PLAN YOUR WATER SOURCES
In order to solve this issue, many people will
install additional water tanks in their RVs. I’ve
heard of caravans with as many as five 95L water
tanks. That’s a lot of water and, more critically,
a lot of weight to tow around. Given the issues
many caravanners have with keeping their
weights within legal limits, it’s worth
remembering that 1L of water weighs 1kg.
Therefore, those five water tanks filled to capacity
will weigh 475kg!
For the vast majority of the time, there simply is no
need to fill all our water tanks. It’s just dead weight.
It makes sense to plan your water requirements
ahead of time and have the facility to use local
water sources as and when you need them.
My wife and I are living in our van for at least 12
months. We intend to do a lot of free-camping in
that time. Our caravan has three 95L water tanks.
One is dedicated to storing fresh drinking water
and has a single filtered outlet in the kitchen. The
other two tanks are plumbed into the remaining
outlets including the shower and toilet flush.
This ensures we have good quality drinking
water anywhere we go and we can utilise any
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other water source, such as a river or lake, for
personal hygiene. By carrying a suitable pump
and filters, we can replenish our stores as and
when we need to. If we run out of drinking water,
we have additional specialised filters that can be
plumbed into the pump outlet to purify the local
water source.
We also carry two different types of pumps. One
is powered by 240V and is basically a ‘sump rat’
style of pump that can be used to draw water
from any source, even if it is contaminated with
debris. It has a large sediment filter to remove
debris in the water before it is fed into our tanks.
The other pump we carry is a 12V pump that is
identical to the water pumps in the caravan. So
in addition to being able to pump water using
battery power alone, it serves as a spare should
one of our caravan’s pumps fail.
We also carry three food-grade water hoses and
sufficient connections to join all three to form
a single long hose. Even at caravan parks, it’s
amazing how much hose is often required to
reach the water source.