An outdoor shower is the one thing you buy to keep something out of the house. Sand, salt, chlorine, lake water, the dog. It goes in the yard so none of that crosses your door. We carry three: a cedar post on a pad, a panel to stand behind, and a cedar room with a door that closes. Tell us where yours would sit and we will tell you what that spot needs.
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Dundalk LeisureCraft Skylight Washroom and Shower Combo | Cedar Barrel Shower with Acrylic Dome
Vendor:LeisureCraftRegular price $9,591.00Sale price $9,591.00 Regular priceUnit price perFree Shipping -
Dundalk LeisureCraft CT Sierra Outdoor Shower | Eastern White Cedar Pillar Shower
Vendor:LeisureCraftRegular price $847.00Sale price $847.00 Regular priceUnit price perFree Shipping -
Dundalk LeisureCraft CT Savannah Outdoor Shower | Eastern White Cedar Privacy Panel Shower
Vendor:LeisureCraftRegular price $1,202.50Sale price $1,202.50 Regular priceUnit price perFree Shipping
Outdoor Showers for Sale: Types, Plumbing and What the Rules Actually Require
The shower itself is the easy part. What decides whether yours is a twenty minute job or a permitted plumbing project is not the cedar, it is the water: whether you want it hot, and where it goes after it hits the ground.
Almost nobody selling outdoor showers will tell you that. This page does, along with the question the whole category avoids, which is whether the shower head is even in the box.
Monthly financing available. We will tell you what your site needs before you order.
You come up from the lake with sand to the knee and salt drying on your shoulders, and you do not go inside. You stand on warm cedar boards, pull the lever, and rinse it all off under the open sky before the house ever sees it. That is the whole argument for an outdoor shower, and it is a good one.
The seven decisions, in the order they actually matter
Answer these in this order and the shortlist writes itself. Answer them out of order and you find out about the plumbing after the cedar has arrived.
- Hot water, or cold only? This is the fork. Cold only can mean nothing more than a garden hose. Hot means a supply line, which means a trench, a plumber, winterizing, and usually a permit. Either way, where the water drains is a separate question with its own rules.
- Where does the water go? The single most overlooked question in the category, and the one that is genuinely regulated. More on it below, because the answer surprises people.
- Is the fixture in the box? Ask before anything else. It is excluded far more often than the product pages admit, and it changes your budget by hundreds.
- Plumbed, or fed from a hose? This follows from the first two rather than being a separate taste. It sets your cost, your permit exposure and how much work November is.
- How much privacy do you actually need? Measured against your neighbor's upstairs window, not against your own fence line.
- What happens when it freezes? Cedar does not care. Water sitting in a pipe does.
- What does it stand on? Deck, pad, gravel or concrete, and the drainage answer above largely dictates which.
- Does anything here need a permit? Ask before you buy, not after. The trigger is almost never the shower itself.
The sentence this whole page rests on
The fixture is not what is regulated. The destination of the water is. A shower fed by a garden hose that drains onto grass and a shower on a plumbed line that drains to a proper system are treated very differently, and the difference has almost nothing to do with which shower you bought.
The eight kinds of outdoor shower
Price bands below are what the market sits at as of August 2026, gathered from live listings. They move, and they are here to set expectations rather than to quote you.
A post or stand with a head on it, fed by the garden hose. Cold water only, no plumbing, and it comes in and out with the season.
Renters, poolsides, and finding out whether you will use one at all.
A freestanding cedar pillar, or a taller slatted panel you stand behind. Both can run on a hose or be plumbed hot and cold, which is why they are the most common shape sold.
Most backyard and poolside buyers.
That band is genuinely that wide because two different products share the name: vinyl and imported wood kits at the bottom, and walk in cedar barrels with a roof at the top.
Full privacy, and anywhere the shower is a destination rather than a rinse.
The other four, briefly
Wall mounted showers fix to the house or a pool house, which makes the plumbing run short and cheap because you are already at the wall where the water is. The trade is that you shower where the building is, not where the view is, and any drainage sits right against the foundation.
Solar bag and tank showers heat by sitting in the sun. Genuinely off grid and genuinely cheap, but you get the temperature the weather gives you, the volume is a few gallons, and in a cool week you get a cold shower.
Plumbed hot and cold is not really a separate product so much as a specification you apply to a post, panel or enclosure. It is covered on its own below because it changes everything downstream of it.
Portable and camping showers are pumps and bags for a trip, not a fixture for a yard. If that is what you want, it is a sporting goods purchase rather than this page.
We do not sell solar, wall mounted or portable showers, and we describe them here because you cannot choose well without knowing what the alternatives are. What we do carry is below.
We carry one of each of the three shapes that matter: a post in the CT Sierra, a privacy panel in the CT Savannah, and a walk in enclosure in the Skylight washroom and shower. All three are cedar. The post and the panel will run cold from a garden hose or be plumbed hot and cold; the enclosure is a plumbed installation and the plumbing is yours to run, so it is not the one to buy for a hose fed rinse.
Choosing between the three
We carry one of each of the three shapes that matter, which means the decision is not which brand, it is how much you want between you and the rest of the yard.
| CT Sierra | CT Savannah | Skylight | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shape | Post you stand beside | Panel you stand behind | Room you close the door on |
| Privacy | None. The spot has to be private already | A wall at your back | Complete |
| Footprint | 31 by 31 inch pad | 40 by 40 inch pad | 7 feet across |
| Water | Hose or plumbed | Hose or plumbed | Plumbed, and you supply it |
| Fixture | Not included. Add the hardware or fit your own | Not included. Add the hardware or fit your own | Not included |
| Price | $847 | $1,202.50 | $9,591 |
| Best when | A rinse beside a pool, sauna or plunge, in a spot nobody overlooks | You want cover without building a structure | Sand and salt stay outside, and the shower is used properly |
- Free freight on all three to the contiguous 48 states, with cross border charges included.
- A delivery estimate on every product page before you order, which is more than anyone else in this category publishes.
- Monthly financing available at checkout, subject to credit approval.
- Built to order in Ontario by an authorized dealer, with a 5 year residential limited warranty, parts only.
Still deciding between the three?
Describe the spot, tell us whether you want hot water, and we will tell you which of the three fits and which one to skip. It is usually a two minute answer.
Call (888) 500-5675Does the shower head actually come with it?
This should be the first question on every product page in this category and it is on almost none of them. Ask it before you ask anything else.
A great many cedar outdoor shower kits are exactly that: cedar. Walls, posts, a door, a bag of fasteners. No valve, no shower head, no riser, no supply fitting. Some list their full contents without ever stating that the plumbing is excluded, so a buyer reads a complete looking parts list and reasonably assumes water will come out of it. Watch for wording along the lines of all hardware included, which a normal person reads as complete while the seller means fasteners rather than plumbing.
The result is that you can spend well over a thousand dollars and receive a wooden box with no way to make it work, then discover the fixture is another few hundred and, if you wanted hot water, a plumber on top.
How to check in one minute: find the words "included" or "what is in the box" on the product page and read the list itself rather than the summary. If it names boards, posts, hinges and screws but never names a valve or a head, the fixture is not in there. If the page will not tell you, ask before you order, and treat a seller who cannot answer plainly as the answer.
Every shower on this page states it explicitly. Ours ship without a fixture unless you add one, we say so on the product page in those words, and the hardware is a priced option you choose rather than a surprise you discover. That is not a boast, it is the minimum the category should be doing, and it is part of why we publish how we sell rather than only what we sell.
Hose fed or plumbed: the decision behind every other cost
Nobody frames this as a choice, and it is the choice. Everything downstream follows from it.
| Garden hose fed | Plumbed hot and cold | |
|---|---|---|
| Water | Cold only, at whatever the hose gives you | Mixed to temperature, year round |
| Install | Connect a hose. Often no trade needed | Buried supply lines, a plumber, usually a permit |
| Winter | Disconnect the hose and walk away | Shut off, drain down, and blow the lines out |
| Movable later | Yes | No, it is where you put it |
| Season | Realistically summer | As long as you are willing to heat it |
In July, hose temperature is the point rather than a compromise, and a great many owners of poolside showers never want hot water at all. The case for plumbing it is shoulder season and the school run: a cold rinse in October is a different proposition from a cold rinse in August.
If you do want it hot
Three things are worth knowing before you price it. The distance matters, because a long hot run sitting full of cold water gives you a wait and a waste every time you turn it on. The valve type matters, because a plain mixing valve outdoors will swing with pressure elsewhere in the house, and a pressure balanced or thermostatic valve is what stops that. And the hot line is the thing that forces you to winterize at all, so choosing hot water is also choosing an autumn chore for as long as you own it.
One supply-side rule that applies even to the simplest hose setup: a hose connection is a cross connection, and the plumbing codes require hose bibbs to carry a vacuum breaker so shower water cannot be drawn back toward your drinking water. In freezing climates the code calls for a frost proof hose bibb with that protection built in. It is an inexpensive part and it is not optional.
Where the water actually goes
Barely anyone selling outdoor showers covers this, and the pages that do treat it as a drainage detail rather than a legal one. It is the part that is genuinely regulated, so it is worth five minutes before you buy rather than a conversation with an inspector afterward.
Start from the definition, because it is the thing buyers get wrong. Under the model plumbing codes a shower is a plumbing fixture, and a fixture that discharges liquid waste is required to be connected to the sanitary drainage system of the building or premises. Nothing in that definition turns on whether the fixture is indoors or outdoors. Water from a shower is graywater by source, wherever the shower happens to stand.
There is one exception and it is narrower than people expect. Shower water may leave the sanitary system where it goes to an approved graywater system, and then only for flushing toilets or for subsurface irrigation. Read that twice, because splashing onto the lawn is neither of those things.
The claim we are not going to make: you will read, on plenty of pages, that an outdoor shower draining onto grass needs no permit and is nobody's business. We looked for a jurisdiction that explicitly permits drain to grade without approval and could not find one, while several states prohibit graywater surfacing outright. At least one page ranking on the first page of Google for this category publishes a permit test that matches no code anywhere. Do not plan around it, and do not plan around us either: call your local building department, because this is decided locally and the answer genuinely varies.
The realistic options, honestly
- Sanitary connection. The default the codes assume, and the one nobody argues with. It is also the most work: a drain, a trap, a vent and a tie in.
- An approved graywater system to subsurface irrigation. The exception written into the codes, and a real option in states with a graywater pathway. It is a designed system with a permit, not a pipe pointed at a flower bed.
- A dry well or soakaway. Common advice, and more complicated than it looks. Depending on construction these can fall under federal underground injection rules, and at least one state bans them outright. Ask locally before you dig one.
- A French drain or gravel bed. Widely used under hose fed showers and the least documented of any option. It moves the water rather than treating it, so where it ends up is still the question.
- Onto the ground. What most hose fed showers actually do. Be aware this is prohibited in some states and that ponding is prohibited essentially everywhere, so if it puddles you have a problem regardless of where you live.
- Into a septic system. Adding a fixture can count as increasing flow to the system, which in some states requires the system to be brought into compliance and a modification permit obtained first.
Which of those you need is set by three things: your state, whether you are on sewer or septic, and how much water you are actually putting down. A hose fed rinse used a dozen times a summer and a plumbed daily shower for a family of four are not the same question even though they look like the same product.
What actually triggers a permit
Almost never the shower. Usually the pipe, the drain, or the structure.
The residential code lists the plumbing work that is exempt from a permit, and the list is short: stopping leaks, clearing blockages, and repairs that do not rearrange valves, pipes or fixtures. Installing a new fixture is not on it. That single fact explains most of the confusion in this category.
| What you are doing | Where the exposure sits |
|---|---|
| Hose fed, no permanent pipe, no permanent drain | Weakest plumbing trigger, since there is no new pipe. The water is still graywater and where it lands is still regulated. |
| A permanent water supply line | New piping, so no exemption applies. Expect a plumbing permit. |
| A permanent drain connection | The clearest trigger of all, and several states require a permit for any graywater system. |
| An enclosure or structure | Small detached structures are often exempt from a building permit, but zoning setbacks, height limits and lot coverage are separate rules that an exemption does not waive. |
| Anything on septic | May require a modification permit before you start, not after. |
| Coastal property | A separate coastal permit layer applies near bluffs, wetlands and the tide line in some states. |
None of this is a reason not to buy an outdoor shower. It is a reason to make one phone call to your building department first, describing what you actually intend to connect, and to buy the shower that matches the answer you get rather than the one you hoped for.
What an outdoor shower really costs, all in
The complete set of installed cost figures published anywhere in this category amounts to two magazine ranges, one of which spans hundreds of dollars to tens of thousands. That is not useful, so here is the actual shape of it.
The purchase price is the part everyone quotes and the smallest variable. What moves your total is which of the four lines below you trigger.
| Line | Hose fed | Plumbed hot and cold |
|---|---|---|
| The shower | $40 for a bare hose fixture up to $10,000 for a walk in enclosure | Same, plus a fixture rated for it |
| The fixture | Often extra. Check before you buy | Extra, and a mixing or thermostatic valve costs more than a plain one |
| Water supply | A hose you already own | Trenching, buried line, a plumber, and possibly a permit |
| Drainage | Gravel or a soakaway, subject to local rules | A designed system, which may mean a permit and a contractor |
| Base | Pad, deck or gravel | Same, but it has to accommodate the drain |
| Every winter | Disconnect the hose | Shut off, drain, blow out the lines |
The honest way to budget it
Price the shower, then price the fixture separately because it is usually not included, then get one number from a plumber for the supply and one from your building department about the drain. Our three are compared side by side further up this page, fixture included status and all. If those two calls come back cheap, plumb it. If they come back expensive, buy the same shower and run it from a hose, because the cedar you are standing on is identical either way. Most people who regret an outdoor shower regret the plumbing bill, not the shower.
What it stands on, and who can see you
Two practical questions that get decided late and should be decided early.
The base
Your drainage answer largely picks your base for you. A shower that drains to a gravel bed wants to stand on something water passes through. One tied to a drain wants a solid, sloped surface that carries water to it.
- Cedar slat pad. The common answer under posts and panels. Water falls between the boards, the boards stay warm underfoot, and the whole thing can be lifted.
- Gravel bed. Cheap, drains well, and unpleasant barefoot unless you top it with something.
- Existing deck. Convenient, and worth checking what is under it. Water that used to run off a deck now runs off it every day, and joists dislike that.
- Concrete pad. The right answer for a walk in enclosure, because the unit is heavy and wants to stay level, and because a drain can be set into it. It is the same base question as siting an outdoor sauna or an outdoor cold plunge.
- Anything that moves. Bare soil and unprepared ground settle. A shower out of level is a shower that drains where you did not want it to.
Privacy
Measure this against your neighbor's upstairs window rather than your own fence. A six foot fence stops somebody standing in the next garden and stops nobody on a first floor. A post shower covers nothing at all and is the right answer only where the spot is already private. A panel gives you a wall at your back. An enclosure is the only one that answers the question completely, and it is the only one where the door side orientation matters as much as the height.
Two things people forget: screening planting is seasonal, so a shower private in July is exposed in November, and setbacks from a property line are a zoning question that applies to a structure whether or not it needed a building permit.
Winter, and how cedar ages
The two questions asked most often after purchase, and the two the category answers least.
Freezing
The shower does not freeze. The water left in it does, and what it breaks is the valve and the supply line rather than the wood. Which means the procedure depends entirely on which decision you made earlier.
Hose fed: disconnect the hose, let the fitting drain, and you are done. That is the whole winterizing routine, and it is a real argument for staying on a hose in a cold climate.
Plumbed: shut off the supply at the indoor valve, open the outdoor fixture to release pressure, drain the line down, and in a hard climate blow it out with compressed air. Cartridges and handles are commonly removed and stored inside. If the run is buried below frost depth and has a proper shutoff and drain, this is a fifteen minute job. If it was run in a hurry, it is the job you find out about in April.
The one that catches people: a standard hose bibb left connected to a hose in a freeze will hold water against the valve and split it, even though the bibb itself is outdoors and the pipe behind it is not. Disconnecting the hose is not tidiness, it is the actual protection.
Cedar
Cedar is the category default because it resists rot and decay outdoors without treatment and stays dimensionally stable. Left alone it weathers to a silver gray, which is a color change rather than a condition. You can keep the honey tone by sealing it, and that is a job you repeat rather than do once. Nobody publishes a reliable timeline for the graying, because it depends on sun and exposure more than on the wood.
Two distinctions worth understanding because they carry a real price difference. Species: Eastern White Cedar and Western Red Cedar are both used, often on the same product. Western Red is darker and more dimensionally stable, which is why it is the usual choice for larger structures. Grade: knotty and clear are the same wood, with the knots graded out of the clear. On some models the clear grade adds a meaningful amount to the price. It is a cosmetic upgrade, not a durability one, and anybody telling you clear cedar lasts longer is selling you the grade.
Wood left standing in wet soil is the usual place any outdoor structure gives out first, which is another reason the base matters more than it looks. The same cedar and the same reasoning run through the Canadian Timber range.
Which type suits which buyer
Three situations, and what actually fits each.
Poolside, summer only
A hose fed post or panel, sited where the water can drain away from the pool deck. Cold water is the point in July. Skip the plumbing entirely and put the money into the pad instead.
See the CT Sierra post shower ›Beside a sauna or a plunge
A rinse between rounds, so it wants to be close and it wants to be quick. Cold is fine and often preferred. A panel gives you somewhere to hang a towel and something to stand behind, and our contrast therapy guide sets out how the sequence usually runs.
See the CT Savannah panel shower › Pair it with a cold plunge ›The cabin or the shore house
Sand and salt stay outside, which is the entire reason. An enclosure earns its cost here because the shower is used properly rather than as a rinse, and because a door matters when the wind comes off the water.
See the Skylight enclosure ›Who should slow down: anyone planning hot water without having priced the supply run and asked about the drain, and anyone buying a kit without confirming in writing that a valve and a head are in the box. Those two account for most of the disappointment in this category, and both are free to check first.
Outdoor showers for a business
A shower used by guests, members or the public is a different question from one in a back garden. Pools, gyms, campgrounds, glamping sites, marinas and short term rentals generally fall under state or county rules for public bathing facilities, and those rules are written around plumbing and drainage rather than around the fixture you chose.
What that usually means in practice: a permanent drain tied into an approved system rather than a soakaway, a permitted supply, anti scald protection on hot water, an accessible route where the code requires one, and an inspection before anyone uses it. A hose fed shower draining to gravel is a residential answer and will not pass as a commercial one.
None of that makes it hard, it makes it a design question to settle first. Tell us the setting and we will tell you what the specification needs to be before you pick a model.
Specifying for a site rather than a backyard?
Our commercial team works backward from your local requirements to the equipment, which is the only order that works. That includes telling you when we are not the right supplier for it.
Commercial and B2B
Outdoor shower buyer questions
Does the shower head come with an outdoor shower?
Very often it does not, and this is the least disclosed fact in the category. Many cedar kits ship as woodwork only: walls, posts, a door and fasteners, with no valve, no head and no supply fitting, and some list their contents in full without ever saying the plumbing is excluded. Read the actual parts list rather than the summary, and if it names boards and screws but never names a valve, the fixture is extra. Every shower in this collection states it plainly on its own page, and the hardware is a priced option you choose rather than a surprise at delivery.
Do I need a permit for an outdoor shower?
It depends on what you connect, not on the shower itself. Installing a new fixture is not on the residential code's list of permit exempt plumbing work, so a permanent supply line or a permanent drain will usually need one. A hose fed shower with no permanent pipe has the weakest plumbing trigger, but where the water lands is still regulated, and an enclosure can raise separate zoning questions about setbacks and height. This is decided locally and it genuinely varies, so make one call to your building department describing what you intend to connect.
Do I need a drain for an outdoor shower?
You need somewhere for the water to go, which is not quite the same thing. Under the model plumbing codes a shower is a fixture that discharges liquid waste and is expected to connect to the sanitary system, with a narrow exception for an approved graywater system used for toilet flushing or subsurface irrigation. In practice many hose fed showers drain to gravel or a soakaway, and whether that is acceptable depends on your state and whether you are on sewer or septic. Ponding is a problem everywhere, so if it puddles you have your answer.
Can an outdoor shower have hot water?
Yes, and it is the decision that drives every other cost. Hot water means a supply line, which usually means a trench, a plumber and a permit, and it is also what commits you to winterizing every autumn. Worth knowing before you price it: a long hot run wastes water while it warms up, and a plain mixing valve outdoors will swing with pressure elsewhere in the house, so a pressure balanced or thermostatic valve is the part that makes it pleasant. If those costs come back high, the same shower run from a hose is identical to stand in.
Can I use an outdoor shower in cold weather?
The shower is fine in winter. The water left in it is not. A hose fed shower is winterized by disconnecting the hose, which is genuinely the whole job. A plumbed shower needs the supply shut off indoors, the line drained down, and in a hard climate blown out with compressed air, with cartridges and handles often stored inside. The classic failure is leaving a hose connected to a standard bibb in a freeze, which holds water against the valve and splits it.
Is cedar good for an outdoor shower?
It is the category default for good reason. Cedar resists rot, decay and insects without treatment, stays comfortable underfoot, and is stable outdoors. Left alone it silvers over a season or two, which is a color change rather than a condition, and it can be sealed instead if you prefer the honey tone. Two things to understand: species and grade are different questions, and knotty against clear is the same wood with the knots graded out, so clear is a cosmetic upgrade rather than a durability one. Where cedar actually fails is prolonged ground contact, which is why the base matters.
Is it cheaper to build an outdoor shower or buy a kit?
Building is usually cheaper in materials and more expensive in everything else. A kit arrives cut, matched and predictable, which matters on something that lives outdoors and has to stay square. The honest comparison is not lumber against kit price: it is lumber plus your weekends plus the fixture, against kit plus the fixture. And on both routes the costs that actually surprise people are the same two, which are the supply run and the drain, and neither changes depending on who cut the boards.
What is an outdoor shower called?
Outdoor shower is the usual term, and you will also see garden shower, pool shower, beach shower and, for the fully enclosed cedar ones, shower enclosure or shower cabin. A post or pillar shower is the freestanding column type. A panel shower is the taller slatted screen you stand behind. None of these are formal categories, so it is worth reading what a listing actually includes rather than relying on the name.
Where should an outdoor shower be placed?
Start from where the water can go, then work back to where you want to stand. You want somewhere it drains away from foundations, decks and pool decks rather than toward them, somewhere the ground will not settle, and somewhere private measured against upstairs windows rather than your own fence. If the shower is a rinse beside a pool, sauna or plunge, close beats scenic. If it is a proper shower, it is worth siting for the view and the sun, because that is why you will use it.
Where to go next
An outdoor shower is usually part of something else. Here is the rest of it.
Not sure whether to plumb it?
Tell us where it is going, whether you are on sewer or septic, and whether you want hot water. Those three answers decide the whole specification, and we will tell you honestly when the simpler option is the better one.
Call (888) 500-5675