"Best" way to plumb an outdoor shower AND garden hose

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bha

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Hello all,

Had a seasonal home built last year. Home is located in Canada. So we shut the water off and drain the downstairs faucet in the winter when we leave. We don't fully winterize because we leave a heater on low all winter, and also we are there every few weekends (we turn on the water while we're there). This has worked through the entire winter with no problem.

Question about building an outdoor shower in the yard:

I had the plumber stub out two 1/2" copper pipes on the back wall, with shutoffs inside the house. One hot and one cold.

Shower will be located about 10ft away so I plan to run pex for the hot and cold.

The cold stubout will also be my garden hose faucet.

Hot side is easy... I can solder but prefer Sharkbite, so I plan to install the following parts in this order:
(hot stubout) > Sharkbite to Sharkbite coupling (1/2 x 1/2) > 10 ft of PEX to the shower > Sharkbite to MIP fitting for the shower(1/2 to 3/4 MIP)

No additional shutoff required, as I'll shut the one off in the house in the winter. The shower panel hooks on the wall and uses two 3/4 FIP fittings, so I plan to just disconnect the shower every winter, unhook it, and take it indoors. That will leave 10' of buried PEX connected to my outside faucet, and the faucet will be shut off inside the house.

Cold side is harder.. I need a sillcock for a garden hose. But I believe those have to be mounted/screwed to the wall so not sure how I can tee off the shower supply hose from there. I don't want to do it after the sillcock with a splitter, because the shower should be operable at all times (if someone shuts of the garden hose, I still want the shower to work)

Can I do something like this?
(cold stubout) > Sharkbite to MIP/FIP adapter > Tee (one end to mip/fip adapter, one end to shower, one end to sillcock) > Sillcock (hanging mid-air?)

Questions:
1. Will the 10ft of buried PEX be OK assuming a)shut off inside the house and b) disconnected at the shower end every fall. Or should I consider adding a tee with a cap somewhere early in the line so I can drain it right at the outside wall of the house?

2. What the heck should I be doing for the cold side of things? I'm confused as to how to add a garden hose. Seriously considering either doing the above, or eliminating the sillcock entirely and just putting a ball valve with 3/4" outlet which I'll screw my garden hose to. Things should look nice (ideally one or two silcocks mounted on the wall with a barely-noticeable PEX line going down the wall into the ground. The wall is finished nicely in stucco and is very visible.. so it has to look good. Would hate to have an industrial ball valve hanging mid air with a bright red handle :)

3. Any suggestions on improvement to make this cleaner/nicer? Does anyone make a sillcock with two outlets (one controlled by knob and one not) for example? Was hoping there was something "groundbreaking" like those nice Moen hot/cold knobs (for example) that could fit my shower/hose application.

Thanks!!!!!
 

Jim Mills

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Why don't you just Tee off the cold inside the house before the shutoff valve & install the sillcock through the wall the way it is suppose to be done. Keep it seperate from the shower all together.
 

bha

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I think I understand what you're saying, but let me clarify something...

You are saying I should Tee of inside the house, then just put on the sillcock as usual. So from that tee inside the house, you're suggesting I then run the pex down the wall and through the wall at the bottom? Then once outside, bury it over to the shower?

The house is on a concrete slab and is raised a bit from the ground. So in the back of the house, you can see a few inches of concrete at the bottom before the stucco starts.

It's a wall made of stucco (the new style where they roll it on to foam board, not the old really thick stucco)

So I'll have to drill a hole through the stucco (not a problem, I own an SDS rotary hammer). Once outside, I guess I'll have to put a 90 degree fitting in the pex, so it goes downward and into the ground. This will leave a few inches (maybe a foot at most) of the pex visible running down the wall and into the ground.

So I'd have a sillcock on the wall (cold), and a foot or two below it will be a piece of PEX coming out of the wall and into the ground.
Beside that, I'd have the hot stubout going into a piece of PEX which goes down into the ground also.

Is that correct?

By the way, thanks for your help... this sounds a lot better than my original idea.. much cleaner and keeps all of the tees indoors!
 

Reach4

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For the outside faucet, an alternative is the yard hydrant. That has the valve below the frost line, and when the faucet is turned off, it drains into the dirt or gravel .... you would not need to go crazy making a drain pit if your soil is at all porous.
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For a shower you would need to make provision to blow the water out with compressed air before the freezing season.
 

Cacher_Chick

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A garden hose is normally fed by a 3/4" supply line, particularly if you are using PEX, which has a smaller I.D. than copper pipe.

I too would recommend a regular hose spigot for the hose. Any piping must be installed in such a way that it will gravity drain when opened or can be blown out with compressed air before being left in freezing temperatures. PEX might not split every time it freezes, but it is not intended to sustain repeated freeze/thaw cycles.
 

Smooky

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Jim Mills

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