The Amenity Hut is really nice. It’s a 6′ x 12′ little structure with an enclosure for our composting toilet and for a shower. We mounted a sink on the outside wall. We have running water from the lake provided by a solar-powered pump and pressure tank.

It’s so nice to have a place to wash hands and brush teeth right next to the Pavilion. We placed a Katadyn gravity-fed water filter next to the sink to provide drinking water there, as the lake water can present giardia risks.

We get a lot of sun, so I figured we could do a crude solar water heater on site. I found a black steel pressure tank intended for storage of compressed air for tractor trailer braking systems. The plumber installed this in line with the shower (we split the line into a cold and “hot” side and ran them to a conventional Moen shower valve). This sort of works. There really isn’t enough surface area here relative to the 2o or so gallons of water in the tank to get the water very warm. Still, the lake water runs 65-70F and I think the “hot” side of the shower was about 80F. That makes a pretty big difference. The shower at that temperature is very nice on a warm summer afternoon. The less hardy members of the family supplement with one of those black plastic solar shower bags, which get up to about 105F. I think with some fussing I could get this to work better, but it’s not a bad first try.