Water Filter for RV and Checking Water Source
RV Lifestyle & Repair EditorsDescription
One of the more important issues to deal with when connecting to a city water fill is the quality of the water entering your RV. The water at RV campgrounds is required to undergo the same treatment as municipality water systems. All RV parks are required to keep an MSDS in the office and make available to look at upon request. This book should include the results of the most recent water test performed by the RV park or campground.
More rural sites only send in samples periodically and there can be issues with the water in-between tests. This, among many other reasons, is why it is so important to conduct a quick water quality test before hooking your RV up to any city water fill.
To conduct a water test you will need a purity sensor. This sensor will tell you if there are any impurities in the water, such as dissolved solids, minerals, metals and inorganic materials. Water purity sensors can be purchased at most RV supply stores, home improvement stores and select big box retailers.
Fill a jar with some water and place the purity sensor in it for about 10 seconds. If this test shows there are high amounts of dissolved solids, minerals, metals or inorganic materials, it might be best to find another location to stay.
Even with a pure water reading, it is still a good idea to attach a filter. The water filter for RV will help remove any sediments, taste and color in the water. This also prevents any sediment from entering your RV’s water system and clogging up the lines. Do not forget to include a pressure regulator when hooking up a water filter for RV.
When connecting up to the water fill supply at an RV park or campground it is important to know the source of the water, filter it and regulate the pressure. This will ensure you have quality water coming into our RV’s water lines during your stay.
Another important issue in the city water field, is water quality, all campgrounds are supposed to go through the same treatment as your city municipality and have an MSDS sheet inside the office. However when you get into rural areas that are on well systems. They're gonna send in samples periodically. And we could have some issues in between testing of those samples. Especially when you get into some areas with agricultural around, confinements, that type of stuff.
So I always like to test the water before I go into the campground. The first thing I would do is just pour a little bit into a container. And this happens to be a digital water quality purity tester. And I got this at Walmart. You're seeing a lot of your bigger box stores now are carrying more RV related supplies because they know you're gonna come in to the camp and to the parking lot, spend the night, come inside, buy food, that type of stuff.
So you're seeing them putting a lot more in. Now keep in mind you can't stay at every convenience store or large box store overnight in every city. Some cities have ordnances that don't allow any overnight parking. So make sure you either check with the manager before you stay there. Or there are several apps, RV camping apps that will have a Walmart filter on it and they'll tell you with comments from people that have stayed there or not stayed there.
So make sure it's okay to stay there. So what I do is I just put a little bit of water from the campground source in a jar. I take this purity sensor, put it in for about 10 seconds. Now this is gonna look for total dissolved solids. And it's gonna tell me if I have minerals, metals or any kind of inorganic material in there.
If I do I probably don't wanna stay there. Now the next thing I do is even if I have fairly pure water, I'm gonna put a filter in line because this filter is going to filter out sediments, it'll filter out taste and odor. So I may still have a good quality water but I wanna make sure that I don't have sediments coming through, plugging up my lines, that type of stuff. Now I could go to the Home Improvement stores and get the residential style. You've seen those in a lot of campgrounds.
The large blue filter that's got actually cartridges to go inside of it. Those are a little more expensive, a little more cumbersome. These again, your large box stores are carrying these, RV suppliers and it's just an in-line filter. It's a one off, I don't have cartridges or anything. So it's inexpensive enough that I can change it almost for the price of one those other cartridge filters.
So what I'm gonna do, the first thing is I'm gonna take and connect a pressure regulator to the front of this. I wanna make sure I'm not going over what my system can handle. I don't want a flood in the morning. I'm gonna hook this little flexible line up to it because I wanna make sure I don't have all the weight of this coming off so I'm gonna have it towards the ground. And I'm just gonna put it in here.
I'm gonna connect my line then up to here. And I'm just gonna continuously be able to filter my water coming inside. Now keep in mind I typically don't drink the water that comes in through the lines into my RV. I carry bottled water with me. But I wanna make sure I don't have sediments inside here, when I fill my tank I don't want the odors, that type of stuff.
Also the water coming from our campground source is gonna be hard water in most cases. So this will help filter out some of that sediment as well. If you wanna carry soft water, then typically you're gonna have to fill up from home and carry the weight of that water as you're traveling down the road. Now water weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon. So if I have a 100 gallon tank, I fill that up, I just added 830 pounds of water into my carrying capacity.
So I wanna be very careful, I know what my gross vehicle weight rating is and my cargo carrying capacity is. Don't overload your coach. So check your water source, it's a good idea to filter it so you don't have the odors and make sure you regulate the pressure.
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