Drinking Water

The potable isolated water reticulation system.

Our drinking water system is totally seperate from the bathroom shower and kitchen washing-up supply.

The system comprises 4x60 litre interconnected water tanks. Each tank can be isolated from the others by seperate stop-cocks. The 4 tanks can be filled at the same time from a garden hose supply. There is no filler cap access to prevent louts from urinating in the water supply, it can only be filled by a hose with snaplock fittings.

Didn't you know that the hoons love to piss in caravan water-tanks? Think about the height of that plastic filler-cap on your van? Sheesh, I was a kid once and even topped up a few myself at various holiday caravan parks. You'll think twice about that nice cup of tea next time you travel hey. Trust me, it wasn't the Earl Grey tea-bags that gave it the tang, it was someones bad kidneys instead.

So like I said, the only way to access our water supply is through the locked side-bins, a couple of taps, and a half-inch fitting :)

The lower tank can gravity feed from any of the other 3 tanks, each independently valved from the others. We have done this to preserve the integrity of our drinking water, and to ensure that there is always a spare 60 litres on hand for an emergency.

The water is drawn from the lower tank through a 5 stage filtration system by a small electric pressure pump, and then delivered through drinking grade white tubing to the kitchen sink. The 5 stage filtration system not only removes particles from the water, but also has a 3 step deodorising process to remove any bad tastes.(In case someone does piss in it hey!)

The kitchen sink has a seperate extendable mixer for the hot/cold water supply for washing dishes etc drawing from the main water tanks, and a small water cooler type faucet on the kitchen sink that draws from the drinking water system listed here.

Remember that water-pump, well it is fused from the main electrical control panel inside the motorhome, so if a leak develops or cut-off pressure drops, the pump can be switched off to save wasting water. We will also be switching the pumps off while travelling.

To top it all off, the water tanks can also be filled by rainwater collected from the roof guttering during periods of steady rain.

The roof water plumbing system simply drains to the ground below under normal circumstances, and by flicking a switch a 12 volt diverter valve opens to direct the collected water into the tanks. This way we can let it drain for 15 or so minutes to flush away any dirt or bird droppings on the roof, before running the rain water into the tanks through a pre-filter.

So as long as we get rain, our drinking water system should be the same if not better than our rain-water tanks at home.