VAN FEATURES - Bathroom

January 2020 UPDATE: The more we travel in our Big Red Home the more we realise that some things just aren’t that useful for us. We’ve actually decided to ditch the portable hot water system and shower tent setup as we just weren’t using them enough to warrant them being hauled all around the country. By getting rid of these bulky items we’ve freed up enough room to upgrade our water tanks to something a bit easier to manage, not that our old system was that bad.

You may have noticed we don’t have any obvious bathroom in the van.

We debated long and hard over whether we would include one, and it is still a topic of discussion today, even after more than a year of vanliving.
That’s not to say we don’t have the means to shower and pee whilst travelling! We just forwent the official indoor shower feature and came up with some alternatives, as you’ll see below…

SHOWER
We generally use public facilities for showering, public swimming pools, gyms, coin-operated showers, caravan parks, backpackers & hostels. There is a surprising amount of showers around Aus and most of them are either free or fairly cheap.

We also carry with us a Companion Aqua Cube Logic Lithium with a Companion Aqua Cube Shower Stand which we bought almost-new from a little old caravanning couple we found online.
It takes LPG or butane gas, heats water almost instantly and has decent pressure. If we’re short on time/feeling lazy we’ll use it out in the open wearing our bathers, but if we want to get rudie nudie or we’re staying in a spot for more than a few days we’ll set up our Oztrail Ensuite Duo Tent.

TOILET
Mostly we use public bathrooms, but for emergencies we also have a 10L portable toilet, which we keep in a bag between the driver and passenger seats in the cab. Nothing fancy, but it does the job. If we’re stealth camping in a built up area for a night we just bring it into the back with us before we shut ourselves in so we don’t have to go outside to pee in the middle of the night or we’re staying in a spot for more than a few days we’ll chuck the loo in with our shower in the Oztrail Ensuite Duo Tent.

SO WHY DIDN’T WE INSTALL AN OFFICIAL BATHROOM IN THE VAN YOU ASK?
A FEW REASONS…
•Space. This was a big one. Every design we came up with seemed to seriously compromise the feel and flow of the vans interior, which for us was a big deal. We also knew that the dimensions of these bathrooms were sardine-can like at best (understandably), and seeing as Gary gets frustrated enough using a normal sized shower thanks to his height and extra-long limbs, we could just see us installing a pint-sized shower and then never using it as it.
•The possibility of mould/mildew/leakages. These were issues we really didn’t feel like tackling if we could avoid them. Too hard basket quite frankly.
•Cost. Making a water-tight cabinet with running hot water came with a seemingly never-ending list of pricey needs, and our budget just couldn’t stretch that far.