Bottled water vs not

[dadmomh]

Some recent posts got me to wondering how many of us use bottled water vs campground/bringing from home/other. Why re your choice?

We have the filter for the water system in Rocky, which does a good job. It's a new, fairly pricey filter FR has gone to recently, but DH used to say that the one we had in the ROO only got the big chunks out. This one seems much better. We had a PUR faucet filter in the ROO and liked it a lot, so put one in Rocky. We like the taste and the fact that it does remove other assorted "stuff". Usually we get a whole season with 4 refill cartridges.

We don't use bottled water because we don't like the idea of all those plastic bottles going into landfills. We have 4 reusable plastic bottles that we fill part way, put in the freezer before leaving and they go in a small insulated bag that goes in the truck....cold water enroute. Easy enough to refill, refreeze and start over. And these are designed to be reused.

[dahkota]

korbe wrote:

I wonder if California - or at least our part, has different regulations on drinking water standards compared to back east. We have no need to filter our water at all.

Well, 3 California areas are listed in the top 10 worst municipal water.

At the Berkeley Springs Water tasting this year:
Best Municipal Water 2014
Best in the World – Clearbrook, BC, Canada
Best in USA – Santa Ana, CA
2nd – Hamilton, OH
3rd – Greenwood, BC, Canada
4th (tie)– Dickinson, ND & Montpelier, OH
5th – Emporia, KS

But, best tasting does not mean safest. All municipal water supplies are required to meet minimum EPA standards. It gets a little sketchy when you get into private water systems (wells). We had no need to filter our municipal water in Maryland or New York City. On our farm, which had a well, we filtered the water because of the high calcium levels. Otherwise, it was safer than municipal water as there were no added treatments (fluoride, chlorine, etc.) and no contamination or lead (yes, we had it tested).

Filtering for taste is unrelated to filtering for safety.

[fla-gypsy]

My TT has a filter and I camp mostly in Gov owned CG's so I will drink the water provided.

[Caveman_Charlie]

I didn't read all 3 pages of this thread. I'm only a weekend camper. My local grocery store (HyVee) sells drinking water by the gallon for like 98 cents or so. After buying a couple of them I refill the gallon jug from my home water system most of the time. I'm on what you would call city water and I have a water softener and a Brita Filter.

[tenbear]

We use campground water for everything, including filling water bottles for daily use. Have never had a problem in 14 years of RVing.

[DiskDoctr]

Is it true bottled water companies do their own testing instead of independent labs? Saw it in a documentary.

Either way, we bring our own spring water for coffee and drinks, fw tank for all other tasks.

[jaycocreek]

The only bottled water I drink is out of the Sawyer water filter. I use it daily. Changes bad water to great water.1million gallon guarantee.

[memgrove]

Although we are not afraid to drink the tank water, we fill an igloo water cooler with reverse osmosis filtered ice and water. We each have our own refillable insulated bottles. We like it cold and ready and this makes it easy for us.

[mlts22]

Depends on what time of year I'm camping. Come the summer, the FW tank and ice are good enough.

Winter, when I'm camping in the unpredictable Texas weather that can be sitting at 90 degrees one day in February... several days later, a hard freeze hits, and the high may be in the low 30s for a week or so.

I use water bottles in the winter for a few reasons. If they freeze, they tend not to burst or leak, so I can leave them in my TT's refrigerator. Plus, I can also use frozen ones with my hard-sided gel packs to pre-chill my fridge when turning it on, come Friday.

I do have one caveat about bottled water: I always buy the stuff that is bottled from a tap. Not spring water (where water rights are being fought over), but from local tap water, or a place outside of Austin that uses filtered rain water for their bottles. I don't like using bottled water, so I try to minimize the impact done.

[NanciL]

We use bottled spring water for drinking and the camp ground water for everything else.
Our home water is spring and we hate the chemicals and or taste of anything else

Jack L

[TexasShadow]

IMO, bottled water is mostly a scam that creates garbage and uses resources.
I'm glad to see that lots of tourists are beginning to carry their own bottle and just refill it at places where they can. Yellowstone is offering water refill stations.

[wmoses]

We don't use bottled water. We have a filter in line direct from the spigot then it passes through the filter in the RV and that's what we use for everything but drinking. For drinking we fill a Brita pitcher.

[rfryer]

bdpreece wrote:
I have been making coffee and drinking the water from my tanks either brought from home or gotten in a campground for the last 40 years and am still alive and well. The DW on the other hand refuses drink the water or use the ice and has to have bottled water for everything except her shower. Don't think she has been any healthier than me all these years.

X2 except the DW doesn't use bottled water either.

[rbpru]

CG water but we carry 5 gallons from home in reserve. Sometimes buy bottled water for convenience. Also have a FW tank full from home.

We pay for recycling at home, so very little goes in the garbage; crush it, bag it, store it, recycle when we get home.

[doxiluvr]

We buy an occasional 8 pak of bottled water just to have if we go out for the day, otherwise we have excellent water where we are (Creede, CO), so we use it for everything.

[TexasShadow]

we have two filters on our fresh water and so we use the campground or truck stop water. never have had a problem in 15 years.