Page 7 - Travelore - Winter 2017

DRVC Travelore - Page 7
Water Processing for the Motorhome
by Rod B. Kenly, Senior Vice President
This is the first of several articles concerning the process- ing of water in our RVs. I will have facts, and my opinion on what should be done. Your opinions may be different than mine, but I will try to present the data as well as I can.
In the next few articles, I will discuss the following:
• Water input
• Water filtering
• Water softening
• Water conditioning
I hope that you will find the information useful and a starting point for you to learn even more. Now let’s get started.
Our RVs are self-contained homes on wheels. We carry our own water, electricity, heating, cooling, food preparation facility, etc. The water portion may be the most important system that we have since it affects everything – it pro- vides water for drinking, bathing, and food preparation – as well as the water used for the waste system.
We have to get the water on board the RV for all these uses and into our storage tanks so that we may carry that water to various locations, making us mobile. RVs can store any- where from 40 gallons (small class C coaches) up to almost 200 gallons (for a large class A) – I think my coach has a 165-gallon fresh water tank.
There are a lot of schools of thought about how much water you should carry when you are going down the road. I start out with a full tank of water – that provides me with about 7 days of water – I’ve gone as long as 10 days on a single tank of water – and, for a large coach, that is pretty good.
One of the reasons that I start with a full tank of water – is that I know about my local water – I know the water pres- sure, I know the water quality, and I know what I have to do with it before I put it in my tank.
That leads to the first question – how do I store my system? First – my coach is stored in the garage – it’s nei- ther too hot nor too cold year round. It is recommended that you store your tank full of water so there is a mini- mum amount of air to breed bacteria. Many people also put in a few ounces of bleach in their system to keep stuff
from growing. If you are going to do that, consider adding the bleach by putting it in your hose, as it will also disin- fect the hose as you are adding it to your tank.
Since the tanks are in a bay, and the bays are kept closed – there is no light getting to the water to help grow algae. Algae uses photosynthesis to reproduce. So if your tank does not allow light in, algae cannot grow. When you get ready to leave on a trip, drain the tank and refill.
Which brings me to the second point – water pressure. Most if not all of our RVs use PEX water piping. While PEX is designed for 100psi, the water pumps in our rigs have an output of approximately 40 psi though some pumps can produce up to 55 psi. That means there is no reason water coming in to the coach needs to be at 100 psi/ In fact, most recommendations are that the water systems be pressurized at about 50 or 60 psi. That gives a lot of leeway to that 100 psi PEX rating. City water pressures can vary from 50 to over 110 psi. Our local city service pressurizes water at up to 90 psi. My home is currently at 70 psi.
Keep in mind that some RV campgrounds are on well systems with no hard criteria on the pressure from these systems. I have personally seen water pressure at less than 40 psi, and in excess of 100 psi.
So it is only smart to always use a pressure regulator when putting in water to your coach, or when running on city water directly. I have pictured two regulators below:
The regulator on the top is a fixed pressure one that allows 40-50 psi. The one pictured is a Camco unit. Valterra also makes one that handles a
wider range of pressures.
The unit at the bottom
is a variable unit, and is adjustable from 0-120 PSI. I use a variable unit, and I have it set to 52 psi. By the way, the regulator should be lead-free.
At this point we have water coming into the coach properly. I’m going to end this article here and move on to water filtering in the next one.