RV FEATURE
TRANSPORTING WATER TO CAMP
If you do a lot of free-camping and you want to stay in one location for an extended period of time, you are going to need a way to collect water and bring it back to your campsite. The best system we found was to purchase a collapsible water bladder and a small inline water pump.
The bladders come in all shapes and sizes. Some are even designed to fit into the footwell of the rear seats in your car. They can hold anywhere between 50 and 150L of water. Having one means you can leave your caravan set-up at the campsite, go fill the water bladder, and bring it back to refill your water tanks using the small water pump. When you’ re finished, the bladder can be rolled or folded up and stored away in a convenient location.
When shopping for a water bladder, ensure it is food-grade so it won’ t foul the taste of the water.
These submersible water pumps are ideal for collecting water from rivers.
We converted a canvas camp shower to collect water from our awning.
CATCHING RAINWATER
Have you ever noticed when it rains just how much water runs off your caravan awning? Let me tell you, it’ s a lot, and you can harvest a decent amount of water from even a brief shower. The trick is to catch the water falling from the awning and channel it into your water tanks.
You can buy purpose-built kits for harvesting rainwater from your awning, but it’ s easy to rig up a simple system using some spare bits and bobs you might have lying around. I’ ve seen old buckets modified with a drain hose used quite effectively. We used an old canvas camp shower that we removed the shower rose from and fitted a standard hose connection to, and this worked perfectly. It had the added advantage of being collapsible and easy to store.
/ 53