Water Filtration question

[SeaRay45db]

Originally Posted by sajohnson

The link in (#1) above is to a typical "city water" inlet.

Many people do remain connected to city water at campsites and other locations where water is available (residences, etc).

That's actually when the pressure regulator and gauge is a very good idea. Water pressure varies a great deal from one location to the next. In our experience the pressure is usually reasonable, but in a few cases is has been extremely high -- as in, it looks like the water hose is about to burst, and if the hose is disconnected from the water inlet and the spigot is turned on, water shoots about 20 feet out of the open hose.

Since we do not have a regulator or gauge yet (likely the next mod), we only use city water to fill our tank in those situations where the pressure seems high. There is no pressure applied to the plumbing then, because the water is just rushing into the tank. The last thing we want is a split water line or leaking connection in the rig. With a regulator and gauge, those worries are eliminated.

Avoid the cheap Camco regulators and get a decent adjustable residential pressure regulator.

With or without a regulator, it is good practice to turn off the water supply (pump or spigot) before leaving the RV/trailer. I've read too many stories of people coming back to find that a pipe burst and water has been pouring onto the floor for hours. The worst cases are when the toilet or anything else connected to the black tank leaks and causes the black water to back up into the rig. IIRC in at least one case I heard of an RV was totalled that way.

You are absolutely right about the need to keep sediment to a minimum. As I mentioned above, instead of the relatively expensive; inefficient; and clog-prone blue Camco filters, a better method is to use a standard size clear filter housing and any high quality sediment filter. We found some that filter to 1 micron (nominal) and are rated to flow 5 gpm. They work very well and are about $5-6 each. They easily last an entire season with little if any flow reduction. The clear housing is not necessary, but I like watching the water flow through and seeing what the filter traps.

There is absolutely no reason not to drink the water from the tank, as long as the owner does 2 things:

* Sterilize the tank and plumbing per mfr instructions. This is incredibly easy and takes very little time -- other than the time the bleach solution is left sitting, 1-4 hours in our case. We use a weaker solution of bleach and let it sit 4 hours. The result is the same, but the residual bleach smell is much less.

* Use a filter(s) that have actual NSF 42 and 53 certification -- preferably for all contaminants listed in 53. Buyer beware: Last I read, filter mfrs can claim NSF 53 compliance if their filter effectively removes even one (1) contaminant out of the dozens listed! I'm surprised the NSF allows that sort of deception.

We use a pair of under-sink Pentek filters ($24/pair) here at home. In the View we use a PUR filter attached to the faucet. Before looking into the PUR filters I assumed that they were probably just a "taste & odor" (NSF 42) filter. Turns out that they are fully NSF 53 certified as well. One $7-8 PUR filter will last all season.

BTW, CR has rated filters again. I'll post separately about that.

I will have to take some pics. I agree to turn off the city water, admittedly I forget all of the time, I guess I sill see if my pumps can keep up with the water, lol. Sand as we both agree is the killer. Tank, but more importantly to your water heater. We don't get that fancy with the filters, we make our own, so we can get the filters anywhere. We will actually change the filters out depending where we are. We use a pre-filter and a filter. As I have said, the other reason I don't drink is that my water tank is in my engine room. It sits behind my diesel generator, which also has my 450 hp cummins twins. Who needs a water heater! I think if you leave water in your tank long enough, you will have problems. Don't let it sit in the tank. Keep it fresh.

[sajohnson]

Originally Posted by SeaRay45db

I will have to take some pics. I agree to turn off the city water, admittedly I forget all of the time, I guess I sill see if my pumps can keep up with the water, lol. Sand as we both agree is the killer. Tank, but more importantly to your water heater. We don't get that fancy with the filters, we make our own, so we can get the filters anywhere. We will actually change the filters out depending where we are. We use a pre-filter and a filter. As I have said, the other reason I don't drink is that my water tank is in my engine room. It sits behind my diesel generator, which also has my 450 hp cummins twins. Who needs a water heater! I think if you leave water in your tank long enough, you will have problems. Don't let it sit in the tank. Keep it fresh.

You wrote:

"We don't get that fancy with the filters, we make our own, so we can get the filters anywhere."

That sounds like exactly what we do. I purchased a standard/generic clear filter housing for 2-1/2 x 10" filters. That way we can buy filters anywhere and have a wide choice. That's our sediment 'pre-filter'.

I would have done the same for the final/point of use (NSF 53) filter at the sink, but there is very little room under the sink in a View. The little PUR filters are surprisingly good.

[kpm]

I had an experience adding a whole-trailer filter to our 2018 25FBT that I'd like to share. We are using a filter housing positioned after the water pump along the lines of #18, but we had to do a bit of research to get a filter that worked well with it.

Our 2018 25FBT has a Shurflo 4008 Revolution pump rated at 3 GPM. We knew we wanted a 0.5 micron carbon block filter, and at first we tried a Pentek CBC-10, but apparently the 12 psi pressure drop of this filter was too much for our pump. When a faucet was turned fully on, the pump would continuously cycle on and off instead of running continuously. When shutting off a faucet, the pump would stutter five or six times instead of stopping pretty much immediately as it should.

A bit of searching turned up another 0.5 micron filter filter, the Pentek FloPlus-10, which has a smaller pressure drop of 2psi. With the FloPlus-10 our pump stuttering went away entirely - the pump sounds just as it did before there was any filter hooked up. The FloPlus-10 is a bit more expensive than the CBC-10 but is still very economical. I'm very happy to have found it.

One other thing - While the Shurflo 4008 is rated at 3 GPM, the FloPlus-10 specifications are stated for a flow of 1 GPM. I understand if the flow is too large through any of these filters, their performance can be compromised. We measured a maximum of 1.3 GPM at our galley faucet, so the pump, plumbing, and filter seem pretty well matched.