In this Sea To Summit Pocket Shower review, I’ll explain how to use this shower, the product details, and my personal experience with it, over a few camping seasons, and in the backyard over the summer. Having a nice shower at camp, or in the wilderness, can have a significant positive impact in your attitude and relationship with nature. And there’s no downside to throwing this little shower, which when packed is about the size of a pants pocket, into your pack, regardless of where you’re going. But let’s get into the details to be sure it’s right for your next trip.
Sea To Summit Pocket Shower
- small enough to fit in a jacket pocket or small compartment on a backpack
- warms up in the sun
- 70D nylon treated with polyurethane and seam sealed
- can hold up to 10L of water, but less than 1/2 of that can provide an adequate shower
Pros and Cons
Pros: Multiple ways to hang the shower using the belt, the plastic loops and included cord, or even a carabiner and your own paracord. Packs small and light enough for backpacking, or even day hiking. Capacity and run time are long enough to have a relaxed shower; this is true even at half capacity, if you turn the water off while soaping up. Cordage included is long enough for a variety of hanging scenarios, and can double as a clothes line for backpacking/camping.
Cons: You have to prop the shower up on an object if laying it on the ground, otherwise water will seep out the top flap. A bit difficult to hold with one hand, and fill to capacity from another vessel, or a faucet with a spring loaded shut off valve, like those found at potable water stations in established campgrounds. At full capacity, it will weigh 22 pounds. Plastic threaded nozzle can easily be stripped when tightening too much, leading to permanent leakiness.
Features
The features of the S2S Pocket Shower include:
- comes with zippered storage bag
- 70D nylon with polyurethane coating and sealed seams (70D = similar to 4 season tent wall or bathtub)
- nozzle twists to open, close and control the flow rate of the shower water
- holds up to 10L of water, but less than 1/2 of that provides an adequate shower
- folds up to 5.5 x 3.25 x 3 inches
- black color to maximize solar gain
- wide open top for easy filling, that uses a fold and buckle closure system
- cordage and plastic loops included to hang the shower
- weights a little over 5oz. and feels lightweight
Price
The price of the Sea To Summit Pocket Shower is usually in the mid $30 dollar range. As of the writing of this article, the price both at REI and Amazon is $36.95. You can check the price on Amazon by clicking that big ol’ button at the beginning of this article; the one that says ‘check the price on Amazon’!
The price is comparable to other hanging bag showers, but none of those are compact enough to fit in a jacket pocket, or next to a headlamp in a small compartment of a backpack.
Portability
As mentioned above, this is likely the most portable solar bag shower on the market. When folded up and placed in it’s storage bag, it’s only 5.5 x 3.25 x 3 inches, or about the size of a human fist. I leave mine in the outer, top compartment of my Gregory backpacking pack. But it can fit anywhere. Indeed it’s so small the challenge is not to lose it in all your gear.
As far as carrying the bag when full of water, how much water you choose to use defines it portability at that point. It can hold 10L of water, which is 22lbs. But for an adequate shower, I’ve found you only need like 3L or so, which is 6.6lbs. So it’s portable in that respect as well.
The fold-up-and-buckle top is hardy and allows for easy carrying of the bag around camp (to find some sun).
Capacity
The capacity of the shower bag is 10L or 338 fluid ounces. As previously stated, you really only have to fill it up to around 3L, or 100 fluid ounces to get a decent shower. But if two people are going to use the same fill, I probably would fill it up to at least 7L, or 236oz. Though it gets fairly heavy near full capacity:
| Number of liters of water in pocket shower | Pounds of weight of that water |
|---|---|
| 3 | 6.6 |
| 5 | 11 |
| 7 | 15.4 |
| 10 | 22 |
I haven’t measured the flow rate, but according to REI, the full 10L provides a 7 minute, continuous shower. That’s 1.4L/minute or 0.38 gallons per minute. Compare that to a low flow, home shower head, that produces 1.8 gallons per minute. Still yet, I’ve always gotten a nice shower from it (see Functionality below).
Ease of Set Up
The Sea To Summit Pocket shower is about as simple as it comes, regarding solar showers on the market. It doesn’t have any hoses or other unattached parts to it. As long as you follow my hanging instructions above, it’s, for the most part, easy to use.
However, if you are using a typical California campground potable water spigot, it can be a little tricky to hold the bag with one hand and keep the spring-loaded spigot on with the other.
And if you’re hanging it, per my lever hoist method above, it can be a bit of a challenge holding the bag with one hand and throwing the cord over a tree limb with the other, or alternatively, leaning the bag up against your shins, as you hoist and subsequently thread the cord through the plastic loop near the buckle. Just remember that you can set the bag down, and the nozzle will disappear up into bottom middle of the bag, without it compromising its integrity, if you’re gentle in doing so.
How to hang a Sea to Summit Pocket Shower
Re-tie the factory knot
To hang your S2S pocket shower, the first thing you want to do it retie the factory knot, that’s tied around one of the two hard plastic hang loops at the top of the bag. It’s not the best knot, and eventually comes unraveled, I’ve found, when first experimenting with the shower. Try a fly fishing Eugene Bend Knot or a Taught Line Hitch Knot for a good secure knot. After all, it has to resist up to 11lbs of weight, if it’s under 50% of the gravitational force of a full bag of water.
Lever hoist method of hanging
Once I have my knot secured on one of the hanging loops, I create a lever system with the cord to make it easier to hoist the heavy bag with its small gauge cordage.
I find a tree branch that’s both high enough that I can shower under the hoisted bag, and low enough that I can toss the cord over a few times when creating my lever. Then I place my bag underneath where it will eventually hang.
Next, I toss the cord over the branch and string the end of it through the opposite hanging loop, relative to the one I tied my knot on. I then toss the cord over the branch again, except from the opposite side I originally tossed it from. This make a pulley, which makes it much easier for me to pull up to 10L of water from the ground to a position that would be over my head to shower.
Lifting the bag into the air
However I don’t actually try to just pull the end of the cord to lift the bag from the ground. I grab the bag handle on the top, and lift the bag into the air. As I’m lifting it, I pull the end of the cord to take the slack out of the line. Once I’ve got it lifted as far as I can, then I use the end of the cord to pull it a little farther up, so that the nozzle will be above my head. Or at least above my head, as I’m leaning over just to wash my face, hair, and underarms.
Once I have the shower placed in the air adequately I just tie the end of the cord onto whatever I can find: a tree branch, a tent stake that’s at a 45° angle in the ground, even a random campground sign in one case.
Hanging your pocket shower with only the belt
If there is a small enough tree branch, and you can reach it, you also have the option of hanging your shower just using the belt. It’s pretty straight forward. Just un-clip the belt buckle and re-clip it with the belt around the branch.
Functionality
Because the pocket shower, inside it’s carrying case, takes up very little space, and it so lightweight, it can function as a shower where other camping showers, or even bag showers cannot.
It can be thrown in a backpacking pack, with no worry as to space/weight, and can just as easily go in a day hiking pack for a quick rinse off, before heading back to town. Just glancing through the online reviews, looks like some folks are even using their Sea To Summit Pocket showers at the beach.
It has a generous amount of cordage, such that it can be hung from tree branches at a variety of heights and orientations. Further this cordage is long enough to double as a clothes line when backpacking/camping.
The run time is more than enough to take a shower. I never fill the bag further than 1/2 of its capacity, and I always have water leftover after every shower.
The shower area and flow rate is also adequate enough to wash your hair and body. I’ve never had a situation where I’ve had soap left in my hair, or anywhere else, because the shower size and flow wasn’t up to the challenge of washing me off.
Functionality challenges
Now if you want your shower warm, you do have to wait around for a while after filling it, so that enough solar heat gain can occur. This can be a little tricky in the field, as even when you’ve folded the top over, multiple times, and buckled it, it still will leak from those folds. Thus you can’t lay it on it’s side, on a picnic table, rock, or other surface that is naturally exposed to the sun. And you can’t hang it in your tree, as it will shade the sun out, such that the bag doesn’t warm up.
I’ve had some success in filling the shower bag up, then propping it up against a rock for it to warm up in the sun. However I don’t know how well this would work if you wanted to leave it propped up against an object all day to heat up, while you’re out hiking, fishing, or otherwise away from camp. The propped up bag naturally wants to fall over from the weight of gravity, and from the fact the structure of the bag is not rigid, and is semi amorphous, like a water balloon. Any significant disturbance could knock it over.
Further, the sun also changes positions in the sky all day, so you’d want to place it somewhere where the solar gain of the noontime sun can efficiently heat it up. This is when the the solar rays are hitting the earth in a perfectly parallel fashion and provide the maximum solar gain.
Construction and Durability
The S2S pocket shower’s 70D nylon walls, with polyurethane coating and seam seals, makes it comparable to a 4-season tent wall or bathtub floor. I’ve leaned it up against large rocks on the ground to sunbathe, and even when the bag occasionally tips over, sliding along these rocks, no abrasive damage happens to the walls of the shower. I don’t expect it to fail at the point of the wall construction.
I have noticed, however, that when your bag is full, and you do want to lean it up against a rock or object, so that it doesn’t fall over and leak from the top folds, the nozzle naturally pushes up into the bag. This means the bottom of the nozzle is sitting at the same horizontal plane of the ground as the surrounding areas of the bag on its bottom. More to the point, this is creating a stress point in the patching where the nozzle is attached to the bottom of the bag. I don’t know from experience, but this does look like a potential point of failure after long, heavy use in the field.
Be careful turning the nozzle on and off
Further, the on-off mechanism of the nozzle, where you screw the nozzle left and right to turn it on and off, does feel a bit cheaply done. There are cautionary notes on the bag that say not to over tighten it. Doing so will strip the plastic screw threads on the inside of the plastic part of the nozzle. Then you’re going to have a leaky shower. I’d say this will be the number one point of failure. But if you’re careful and don’t ever over tighten it, then you’re probably okay for several summer seasons of use.
Also because of the delicacy of the plastic nozzle, and the likely future failure point of the nozzle assembly patching to the bag, I certainly would take caution never to drop it, when it’s full of water.
Personal experience regarding durability
I’ve been using my Sea To Summit Pocket Shower over a few seasons now. Lots in the backyard, in the summer, just to save on the water heater and water utility bills. I’ve used it in Los Padres Paradise Campground, at Lake Arrowhead’s Dogwood Family Campground (with water so cold, it makes your scalp numb!), and San Simeon State Park’s Washburn Campground. So far I haven’t had any quality issues with it, and it works the same now as the first day I bought it. If anything comes up, I’ll post it here.
Further Reading
Thanks for checking out my Sea To Summit Pocket Shower review. If you want to check out more camping gear reviews, check out my page dedicated to just that by clicking this link.