Filling the Freshwatwr Tank

[trailbiker]

There is another option when dry camping which is to fill the the tanks from the fresh water taps at the dump station. We dry camp so we use the fresh water tap at the dump station to fill our tanks by connecting a garden hose to the freshwater drain under the trailer. You do not have to open the trailer to do this. You do need to add piece of tubing and female connector to the bottom of of the drain lines. The tricky part is timing the flow of water to fill the tank without over filling it. We dry camp at state parks a lot. We often go to the same parks so we khow long to leave the freshwater spigot on to fill. That's the tricky part. There might be others on this forum that that have better ways of measuring how long to fill. We camp a for two or three days at time so we only fill to about 1/2 a tank. I don't want to tow with 25 gallons of water, so this method works well. If you want to fill your tanks it would be tricky not over fill. I don't know any method to measure the amount water going in, so we don't fill to the top.

[Larryjb]

Just be careful using any hose beside a dump station. Others may use their sewage contaminated hands on the hose which could add nasty bacteria to your freshwater. In a perfect world, everyone washes their hands before handling the freshwater hose. In the real world, just watch how many people wash their hands in the washroom after <ahem>, need I say more?

You could always have a bottle of 10% bleach on hand and give the end of the hose a quick squirt with the bleach solution before connecting it to the freshwater drain as Trailbiker says.

[rtcassel]

Originally Posted by Bill

... I bet if you find a way to detach the entire black piece from the trailer wall (probably 2 or 3 screws), you could rotate it 180 degrees so the nipple is at the top. (Maybe only 120 degrees if the vent hose is too short.) Then re-attach it. Drill new screw holes if needed, and caulk around it. Yes, the vent hose will be a bit lower than the fill hose - but who cares? It just means that the tank will begin to overflow when the water level is 1/2 inch lower than before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXofssQBDKw