Another Water Question..

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BinaryBob

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I've been studying a lot of the wonderful current and older posts. It seems quite a number of you will not drink from the holding tank. Is this due to the questionable water quality from the source? Or does the holding tank / hose create a bad taste? Both? Would a good in-line filter solve this problem?
 
We have always used our holding tank water for drinking.  If we find ourselves in a campsite with bad water, we just don't hook up to it.  We always try to have at least a half tank of good water on board when traveling.  We do have an ACD filter in the galley for filtered drinking water.
 
Good to know. Also just found the "fresh water" documentation in the library. Added a filter to my list of items needed. Don't need to worry about northern minnesota (where the water is pure and the children are above average), but for everywhere else, it just makes sense.
 
We also have filtered water in our coach, and we only drink water from our holding tank (90 gallons). We refill it as necessary but my personal preference is to use the water directly from my holding tank, and I always pull out of the driveway with a full water tank.

Kev
 
A lot of people are sensitive to skunky water, but we have a standard filter at the tank and then another filter in the residential refrigerator which has a water dispenser.

I have never hesitated to drink from the holding tank and we recycle it every couple of months, just for grins.

Possibly for people who are not full time in their rigs, it would be more of any issue and certainly personal taste (pun intended) has something to do with it.
 
BinaryBob said:
I've been studying a lot of the wonderful current and older posts. It seems quite a number of you will not drink from the holding tank. Is this due to the questionable water quality from the source? Or does the holding tank / hose create a bad taste? Both? Would a good in-line filter solve this problem?

We drink the water from our holding tank, bathe in it, wash dishes with it, and give it to the dogs. DW sometimes uses a Brita pitcher filter if there is a taste she does not care for in the water. We fill the tank in the spring when we leave FL, use and replenish the holding tank for the six months or so that we are gone, and then continue to use the water through the winter for our day trips and short overnights. The next spring we drain and sanitize (if I am not too lazy). I am a budget challenged person and waste a lot of money, but I cannot bring myself to buy bottled water.

 
We use the water from the fresh tank for anything and everything, whenever city water is unavailable.  Our coach does have a filtering system and all water, whether from tank or city inlet, goes through it. It's just a dirt and particulate filter, though.

But we have never been very picky about our water.
 
I am one of those who rarely drink the water from my tank. It is nothing to do with the quality of my tank, but everything to do with the quality of various sources of tap water. Even in my stick house, I rarely if ever drank water straight from the tap.

I bought a 2.5 gallon Brita water container with a spigot to fill my glass or tea pot for my coffee. I take water from the tap of the RV (or stick house before I went full time) and fill the Brita container, the 2.5 gallons generally gives me enough drinking  cooking water for several days and I cannot tell it from bottled water. If I plan on some extended dry camping I usually buy a couple 2.5 gallon containers of bottled water, more to save my tank water for washing dishes a short shower and flushing the toilet.

When I got my small 5th wheel, I dumped some bleach in the water system and cleaned it thoroughly and I can honestly say that when I filled in Montana with good clean clear water the water tasted fine right out of the tap. But being on the road full time, means hooking up to many various water sources and some have good water and others have bad tasting water....at one site this winter the smell was so bad I pumped the tank empty at the first opportunity and bleached and cleaned the system again.

It is a habit I have grown used to and it works for me....my next RV will have a "whole house" 3 stage filter system and it will be a none issue, but that is a couple years away.

I always travel with at least a 1/2 tank of water in the tank and if planning on boondocking then I leave with it full.

Everyone has different idiosyncrasy's and mine is the water I drink!

Jim
 
You bottled water fans might want to read this article, especially section 3.  Do you know where your bottled water comes from and what it contains?
 
I don't care what someone else thinks about bottled water and I don't care what is in it. It tastes light years better than the raw sewage that comes out of most taps. I have been drinking bottled water for well over 30 years and it hasn't bothered me yet. However when I was drinking from a tap I got sick from it several times.
 
SeilerBird said:
I don't care what someone else thinks about bottled water and I don't care what is in it. It tastes light years better than the raw sewage that comes out of most taps. I have been drinking bottled water for well over 30 years and it hasn't bothered me yet. However when I was drinking from a tap I got sick from it several times.
When I was young, I used to get sick drinking from a tap, but that hasn't happened in years.  Oh, wait.  You were talking about a beer tap weren't you? ;D
 
Molaker said:
When I was young, I used to get sick drinking from a tap, but that hasn't happened in years.  Oh, wait.  You were talking about a beer tap weren't you? ;D
Nope, I was not talking about a beer tap. I have never in my life drank a beer. I tasted it a few times when I was young and could not get past the taste or the smell.
 
We live on our ranch, with our private well water. Before we leave home I always fill our Fresh Water Tank in our Monty. We use the fresh water for drinking and all uses on the trip. When we expect to be gone longer than the water should last in the tank we take sufficient gallons of aditional well water in a few jugs with

We do this for the reason that our well water has the best taste for making coffee, tea, and cooking, etc. Neither my wife or I like the taste of the Chlorine that is in most city water or RV Park Water. this has been our experience for decades.

I do hookup and use RV Park water when dumping the holding tanks, using the RV Park water for rinsing the holding tanks after dumping.
 
I have what some describe as a :"Cast Iron Stomach" (Wish it really was some days) and I have been to parks where the water, as it comes out of the tap, was not drinkable.

A simple carbon filter fixed it for me... I do drinnk water from the fresh water tank on the RV, in fact from time to time I've found it to be better after sitting a bit on "Hold" as it were.  But only here in South Carolina.
 
Great comments. Further research indicates the water systems at campgrounds are classified as "Transient Non-Community Water Systems (TNCWS)" and are regulated by the EPA. http://www.epa.gov/ogwdw/publicnotification/pdfs/guide_publicnotification_pnhandbook_tncws.pdf.
Assuming our trips are of a duration that depletes the home fill, I would think a carbon filter in the main line is a necessity. I wouldn't trust camp operators to comply with the testing and notification requirements contained in this 80 page document.
If their well goes bad, their business is done. Do you think they're going to voluntarily wave that flag?
 
I think most of us hedge our water bets with filters, carry some good water in the tank, tote some store bought water, etc. so a stop at a bad water campground is not usually a calamity.

Bad campground reviews and word of mouth will put a little pressure on the bad water people, and fortunately you can always move on. The free enterprise system often works slowly but effectively - good water equals happy campers!
 
I think most parks do a decent job of keeping their water system healthy.  I have worked in several RV parks and all were required by state & local authorities to have their well systems tested regularly by a competent test lab. At one campground part of my job was to carry the monthly samples to the county's own health dept lab for testing. One campground was using the city water supply and they still were subject to random testing to make sure they kept their plumbing up to par.

That doesn't mean that all campground water systems are perfect, but neither are many small towns or restaurants.

By the way, the EPA document cited above is not EPA regulation - it is an advisory to state and municipal water/health authorities. They, not the EPA, are the organizations with legal authority over water supplies in their jurisdiction.
 
As times change laws evolve.. I mentioned up-thread a campground where the water out of the tap was not drinkable, but after filtering was just fine.. One campground I stay at in the summer has like nine wells, they do water quality testing EVERY DAY,  I filter their water too by the way.

I would never give a campground a bad review due to water unless the water quality issues were due to lack of maintenance on the park systems.  In neither of these parks is that a problem.

The park I'm in as I type sometimes the water is a bit over-clornated, but that is the city's fault, again , not the park's fault.
 
Water taste is a different question than water health/safety.  You may choose to filter or use onboard water if you don't like the taste of the water, whether it be a chlorine flavor, local minerals, or whatever.
 

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