Water Supplies

Hi Chris

We can be extremely frugal with water when we need to be. We 'stock up' when at a plentiful supply; usually from a servo when re-fuelling. I ask first, so if they are unable to oblige we find a servo who will and purchase our fuel there even if it costs more.

I had a dilemma in north Queensland, when we stayed at a caravan park in Mt Isa and found the water unpalatable. As we were heading into the Artesian bore country, known for odorous water, i was concerned at how long we would have to make our supplies last. Fortunately we stopped at the caravan park at Boulia and the bore water was excellent. We topped up the tanks and filled a few cool drink bottles for a ready supply of nice drinking water.

We don't have fancy filters to use when drawing river water or the like, so i don't put this in our tanks. Depending on quality, i use it direct from the bucket for cooking and washing needs. If needing to conserve water we use this to have a basin 'bath' rather than use the shower.

Motherhen

Hi Chris,
We have 4 tanks with 2 separate pumps so we have one tank dedicated to drinking water while the other 3 run the bathroom and kitchen. Our drinking tank, if only used for that will last us one month.

The other 3 we will use any bore water to refill and have had no problems to date. If you don't like the sulphur smell of some bores, you can filter it with a silver impregnated charcoal element to take the smell out of it.

When camping by a creek or river or even a waterhole, we can turn off the water tanks by the taps and open up a suction line that goes out to the draw bar. From here we will use anything from a 40 litre bucket to a 120 litre collapsible bucket to draw water from via the suction line. This allows us to preserve the water in the 3 tanks and we just top up the big bucket as we need to from the waterhole/river/lake. The suction line is easy to install by replacing an outside elbow on the tank tap manifilold with a "T" piece and a short hose to a tap and then out to the draw bar with a length of hose and a standard click hose fitting on the end and a second tap.....Or Bushtracker will fit you out for about $60.00...job done.

As MH said, some bore water can be a little sub standard, however, we have found most to be OK and had no problems with calcification build up etc....yet.

Hope this helps
Cheers
Rick & Julie

Hello Chris,

Fully concur with Motherhen and the Innkeepers who both seem to have grown up with the peck of dirt. I can also add a few tips.....

You can get a 4-way tap tool from Bunnings Plumbers counter which will give you access to "security" taps which some authorities use in parks and along streets. It is a four way brass tool - very handy. The other one is a fitting to attach to a tap that doesn't have a thread on it, It has a rubber ring which can be tightened with a wing nut onto a tank tap. If the tank doesn't have enough head to to put water into your tank,you may need an in-line 12v pump.

We have one of these pumps and it can be operated as a submersible pump if you need to pump water out of a creek to your non-potable tanks, or directly to your Lemair washing machine.We have pumped water up 7 metres from the Darling River for this purpose.

Enjoy the bush...........Rob and Liz