Is 50 gallons of fresh water enough for boondocking?

100 gallons would be better. When I purchased my Bounder, a big selling point was the 100 gallon water tank.

A towable is much easier to keep supplied with water using the truck, MH not so much..unless your toad is capable of that. That's one reason I chose a 5er.. I'm not into breaking camp to get water, and I don't like uber-conservation.

As a Child and early teens I spent summers at Grand Ma's or Uncles. No water nor electricity.
We bathed once a week. yes just like our Ancestors and hillbillies.
We worked hard and sweated it out.
Many many times I was down to the creek with a bar of her homemade lye soap.
The others did too infrequently. The rocks were clean in that cold spring creek too. No it it didn't hurt the fish of which I caught many.
I don't want to actually I would love to in the summer, if my arthritis would let me but practically won't do that any more. I wash every day sometimes shower before bed too especially if it is warm. I would like a two hundred gallon tank to replace our hundred gallon if there was one that fit.

My motorhomes always had an off/on button for the shower at the head.
You adjust the temp, wet down, turn off, soap up, turn on and rinse!
Saves a lot of water.

huntdooly wrote:
Is 50 gallons of fresh water enough for boondocking? I wonder how long that would last. It seems that the smaller rigs have a smaller water capacity.

With all the conveniences of home, except for Navy showers of course, you might make two days. I don't skip days for showering and we have both a marine type and tecma toliet that uses lotsa water, so with our 105 gallons, four days is pushing it.
As always, your mileage may vary.

Showers: I grew up on a dairy farm shoveling political promises (Well. same aroma in any case) so a daily baty was the rule.


Upon reflection the question in teh subject line is wrong
50 gallons IS enough for boondocking.. But FOR HOW LONG

1 night. 1 week 1 month. All depends on your water usage

For what it's worth, when I was a kid (11 years old to 14 years old... I'm 63 now), my parents had their Phoenix Travel Trailer (18 feet long), parked at a primitive campground, except for an occasional trip, it sat there all Summer long.

It only had a long extension cord that plugged into a power outlet like one inside your home. No water. Water was supplied by a single hand pump and no running toilets. There were 2 sets of out-houses, and DO I remember the stink.

We survived all Summer under these conditions for a few years in a row. Shower/bathing was never an issue for us kids especially. We swam in the adjacent river so much, we never had time to stink. Well, we might have smelled like the old river, but everything else did too. So body odes was never a problem.

Looking back on those days, it sure was simple. Get a bucket of water from the old hand pump, carry it about 1/3 of mile to our campsite, and of course... parents made us kids do that, and that bucket lasted all day long.

Strange how times have changed. I love my air-conditioning now!

Lwiddis wrote:
“ I have a hard time keeping track of the gray water as it seems to just disappear.”

Grey water doesn’t disappear. If you are dumping it on the ground say so. Oh wait, that’s a crime!

Very few places prohibit dumping your grey water, even in Kalifornia. Many CG encourage it. If you think it's a crime, good for you. However, it's not unless prohibited by local ordinance....Dennis

Topic- Showers. Apparently many people use most of their water for showers. We are seniors and grew up when people commonly took about 1 full bath or shower per week due to many reasons. Today younger people freak out over this and to us seem to be obsessive-compulsive over cleanliness. A long shower daily versus one every 2 to 4 days makes a lot of difference in water consumption. Yet this is sufficient with some variation with humidity and activity level.
.Health professionals will tell you that there is no health reason to bathe daily and it may even be harmful. Odor varies but seldom occurs when not bathing daily. Just a FYI.

FYI. Water weighs 8 lbs./gal.