Drinking Water ??????????????

I kept my camper tank water for boiling,washing etc and bought 10litre casks of water at supermarkets while in the centre.
This applies only if you are inland and the water is heavily mineralised to the extent it smell or I suspected it would give us the runs. Along the coast you can just fill up at a tap.

Regards Philip A

We just fill at major towns these days, even place like Coober Pedy have good water these days.
We keep one tank for drinking water and the other for any mineralised or suspect water.

Hi nighttrain

How much water can you carry? We have adequate caravan water tanks (4 x 80 litres). One is plumbed separately as a dedicated drinking water tank. However when all are filled from town water supplies, they are the same. As we don't have fancy filters, i like to know water is good before putting it into our tanks. When stopping at a caravan park and needing to top up the tanks, i do a 'cup of tea' taste test first. We have topped up with town water at servos a couple of times and found it failed the cup of tea test, which was unexpected in these locations. If this happens, we have our drinking water tank in reserve. When water is not palatable (such as the deep artesian water at Winton) or not suitable to put into tanks unfiltered (eg drawn from a river with a lot of sediment), i use water direct from a bucket for the duration of our stay, saving the water in our tanks for drinking only.

We also carry a 20-25 litre canister or two of water in the tow vehicle for emergencies, breakdowns or camping away from the caravan, and a few cool drink bottles of drinking water in the car fridge.

With this system, we have not needed to buy drinking water.

Most water will be safe to drink if boiled. When my family toured Europe some years ago, we boiled all water for drinking, often boiling up berries from the roadside to use like a cordial as boiled water tastes rather 'flat'.

Motherhen

Just drink what comes, if it don't kill you it'll make you stronger, well so they say!

Anyhow we just fill er up with whatever comes. Some of it's pretty hard, occasionally it smells pretty bad, but boil it or leave it stand overnight in a jug and it's acceptable.

We carried 140 litres in total in our camper in 2008. Never ran out of water, and never had any dramas obtaining it. We did a lot of free camping and if we were running low and water was a bit far to travel for we always carried a small inflateable babys pool with us a set it up near the awning with a piece of chaing hanging into it to catch rain.
Whenever we were in a van park to do washing, we would always fill the tanks, some water may just taste a bit more crappy than others, but you just deal with it, Id rather be out drinking crappy water now than being at work 6 days a week.

anyway hope that helps a bit, just dont let worrying about obtaining water spoil a good trip.


cheers Unc

We have a 50 litre food grade water tank in the vehicle which we fill with filtered water from home. When on the road we then just buy the water from the supermarkets to top it up.

Eveything else goes into the jerry cans for cooking and showering.

Jack

We use a domestic .5 Micron water filter. When we come across a tap we hook it up in-line and fillup. Plenty of oprotunities and works well.
Cheers
Alex B

nighttrain
We have been on the road now for 6 weeks and filled our tanks at various places ,Thargominda,Cunnamulla,Bourke,Lake Cargellico,.... and always add a product to our tanks called WaterPure from BIOMAGIC. We even had a situation where we had to use creek water and after boiling and adding the good stuff,our cup of tea was good as ever.Its not cheap but very good
max

When travelling without a trailer (that has a water tank) we carry about 40 litres of bulk water and 30 litres of water in 3 litre bottles (juice bottles) This way we can keep "good" and "not so good" water separate. We fill up at every opportunity though, regardless of quality. We don't bother about filters, and have only rarely had to boil water - and have only once had any stomach problem (and them how do you know for sure that it was caused by the water?).

Nor do we buy bottled water - saw some tests once of the E. coli (bacteria) levels in bottled water and many of the brands tested were over the standard set for tap water.

We have found that either fresh lime juice or lime cordial is good to mask any unpleasant tastes.

Cheers,

Val

The only time we used our van tanks was where there was no water at parks.
Coral Bay, various Roadhouses and across the Nullabor were about the only places we needed to use it.
We have a dual filter setup and didnt get the runs or anything else from the water we drank.
We only filled the tanks prior to going to places where we would need it as dont see the sense in pulling an extra 150kg for nothing

You could ring the moisture out of camel dung like Bear Grylls.

hi
this self same topic on water was covered only about 6-8weeks ago
cheers

hi nighttrain
found the site its thread 80124- 16/7/10
cheers