We live at a marina full-time. It just so happens to be a very nice marina with a very nice and new in 2015 facility that includes restrooms with showers, a laundry facility, a gym and clubhouse. Before the new building, the old restroom and showers were pretty lame. They were clean, but with only one shower stall per restroom, sometimes we had to wait in line to shower. It sucked. It would have been nice to shower on the boat, but when we gutted the head, we never re-installed the shower. Since we’ll be anchoring more now that we have new sails and the boat is basically back together, it’s time to re-install the shower.
I wish we had some photos or video of the old shower, but we just don’t. It can be briefly seen in our First Look At SV Ramble On video starting at about 2:05 , but the video quality is horrible. The head is small and it’s hard to get a good angle for a photo or video.
Plumbing & Fixtures
The plumbing for the shower is on the bulkhead wall shared with the salon. We routed it in the locker space behind the table seat on the port side and it ties into the existing hot and cold PEX pipe for the head sink.
The shower head is a Moen handheld mounted on a slide bar. The faucet handle and mixing valve is some weird brand we found on Amazon that would fit. It had a chrome trim piece we didn’t use. Instead Rich made custom teak trim and it looks amazing.
Sump Pump
The floor of the head is a teak grate over a small sump. The old Jabsco PAR 36600 sump pump was mounted at the opposite end of the boat behind the old electrical panel under the companionway steps. And it shared the drain in the galley sink. We simplified it a bit by installing the sump pump under the port settee and routing the outlet to the head sink. This way there is less plumbing hose and Pex pipe snaking through the bilge and the sump pump doesn’t have to work as hard. We installed a strainer in the line just after the outlet from sump to catch hair and other goo.
Of course, just after we installed the sump pump, it started leaking. So we had to buy a rebuild, take it all apart and install new gaskets and such.
Curtain and Track
Luckily, a custom shower curtain track was already installed on the boat, so we just reinstalled it and the custom teak mounting pieces. We also kept the shower curtain, which is washable. It kind of grosses me out to reuse it, but a new that’s washable one is over $100 (what the heck!). So the old one has been washed and hung up at this point. The shower curtain rollers are a little rusty so we’ll eventually need to get some new ones.
You have done so much work. I can’t wait to see the finished shower in person. I’ll try not to flush the toilet wrong again.
Ha! You didn’t do it wrong, you just didn’t do it completely right. No harm done though! See you in June!