How To Make Your Fresh Water Tank Last Longer When Boondocking
Boondocking (camping for free out in nature) is one of my favorite ways to camp. There is so much beautiful free land that you can stay on, often two weeks at a time.
When boondocking, we live off of the water in the fresh water tank, energy from our solar panels, and the food in our fridge.
Related Product: Get water from non-threaded hydrants using a Camco Water Bandit (click to view on Amazon)
Staying out in the same spot and boondocking for two weeks takes some planning. We need to plan our activities around water.
For instance, we can’t go on hour long hikes every day that will require a shower afterward.
We also need to plan our cooking, so we don’t have a ton of dishes to do every day. It can even be smart to plan your bathroom time as much as possible.
Today I would like to share ten ways to make your RV fresh water tank last longer.
Some of them might sound a bit crazy, but we’re doing them for one single reason: to be able to stay out camping for two weeks and not having to go dump and fill during that time.
Doing one little water-saving thing might let us stay out for another day, which makes it worth it.
Now, let’s get to the list.
See Also: How We Store & Transfer Extra Water To Our RV When Camping
10 Ways To Make Your RV Fresh Water Tank Last Longer
1. Cook Less
If you do meal prep and plan your meals, you can save water. It can be as easy as boiling a lot of pasta and keep it in the fridge.
A great tool that we use in the kitchen to cook less is by using an electric pressure cooker.
We can prepare a whole chicken in it, shred it, split it in small freezer bags, and bring it out for lunches and sandwiches throughout the week.
Cooking less means fewer dishes, which means less water used.
When you do dishes, don’t let the water go to waste, which we’ll talk more about below.
2. Don’t Waste Water
All ways to conserve water might sound like obvious ones, but there are several ways to use less fresh water while doing daily chores that you might not have thought about.
Save the cold water from the shower – You know how when you get into the shower and turn on the water, it takes a couple of seconds for the hot water to go through the pipes and reach the shower head?
It can be a good idea to save that water to wash your hands with or flush the toilet with. It’s water that will go to waste, and if you take a shower every other day, it adds up.
Keep a bucket or a small container next to your shower and fill it up with the cold water before you step in.
Do dishes in a bucket and use it when flushing the toilet – Another way to not let water go to waste is by saving your dishwater and use that to flush your toilet.
It’s also a great way to get some extra dish soap into your black tank to keep it well maintained and clog free.
See Also: How To Maintain RV Holding Tanks To Prevent Clogs & Odors
3. Shower Less
You should shower less to save water.
I get that it’s harder than that. There are ways to shower less and still go to bed clean though.
Baby wipes, shower wipes, dry shampoo, or just a wet towel can be used to get you somewhat cleaned up.
An easy way to use less water when you do take a shower is by taking a navy shower.
A navy shower means that you turn off the water while lathering and shampooing. This way you can take a shower using only a couple of gallons of water in total.
We’ve also found that showering when it’s warmer is better than showering when it’s cold outside.
Our showers are much shorter when we aren’t trying to warm up.
4. Use A High Pressure Shower Head
When taking a shower, a great way to use less water is by investing in a shower head with high pressure.
There are shower heads that can create excellent water pressure with almost no water flow.
They can also turn the water on and off via the shower head which helps you control how much water you are using.
5. Fill The Water Heater When You Fill The Fresh Water Tank
When you fill the fresh water tank in your RV, the water heater isn’t automatically filled.
That means if you have a 50-gallon freshwater tank, and a 6-gallon water heater, you’re missing out on 6 gallons of water when you head out to boondock.
To fill the water heater when you fill the fresh water tank, turn on the water pump but not the water heater. Turn on a faucet in the trailer and set it to hot/warm. After a couple of seconds, the water heater will start filling up with water.
You can hear the water heater getting filled depending on where it’s located. When it’s full, you can turn off your water pump, turn on the water heater if you would like, and fill the fresh water tank to full.
6. Install A Composting Toilet
Composting toilets don’t use any water to flush, which can save you a lot of water.
The most popular composting toilet for RVers is the Nature’s Head Composting Toilet (click to view on Amazon).
It’s an odor-free way to go if you don’t want to deal with the black tank anymore.
See Also: How To Do Laundry Efficiently When Boondocking Or RV Camping
7. Install Low Flow Aerators On The Faucets
Aerators add oxygen to the water coming out of your taps, and it’s the same idea we have seen earlier in shower heads for RVs.
So why would you add oxygen to the water and what does it do?
It improves the water pressure, creating a more evenly pressured stream of water and all while using less water, helping you conserve the water in your fresh water tank.
So how do you install them? Just screw them onto the heads of the faucets.
Here’s a 6-pack of a great 0.5 GPM faucet aerator on Amazon.
8. Get A Solar Shower
A solar shower is a bag that you fill up and place in the sun. The sun then heats the water, and on warm sunny days, it only takes a couple of hours to reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit which will give you a pretty comfortable shower.
Solar showers have a small plastic pipe coming out of the bottom leading to a shower head, so all you need to do is hang it up or place it on something that’s taller than you are.
Solar showers use gravity to send the water to the shower head, and they don’t need an electric pump.
I have used my solar shower when I have been boondocking, and it has worked out surprisingly well each time.
The hardest thing about it is if you’re taking a shower outside and it’s windy. The wind makes your wet body feel cold real quick. A great way to stop that is to get a pop-up shower tent and stake it down (click to view on Amazon).
Of course, you could also use the solar shower inside your regular RV shower.
The solar shower I recommend is the Advanced Elements solar shower (click to view on Amazon).
You will find cheaper options, but they’re less expensive for a reason.
My first solar shower was bought from Walmart, and it quickly broke because the handle couldn’t handle the weight of five gallons of water.
It’s heavier than you might think, which is why I recommend one with a sturdy handle.
See Also: How To Clean/Sanitize RV Water System And Holding Tanks
9. Take Advantage Of Free Bathrooms
Free bathrooms are available everywhere, you just have to look for them.
If you’re driving out to your boondocking spot, and see a free bathroom five minutes from your camp, why not use the free bathroom so you can save water, black tank space, and stay out longer?
Sure, if you wake up in the middle of the night, you shouldn’t get into the car and drive five minutes so you can pee, but when possible, take a short hike to the free bathroom that won’t use any of your precious water.
10. Stock Up With Water Jugs
This is not a way to conserve water, but a way to make your water last longer. Even if you only have three full 7 gallon water containers (click to view on Amazon), you’ll still have 21 additional gallons of water to use while boondocking.
My fresh water tank is 48 gallons, so with four of these containers, I could fill half of the tank and be able to stay out another week depending on usage.
A popular product I have seen used is the Aquatank (click to view on Amazon) that folds when not in use and can be stored easily.
Pair it with a portable water pump (click to view on Amazon) and you can fill up the fresh water tank without having to move your camper.
How do you save water? Feel free to share your tips in the comments down below!
Love your site But, do you have a page that shows set-up of the Truck and trailer at the top of this page?? I wish to do a similar set-up but, w/ kayak & motorcycle (somewhere on rig:) Thanks Ed