Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

I'm wondering how many actually filter their water that they get brought into their trailer. Do you have a internal water filtration system? D you through a pump into the lake and take it as you need it? On board tanks?..my needs are a little different so I'm trying to figure out the lightest possible way to get water on board...and not get sick

If you are going to be consuming untreated water, you need to treat it, filter it, or boil it. Iodine treatment is easy and fast, but not very tasty. Ceramic "backpacker-style" filters are easy, but not fast, and one able to supply more than a little water is not cheap. Boiling is generally a PITA and not guaranteed to kill everything at high altitudes. I have no experience with gravity-fed "Brita" filters so can't attest to their efficacy at removing things like giardia.

Me, I buy drinking water at the water store in my refillable 2-, 3-, and 5-gallon containers. I generally use local tap water only for washing up and drink only purchased water. Even at home.

The best solution is to drink only beer


<Chas>

I have a two stage system which may become three, that can be used for all of the above. When in a park we use a carbon ceramic filter that takes out most stuff, for boon-docking take it out of the river or lake I add a Trav-L- Pure by General Ecology which is NBC and gets everything else. I may add a silt filter. I have two 12V pumps (do not know which one has the greatest lift yet, (both are new) and a five gallon flexible water container with a hose fitting so it can go through the filter(s), sit it on top of CR and let it flow into the internal water tank.
Having wilderness camped I am a bit paranoid about water quality and judging by what I clean off of the outside of the ceramic it is not unfounded, and this strictly from campground water faucets.

These guys might have something that would suet your needs. I have there squeeze filter for backpacking and I love it !
http://sawyer.com/water.html

We use water faucets/hydrants marked potable water to fill our onboard tank.
Since the trailers water tank/water system is only used a few times a year, we do not drink the water from the system.
I sanitize the system every year with a bleach solution, so it is probably safe to drink...but as I am on vacation when we are using the trailer, it just isn't worth the risk, to me.

We bring water from home (tap water our bodies are used to) and or use bottled water for drinking and brushing teeth.
Showers, cooking, etc, we use the tank water.
We freeze a gallon and several smaller bottles of water before trips, and use them as "ice" in the cooler.
As they thaw, we have drinking water.

Rob

droid, I've hit forestry sites all over this great province and have never gotten sick from the water (knock on wood!), though I would never suggest someone 'not worry about it' simply because I don't.
I've installed filtration systems in boats but I'm taking the simpler route and allowing storage for bottled water and treating my tanked water as non-potable.

Just as everybody is different, so are our needs. I have been going over my design for my trailer, as I would like to have a Tiny House my demand for water would be different as well. I think what I would like to do is have an inboard water container that I can refile and filter before it goes into my trailer.I know boiling water kills most of the bacteria that can be in it, but I was wondering if anybody has found different ways with filters and or maybe a 12 volt sterilizer of some sort.. I know with water coming in the trailer usually means water going out of the trailer in one form or another, So my question is do you filter that too? one of the ideas I was thinking of is using it for plants and gardening that could possibly benefit from the water, whats your opinions on that? Are there any plants that need high amount of water more then others? Or if I can get the water clean enough can I recycle it in other ways? I was thinking possible steam engine, but as someone noted before when the question was brought up that it would eventually plug the engine...what are some of your ideas

Droid

You might want to look into "fresnel lense distillation". I am toying with this idea for the caboose as a method of safely disposing of grey water, I am not quite sure what will be left (solids) after you cook it down but the volumn has to be conciderably less after boiling off and distilling the water portion of the grey water tank liquids.

They claim urine can be reclaimed as potable water. I think I will pass

UV is touted for sterilization but it only works on clear water that has already been filtered - any turbidity and its effectiveness goes down. A still might be a good option in your case - a copper coil attached to the valve of a pressure cooker might be a cheap way to play with it to see if it will work for you. You can put water from any source into it and you'll get pure H2O out of it, leaving any metals or other contaminants behind. A small Coleman 1-burner ought to be simple to rig up as a dedicated unit.

IF I were to recycle urine (yuck), that's the only way I would consider doing it as it extracts only the water.

For mechanical filtration I would think an RO system is what you'd want to be able to filter down enough to make the water safe to drink, which requires gradually finer micron filters to keep the 'big' stuff from clogging the membrane, and a high pressure pump to force it through.
There are plans online for sand/charcoal gravity filters as well. They use vertical lengths of PVC sewer pipe and should be good to at least water the plants with (never built one myself though)

wow thanks for the interesting replies . Where to start....urine I was looking at getting a urine separating toilet so it could be safely stored in jugs then it is nitrogen that is safe for plants one of the Ideas that I had was to get some miniatures tree that could use up the wastes I was thinking of getting a small worm farm as well to help break down any of the Solids. I like the idea of boiling off the waste and if it could be run through a turbine of sorts, to generate some electricity then that would be an added bonus. I figure in order for it to be sustainable I'll need a few days worth of water on hand so that it just becomes either a daily chore or better yet a weekly chore...of refilling the tanks

Not cheap but they work, composting toilets,
Human waste goes in, dry soil like compost comes out,
No water use

http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_self_exce_ne.html


All this talk of boiling, better have lots of fuel on hand