Last year we purchased a small (1200')
older (1947) home in Boynton Beach Florida. The house originally had
two bedrooms and one bath. Somewhere along the line the garage was
converted to a bedroom and what I think was originally the laundry
room was converted to a half bath (sink & toilet) This converted
garage/bedroom has an outside backdoor that opens to a 6x12 foot pump
room that now has a washer & drier in it. Years (and years) ago
someone tapped into the sewer line and ran sewer and hot & cold
water into the pump room. When we got it, it had no roof and no
pump. We fixed it all: installed a new pump and put in washer and
drier. Has turned out to be a very nice little washroom. Anyway
back to the outdoor shower.

I love DIYing and the idea of a three
bedroom house with only one shower just didn't get it. Unfortunately
we didn't have the $10-15K it would take to try and put an inside
shower in. I started looking at outdoor shower kits. The bottom
line was that most would end up costing $1500-$2000 by the time I was
completely done. All of them were also much higher (taller) than I
wanted it to be, around 8'. So I said “what the heck”, I can
teach myself to solder and I can build the whole thing myself for
about $600 – which turned out to be completely true.

So here are a couple things I found
out. Learning to solder copper pipe is fairly easy. The big box
stores carry a very low grade of rough cut cedar. I was lucky in
that I already had all the power tools I needed ( compound miter saw,
circular saw, sander, table saw, various drill bits, all the stuff to
solder, etc).

I found a picture of a copper pipe
shower tree and copied that for water hook up. Have a rain shower
head and hot/cold water outlets at bottom of shower for whatever
reason may arise. I used rough cut 4x4 cedar (sanded down with belt
sander) for corner posts. I used cedar 1x6 tongue & grove on 1x4
supports for walls. One side of the T&G was smooth and finished
so had no prep work for the walls. I build the door out of left over
scrap pieces of wall T&G and a 1x4 cedar frame. The floor is an
area about 4'x4' filled with drain field stone and topped with a
cedar platform. The shower door is about 10' from the bedroom back
door. To top it all off we enclosed the area with a fence & gate
for a nice little privacy area. All in all it turned out as a great
little project and I love taking outside showers.

If anyone has any specific questions on
this project just ask.