The Best RV Showerheads to Save Water While Boondocking

To say that the showerhead is one of the first places manufacturers skimp on RV builds would be an understatement. They’re typically not worth the plastic from which they’re made. As a result, you may be looking for a replacement and wondering which is the best RV shower head.

If you love boondocking like we do, then along with a quality showerhead that has good performance features, you also want a design that will save water. Water conservation is vital to boondocking, after all.

To help you in your quest, we’ve done the legwork to provide you with five easy-to-install showerhead options. Let’s get to it!

Upgrade Your RV Showerhead to Save Water While Boondocking

If your pre-installed showerhead barely puts out a trickle, it has to be saving you water… right? Not necessarily.

If you’re all lathered up and ready to rinse off, is that little dribble going to do the job more efficiently? Or is something with a more robust stream of water going to win the day?

Let’s establish right up front that you’ll probably never get the volume and pressure of a household shower in your rig. Your water pump just can’t produce that amount of pressure, and the pressure regulator that all smart RVers use (you are using one, right!?) prevents high pressure from potentially bursting your RV’s plumbing.

But if you install the right RV showerhead, your shower experience can vastly improve. You’ll get a better shower and still conserve the limited water supply in your fresh water tank.

Best RV Showerheads to Save Water

There are a few common elements to the best RV showerheads.

First, they use technology that helps to increase water pressure. The showerheads we’re featuring here all provide excellent water pressure, working around the limitations of your rig’s water pump or the pressure-regulated city water connection.

Second, a good RV showerhead should have a pause/stop function, which is vital to saving water. Don’t be surprised, however, when the pause function doesn’t completely block the flow. Most of the time, pausing it will still allow a slight trickle of water, which helps keep the warm water flowing, so you don’t end up getting a blast of cold when you turn the showerhead back to higher flow.

Third, the water flow through the best RV showerheads is typically 2.0 gallons per minute or less. Like the pause function, lower water flow is critical for conserving as much water as possible. Let’s take a look at five of the best RV showerheads.

1. Delta Faucet Single Spray Showerhead

We’re going right to our personal #1 choice, and the one we’ve used ourselves for many years — an inexpensive little wonder from Delta. We both shower every day (that’s just our comfort level, while some RVers are fine skipping days). If we want to stay in one boondocking location for a while, this really puts the onus on both of us to be water conservation pros, which saves both fresh water, and gray tank capacity.

This little showerhead is amazing, allowing each of us to take a thorough, satisfying shower in one gallon of water or less! It’s a major factor in our ability to stay in one spot in the boonies for over two weeks at a time on our 105-gallons of fresh water and 65 gallons of gray tank capacity.

Staying put for over 14 days with a 65-gallon gray water tank (which is our limiting factor) means being very good with water management. 65 ÷ 14 = 4.64 — which means we only put about 4.5 gallons of water into our gray tank each day when we’re boondocking. That includes meal preparation and clean-up, and of course, showering.

If you don’t like the idea of adding a separate handheld sprayer for your RV, the Delta Faucet Single-Spray is an impressive, low-cost option. It’s super simple to upgrade to this showerhead… just unscrew your existing head, and screw the Delta on in its place. Couldn’t be easier!

The Single-Spray doesn’t come with a lot of bells and whistles but it does its job well. It screws on in place of your existing showerhead, delivers increased pressure in a full-body spray, and includes a pause button for conserving water. That button also allows you to control the amount of water flowing. When used properly, you can significantly reduce the amount of water you use for your shower, while still having a satisfying experience. We love ours!

It’s not only the least expensive showerhead in our round-up, but it’s also the only all-metal option on the list. And it’s backed by Delta Faucet’s lifetime warranty.

The Delta is also the only RV showerhead we’re featuring that’s just a showerhead, not a wand-style. While all of the following options CAN be used as a replacement for your existing showerhead (i.e. remove your current showerhead and attach the hose where the showerhead was), you’ll need to install some type of wall-mounted holder for the wand (included unless otherwise indicated).

Or, if you’d like to use any of the following wand-style showerheads as an addition to your existing unit, you can install a diverter valve in line, between the shower plumbing and your existing showerhead. Then just attach the shower wand’s hose to the remaining output from the diverter and you can have your choice. You can use a simple diverter… or an upgraded one that includes a holder to hang your new wand from (just be sure there’s room for the wand to fit… your ceiling in your shower may be too low for this option).

2. Oxygenics Fury Handheld

The Oxygenics Fury Handheld is everything you could want from an RV showerhead and then some. It comes with a 6-foot long hose and wall-mount adapter. Like all the other showerheads we think fit the bill, it promises increased pressure and the all-important pause function… while offering a few extra bells and whistles.

Oxygenics showerheads are well-known for providing an impressively satisfying showering experience, all while saving water. Their design infuses the water with air to expand each drop and significantly increase the output power of the showerhead. The result is a powerful, efficient, and soothing shower spray that you won’t find anywhere else.

This showerhead has rubber finger grips, which makes it easier to hold onto when wet. It also has five different spray settings, so you can choose the one that you like the best.

3. Oxygenics Body Spa Handheld

Another offering from Oxygenics, the Body Spa Handheld showerhead promises impressive water pressure with some serious style!

But the Body Spa isn’t just a pretty package. It has varying comfort controls to adjust the spray, offers a no-clogging guarantee, and comes with a 60-inch hose. The package also includes a wall-mounted holder.

It’s a bit pricier than the Fury but will save you water while upgrading the look and versatility of your showerhead.

4. Marbrasse Water Saving Showerhead

The least expensive handheld unit of the bunch, the Marbrasse Water Saving showerhead provides plenty of options with three spray patterns and a pause feature. Smaller outlet holes, arranged in a tighter pattern, provide increased pressure while maintaining a satisfying showering experience. The spray head also swivels 360 degrees, giving you control over where the spray is directed.

Note that the Marbrasse showerhead doesn’t come with a hose or a wall-mounted holder. It’s intended as a replacement for your current wand-style showerhead, screwing on to any existing standard 1/2-inch shower hose. If you don’t already have a hose and/or holder for your existing shower wand, be aware you’ll need to buy them separately.

5. Homelody Water Saving Showerhead

The Homelody Water Saving showerhead costs slightly more than the Marbrasse but adds some different spray settings for a total of five spray patterns.

It also comes in either a curved-handle or straight-handle style. Both have the same features, so it’s just a matter of preference.

Like the Marbrasse, the Homelody is an easily-installed, no-tools-needed replacement for your current shower wand. As such, it  also does NOT come with a shower hose or wall-mounted holder, and is, instead, designed to replace an existing wand-style head by utilizing your existing hose and wand holder.

Do You Have to Use an RV-Specific Showerhead?

You don’t have to have a showerhead explicitly made for RVs, but you do want a pause/stop function. If you’re purchasing a new showerhead, put this feature at the top of your list.

If you have an existing showerhead that you like, but that doesn’t have a pause/stop function, you can purchase an after-market inline pause valve. But, for the price, most people find one of the more affordable options on our list to be a better choice, thanks to the convenience and additional water-saving features.

Plus, as with any good RV showerhead, it will improve water pressure relative to your water pump’s limitations.

Other Tips for Saving Water While Boondocking

Aside from installing a good RV showerhead, there are a few other ways to save water and lengthen the amount of time you can spend on your next boondocking trip.

Wipe Dishes Clean Before Washing

Prepping your dishes outside of the sink is a simple, but often overlooked, boondocking trick. The less gunk that goes into your dishwater, the less water you’ll need.

Just wipe your dishes and utensils clean with a paper towel (or better yet, your already-used napkin… to save paper) immediately after using them.

As mentioned, saving paper is a worthwhile goal as well. So we generally avoid using paper plates. But when we’re in what we call “super boondocking mode” (our SOP when we’re planning to stay in one spot for as long a possible), we do make some use of paper plates, to conserve water.

Turn Off Shower Water While Lathering

With or without a water-saving showerhead, you can keep your fresh water tank fuller, and your gray tank emptier, longer by merely turning the shower off while you’re lathering up.

It’s called a navy shower. Rinse to get wet. Turn off the shower. Lather up. Turn on the shower for a quick rinse. You can save a tremendous amount of water when you don’t let unused water run down the drain!

Go Longer Between Showers

You don’t need to shower every day. No, seriously. As mentioned, we choose to do it, but we make up for it by being so good at using only a minuscule amount of water. We just sleep better if we shower every night before bed (it also helps reduce the frequency with which we need to wash our sheets… another helpful plus when off-grid).

Depending on your daily activities, you can go for at least a couple of days, if not more, without a full shower. Often, a wet washcloth or extra-large body wipes will do the trick to keep you feeling fresh and clean without showering. Either that, or practice getting crazy good at showering in very little water, like us!

Choose the Showerhead that’s Best for You

There are definitely compromises to make when boondocking. And there are many ways to conserve energy, generate less trash, and conserve water.

When it comes to water conservation, a few behavior modifications can be highly effective. But why skimp on a good shower, especially if you’re only showering every few days? A new showerhead is one of the easiest, most cost-effective ways to enhance your water conservation efforts, all while improving comfort.

For $10 to $60, and with minimal installation effort, upgrading your RV showerhead will save you gallons of water, extending your limits for boondocking and reducing your environmental footprint.

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