Keeping yourself hydrated is one of the most important aspects of staying healthy, especially while traveling. For this reason, determining how much water to keep on the bus – and how to ensure it wasn’t contaminated – was one of the most important aspects of planning our bus build.

The following article will focus on how we keep our water tanks full and provide some information about the importance of a water filter. I will also include a link to the filter that we have and include information about why I chose it.

As I mentioned previously, our bus can hold up to 20 gallons of water at once. These 20 gallons include a 16 gallon water tank, which we usually fill up to 15 gallons to avoid any overflow while driving. The remaining 5 gallons is held in a jerrycan for emergencies. We use the water to keep ourselves clean, for cooking, for dish washing, and, most importantly, for drinking. If you are interested in reading about any of the other articles I have written about the bus, they can be found here.

How We Keep Our Water Tanks Full

Our primary water tank is installed into the cabinet under our kitchen sink. Given its location and size, it would be quite inconvenient to remove from the bus each time it needed to be filled. For this reason, we have a hose attachment installed into the side of the bus that has a pipe going straight into our tank. We also travel with a 25 foot hose to connect our bus to the water source if there isn’t one available!

Similar to my article about finding places to park overnight, there are multiple methods that we use to find water on the road. These Include:

• Campgrounds or RV Parks are our least used option, considering we have only stayed in three campgrounds on this road trip. However, they nearly always have a water spigot, fill up station near the bathrooms, or the option to stay at a campsite with a water hookup.
• Harvest Hosts has been another good way to keep our water tanks full. Some of the farms or breweries that we have stayed at have allowed us to fill our water tank if we ask. This was especially helpful when we were on the east coast.
• iOverlander is one of our most commonly used sources to find water since we got to the western portion of the USA. We have been able to find a variety of source types including parks, gas stations, and truck stops that had water spigots that we could use.
• Friends and Family that we have visited on our trip have been great and allowed us to use their garden hoses to fill our tank when we stay with them.

Knowing The Difference Between Potable And Non-Potable Water

One of the most important aspects of getting water from a variety of sources is knowing whether you are getting potable or non-potable water. Since you have no idea where most of the water is coming from or what it may have been used for (especially in industrial areas), it’s important to ensure you are filling up on potable water.

Potable water is defined as “water that meets state and federal standards for drinking water.” Water spigots with this signification are typically blue or green in color. Red spigots mean that the water is non-potable, or unsafe for drinking.

The Water Filter We Use In The Bus

While all of the water we have filled our bus with has been potable, we still didn’t feel comfortable depending on a variety of sources. Being an Environmental Engineer, I know that drinking water facilities typically do a great job at treating water to make it safe for consumption, there are still many other issues to take into account.

It’s impossible to know whether the water you are getting from a gas station has pipes that are in good shape or that there aren’t any local issues with the drinking water systems. For example, there could be high levels of lead, bacterial contamination, excessive chlorine, and pharmaceuticals in the water.

The Filtration System

The filter we have is from a company called Aquasana and has three NSF certificatons for water quality. Not only does this filter do a great job of removing contaminants such as:

• Chlorine,
• Lead,
• and Arsenic,

but it also has been shown to remove:

• Pesticides,
• Herbicides,
• Pharmaceuticals,
• and PFAs.

We have been using it for nearly all of our drinking water and absolutely love the filter. It also has a great monitoring system to alert you when it’s time to change the filters. It was super easy to install, too. (click on the picture below to be directed to the aquasana website)

this is not sponsored in any way, but if aquasana would want to sponsor me, that would be cool.

Thank you for reading! As always, subscribe to be notified when we post something new.

– Hailey