone on top of your flagstone....

You could put in a real drain and lay the flagston with mortar in the joints... you could also bury a large bucket with holes in it to get rid of the shower water, or tie into the black pipe as you mentioned...

Just don't forget the include enough space to change out of your cloths and into fresh ones in the area too, as well as a nice place to store towels etc....

I would want mine to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 6' x6' or 6'x8'.....

book for $12 plus shipping.....

Here is a link that might be useful: book of outdoor showers....

I guess I should have said what my original purpose was, and it is twofold, first to wash off the sweat and grime after a long day in the garden, and second, to get a quick reprieve from the summer heat, also while enjoying the garden when it's 98 degrees out (possible???). Maybe a third would be a place to wash off muddy feet after traipsing through the garden on a wet day. BTW, my home is NOT immaculate - I'm a gardener after all, but I like to leave MOST of the mess outside if I can!

I hear you about wasps and bees, they've been a personal phobia of mine for years - they love the deck area, the mud wasps scrape up their mud for their nests wherever they can get it, and it usually is under the deck after I've watered the pots. I can't do much about them though. As for other bees, I tolerate the slow moving bumblebees, they tend to ignore me, and yellowjackets don't seem to be a problem around the house, they have lots of forage elsewhere in the field. Perhaps I should just use foliage plants around the shower area - no delicious nectar plants that stinging insects love.

As for space considerations, a place to change would be lovely, but I think this has to be more economical in scope (meaning the place I want to put it won't allow for huge.) I suppose I could manage 6 x 4, maybe 6 x 6, but I want this to be a humble little washing off place, not a spa in California! I don't even care about changing rooms, just a hook near the door and a place for a spare towel will do.
Think - I'm grimy, I'm dirty, I'm sweaty, I'm too disgusting to enter the house - give me a lovely shower in the garden I've just labored over all day, let me throw on a towel and scamper up to the deck to dry off in the sun before I go in and get clean clothes on. That's the kind of shower I need.

Cafe style door?

Who's going to be building this, and how skilled are they/you?

Got a pic of the location?

Do you plan to use soap/shampoo in shower?

I guess what I mean by a cafe door is sort of a swinging "saloon" type door, one that you can look over and is high above the floor. My husband and I will be building it - we finished a large deck/pergola project two summers ago, the style will be based on what we used there.

Here's a photo of the pergola/deck project.

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The shower would be located at the other end of the deck, attached to the older part of the deck that was there when we moved in. It's been sorely neglected and in need of a makeover. The shower would go just to the left of the opening. I'd fit the opening with some sort of doors to hide the storage space under the deck. The railing there is about 7 ft. high which I think is adequate to fit a shower head on. Then I'd build sort of an arbor-type structure similar to the pergola but on a smaller scale at the height of the lower deck rail. The sill of the house is at the level of the upper deck surface. I'm going to need to figure out some sort of treatment for the back of the thing, where the deck rail is now - or I might just leave it the way it is.

Here's the area I talking about.

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Thanks for the tip on the book - I did purchase it, I hope it will help me with technical issues.

I'm only intending on using biodegradable soap, like Dr. Bronners or glycerine as this area is surrounded by plants.

Gardena make a garden shower that has simple fittings to attach to a hose pipe and is free standing, you then need a wooden grille to stand on and for the water to run through to whatever you plan for that. If you build it over a pit the water can be re-used. Then you need a screen made from a similar lattice to what you have already, you can have a regular shower curtain inside that if you want. Be careful of those roses!

About 50% of the houses in my area have outdoor showers. Most are atached to the side of the house and have a simple fenced enclosure of about 4'x4'. The piping usually comes through the rim joist and then runs up the side of the house.

Rather than relying on the little drain cap on the shut off in the basement, many people extend both the hot and cold downward in the basement and have spigots for each there as well. After the water is shut off from the horizontal pipes in the basement, those spigots are opened along with the outside shower, so they fully drain. They are left open until the spring just in case there is moisture buildup or a tiny leak. That way nothing freezes.

It is vert sandy in most places in my area, so a lot of people just have wooden slats to stand on and let the water run onto the ground through them.Others put in a drain and drywells. Some towns require them to be connected to the septic system.