Transferring fresh water when dry camping

pnichols wrote:

garyhaupt wrote:
A topic near and dear to my heart....more water. With my 24ft C, I am almost stymied. I carry 30 gallons on-b0ard. A bladder would be great...no room. I even considered putting one on my roof. I have just acquired two 5 gallon jugs that will fit in the tub and fold up to nothing once emptied. For now, I lift and funnel, but I have ordered a cheap plastic drill driven impeller set-up....like an in-line pump. We'll see.

Gary Haupt

Hi Gary!

Have you ever crawled underneath and looked up between the driveshaft and the two frame members that run the length of the chassis on each side of the driveshaft? Maybe a large capacity long and narrow custom fresh water tank could be installed in some space there on the side of the driveshaft opposite the side with the long tail pipe.

Of course the tank would be exposed - so to use it in freezing temperatures would not work - and perhaps a piece of steel sheeting should be installed on the bottom side of the tank to prevent any damage from road rocks.

I read some time ago of a Class C owner who installed a 100 gallon or larger fresh water tank somewhere up underneath the coach like I describe. You also have to be sure the chassis has enough extra carrying capacity to handle the extra weight ... however all the water weight would be down low so it could actually result in a more stable and solid feeling when going down the road (as opposed to adding weight up high which makes for an undersirable higher center of gravity).

I have a friend with a C with only 30 gals of FW, another friend that had many boats over the years had a 7 ft long FW tank from one of his boats in his garage, he installed it in a pass thru storage bay east to west to increase his FW to 60 gals. If you could do as Phil says and install the tank forward of the rear wheels it could help to redistribute some weight from the rear to the front wheels which seem to be light in these shorter C's. The boat tank my friend installed had baffles inside so that when you accelerate all the water does not shift quickly to the rear.