If I've been working outside that day, and the air's any warmer than 5C, I'm probably back there having an outdoor shower. Nothing fancy, just a hose with warm water coming out, a bottle of shampoo, a bar of Irish Spring and a few trees and shrubs for privacy.
Five years ago, I installed a hot and cold faucet off my back veranda, and it's turned out to be one of my best plumbing features. And not just because it allows the backyard equivalent of skinny-dipping.
Having access to warm water outdoors also makes a lot of other things possible. I wash off my youngest kids out there after they've spent a day in the sand pile. It's much better than dragging the filthy little fellows through the house and into the bathroom.
The system also gives me easy access to a bucket of hot water for washing the van, cleaning dirty hands and humanely washing pets. I've only heard of a few other houses with hot-and-cold taps outdoors, but I bet that's about to change with a new type of faucet.
When I went shopping for an outdoor-friendly hot-and-cold tap 10 years ago, I didn't find many units that fit the bill. In the end, I settled for a side-mounted kitchen faucet with a swivelling spout and two handles. This traditional design has worked well, though there are two problems with it.
The first is the distinct possibility of physical damage. It's one thing to have a faucet spout in a protected location over your kitchen sink, but quite another when that tap lives outdoors at knee level. Collisions with overzealous tricycle drivers, or an impatient gardener yanking on a 30-metre garden hose connected to the thing, always make me wonder how much longer my faithful faucet will survive.
Then there's the issue of winter.
My outdoor shower season ends when overnight temperatures threaten to drop below freezing, even though there might be plenty of warm days to come. That's when I'm forced to shut off supply valves in the basement and drain my outdoor tap. But that's not necessary with a new kind of outdoor faucet.
The unit I've been experimenting with is made by Moen, and it's unique as far as I know. They call it the "single-handle hot/cold sill faucet" and it does two things better than the side-mounted kitchen faucet.
First is the toughness of the design. The single, pullout knob offers nothing that can get knocked off or bent. It's short, strong, sleek and damage-resistant. You'd have to hit the thing with a hammer to break it. Pull out the knob to turn the water on, then rotate it one way or the other to control the temperature.
The Moen hot/cold outdoor faucet also includes the kind of automatic drain-back feature you'll find on the best traditional cold-only outdoor taps. Whenever you shut it off, water drains completely, so there's nothing to freeze and no need to remember the seasonal draining ritual. If you happen to need a bucket of warm water for washing the car during a January thaw, simply turn the handle. Water flows year-round with Moen.
The design comes in two lengths to handle exterior walls ranging up to 30 centimetres thick. Drill a 40 mm-diameter hole through your exterior wall at a slight outward slope, anchor the faucet with screws and caulking, then make hot and cold pipe connections inside. That's it.
A hot and cold outdoor faucet is one of those things you'll find more practical than you would have guessed before living with one. And if you've never enjoyed a steaming outdoor shower on a crisp, moonlit night in spring, you're missing out on what might be the best and most indulgent advantage of all.
-- Canwest News Service
