Navy still do "showers?"

The USN enforced it back in the day by having the hot water convert to scalding steam (!) after a minute or two. Whether this was intentional or not was debatable.

 

There is plenty of uses of water where grey is good enough.

 

can you describe it? i wasn't in the service

 

i don't shut the water off. other than that, about 5 minutes at 2.5gpm. i guess 5x the navy though
mrs b takes a fairly quick shower, but one of our daughters, oy! and then the 3 hairdryers

 

Super easy to do at home if one of these doohickeys is on the shower head:



So you keep the preferred temperature you mixed, and just stop it temporarily for sudsing up.

Beware, though: during the time you are sudsing up, you've effectively created a closed circuit connecting the hot and cold water through the faucet, and convection will circulate the hot some distance back up the cold pipe. Then when you open the showerhead valve to rinse, you get a burst of 100% hot, until the cold water arrives at the cold side of the mix again.

A check valve on the cold line puts a stop to that nonsense.

 

Most of my adult life was/is working outdoors. When out in the woods, the only real option was buckets of water from a high mountain stream or wait for a big thunderstorm. Needless to say, we got pretty ripe. While jumping into a lake or stream was usually O.K., soap never was allowed.

Nowadays I am further up the career ladder and don't do as much field work -- plus I am considered "enabled" HAHA so skip a lot of the backcountry work, but I miss it and get out when I can arrange. Enabled by the way is one of the new terms for those with "issues." Hopefully, the term will be shortlived.

Yes, even miss the smelly parts, well, maybe not so much.
Kris

 

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink....

Sam Coleridge's poem nailed it.
One CAN, and some do take a (sea) salt-water shower, but it's not quite the same thing as a nice, warm, luxurious "Hollywood" shower!

The reasons for abbreviated showers on or in the big salt lie in the fact that fresh water can be sort of hard to make out on the pond, and if you're lucky enough not to have to rely on renewables for propulsion, the water has other and sometimes more important uses. It's also fairly heavy and requires specific storage, because things like to grow in water.
Humans are somewhat unique in that when they find themselves in enforced congregate living environments (such as jails, spacecraft and ships) they don't like to smell each other, and as we have become more 'civilized' our tolerance for these odors has diminished to the point that we sometimes bathe to excess.

Submarines have all of the usual challenges of the 'salt life' only in a much more concentrated form.
There are NAVY showers, and there are SUBMARINE showers....meaning that there is a very good chance that somebody is really paying attention to the number of seconds that you're wetting or rinsing.
This is, in part, because many of the subs out there have to use really REALLY fresh water to feed the bubbling kettle in the back end of the boat, and they also have to do it....(shhhh!).....quietly.
Yanking the salt out of seawater makes you a little less stealthy.

We used to use social pressure both to enforce regular bathing, and to conserve water.
If one was caught taking an unauthorized "Hollywood" shower, then they would be required to qualify for, and stand an 'evaporator watch' or three back aft.
Sometimes, very rarely, we would have people who were reluctant to bathe regularly requiring a threat of physical assistance with some scrubbing pads.
(YOU do it or WE do it!)
One particular advantage of submarines underway is that "water hours" (rationing) are ridiculously easy to enforce.
Once submerged, all you have to do is disable the water heaters...

TO THIS DAY I do not take warm daily showers for granted.
When I traded my sneakers and poopie-suits in for combat boots and 782 gear I discovered that when you camp out with 5,000 of your closest friends for weeks and months at a time showering can ALSO be an issue.
SO....absenting camping trips as a reminder, this planet will be orbiting a cold, dead star before I voluntarily go on water hours or take a submarine (or canteen) shower EVER again!!!