Water refill when dry camping
We are finding ourselves camping without water hookups often due to the increase in camping families in our area. After an initial fill at the potable water spigot, we have been "topping off" the fre...
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My solution is those 5 gallon jugs that have a tube that can draw water off the bottom of the jug. It has a garden hose thread as a cap and you can attach a hose, or make one out of vinyl tubing and hose end repair pieces (so you dont get that hose taste).
A water bag with any way to attach a hose to it will work too as bags do not need gravity to empty.
To do this I had to splice in a 3-way "T" upstream from the water pump, thats between the pump and the RV water tank. This can be a "selector" valve, or what I ended up with is two ball valves, one on each pipe, one pipe from the RV tank and one pipe from the portable jug.
I jut put the jug on the floor near the RV pump and pull from the jug. My vinyl hose can just be pulled out when needed, or coiled back up when not. The ball valve is at the very end, so it does not lose water when detached.
The ball valve I used is from HD and in the PEX isle. Probably 3/8 pipe size. Brass. You can get a selector valve from RV supply also that are made for hot water heater bypass so should let you chose which pipe to open, but the PEX ball valve let me close the end of the hose so worked for me, and also made it easy to slide a vinyl tube over the valve conncetion.
I close or open these valves depending which source I need to pull water from.
I pull from the portable first before using the RV tanks.
This is similar to the solution of the diagram above, but is a little more closed-system, and I can always have a full RV tank if I am able to keep filling the jug. This is nice for boondocking as you always know you have a full tank when the water spigot runs dry or you don't have access to one...
A water bag with any way to attach a hose to it will work too as bags do not need gravity to empty.
To do this I had to splice in a 3-way "T" upstream from the water pump, thats between the pump and the RV water tank. This can be a "selector" valve, or what I ended up with is two ball valves, one on each pipe, one pipe from the RV tank and one pipe from the portable jug.
I jut put the jug on the floor near the RV pump and pull from the jug. My vinyl hose can just be pulled out when needed, or coiled back up when not. The ball valve is at the very end, so it does not lose water when detached.
The ball valve I used is from HD and in the PEX isle. Probably 3/8 pipe size. Brass. You can get a selector valve from RV supply also that are made for hot water heater bypass so should let you chose which pipe to open, but the PEX ball valve let me close the end of the hose so worked for me, and also made it easy to slide a vinyl tube over the valve conncetion.
I close or open these valves depending which source I need to pull water from.
I pull from the portable first before using the RV tanks.
This is similar to the solution of the diagram above, but is a little more closed-system, and I can always have a full RV tank if I am able to keep filling the jug. This is nice for boondocking as you always know you have a full tank when the water spigot runs dry or you don't have access to one...
