Quick review of our 12V USB-C mobile shower

Last December we wrote about our plans for a mobile shower. And today, I describe show how it actually works.

We currently use the shower, Brunner Aquafresh 2.0, in our Caravan instead of the built-in shower with the boiler to reduce the risk of legionellae and to conserve power.

We heat the water with a 2000W immersion heater which takes around 25min to heat the water to 43°C from 15°C (see the post linked above for more details on time and power requirements). And make sure to stir the water after heating before use.

The water is kept in a DIN96 20l wide-neck container from Comet with a special dust 2-hole cap to fit the hose and the elecitricity cable into it. The pump itself has a standard 12V car/cigarette plug that connects to a USB-C trigger board that takes it power from a USB-C power bank with Power Distribution (PD) 2.0.

Everything is kept within a 30mm PIR tube and glued together with hot glue. This does not look to nice but it works. To further “water proof” the device I keep it in a plastic zip-lock bag with the opeining upside down. See below for an even easier option for this.

The on/off-switch on the shower itself is not waterproof – but until never got too much water to produce a short.

To actually get the hose and the electricity cable through the plastic cap of the container I cut away the switch (as it could not be opened) and connected a new one (from Steffen, bought at Landi for 1,50 CHF).

The power bank must be able to deliver 3A @ 12V (the pump has a nominal power consumption of 35W). Water pressure is ok, but not great. Two people can consecutively shower from a 20l container (without washing long hair, of course).

We also use it in our cars as a mobile shower. On the road we only have a 1000W immersion heater, so heating up the water takes twice as long. But in the summer the initial temperature is much higher so it slightly compensates the total time needed.

UPDATE: instead of going through the hassle to build a USB-C to 12V converter yourself, you can also buy this item from Aliexpress. It is a sealed USB-C to 12V converter. It is much smaller than the tube-based device and costs only around 5CHF, but has no fuse.

Note, that there is a version with and without converter. I went for the version with the converter and with a cable length of 300mm.