Our Story
My name is Zack Jarrett and I’m the founder of OutdoorHandwashingStation.com. I live in Tucson, Arizona with my wife, Jessica, and our daughter, Julia. We’re a family of builders and educators.
When the Coronavirus pandemic shut down public life we felt helpless. We Zoomed with friends, sent lots of mail, and started washing our hands more than we ever had in our lives!
As students began returning to school in Fall of 2020 it was clear that handwashing was going to be a big challenge. We knew handwashing is one of the simplest and most effective ways to stop the spread of germs, but where was everybody supposed to wash up?
Here was a problem we could solve!
Our First Build
Washing the hands of a school one student at a time would take all day! What schools needed was a wash station that could be used by many people at once.
Our first solution started with a sheep trough. It was the perfect size for sheep, but way too small for people, so we welded up legs to lift it off the ground.
We had a bunch of used copper pipe leftover from a remodel that we recycled into the water distribution manifold. Jessica and our young neighbor worked all day cutting and preparing the pipe then Jessica soldered into the night. She had never soldered before but by the end of the night she was sweating fittings like a pro!
After paint and assembly the result was this gigantic 10-person handwashing station. We gifted it to Jessica’s school and it’s in daily use today.
The Second Generation
It was clear through conversation with teachers and administrators that more handwashing stations were needed. Lots more. The sheep trough was great but it was expensive and just flat out too long.
A local construction firm donated four pieces of leftover, unused, 18 inch sewer pipe for the project. We cut it to length and then in half long-ways. Thanks to the firm’s generosity we had enough troughs for eight new handwashing stations!
We broke out the welder and chopsaw again and got to work fabricating frames from 1 inch square steel tube.
It really was a family affair! Desert Metal Works donated laser-cut aluminum for the end caps, which our daughter installed, and several of our teacher friends helped with plumbing, metal prep, painting, and assembly.
For the second generation we switched from copper to PVC for the manifolds. The copper worked great but it had several big drawbacks: it was expensive; it was labor intensive to build; and it was an invitation to thieves. PVC was a great solution and would be easy to repair in the future, if needed.
After several weekends we had built eight of these 6-person handwashing stations and donated them to six schools.
Building and donating wash stations was great fun and incredibly fulfilling but we had hardly scratched the surface of the problem. We had built capacity for 58 people to wash their hands at a time but there are THOUSANDS of students in Tucson.
Which Brings us to Today
After all those weekends building Outdoor Handwashing Stations we knew the only way to increase our impact was to scale up production and go into business.
We began working on designs based on five design principals. After considering our needs we chose to use folded galvanized steel for the structure for it’s light weight, ease of cutting/forming, and durability. We chose PVC for the plumbing for it’s affordability and ease of field repair or replacement.
We are not standing still, though, design wise. We continue to innovate and revise as we see what does and doesn’t work. When your Outdoor Handwashing Station is delivered you will receive the latest iteration of the product.
Our Outdoor Handwashing Stations are manufactured right here in Tucson, Arizona to be shipped to your school, church, park, or sports team. We’re currently producing a second prototype and expect to move into full production by the end of March 2021.