Bongo Fury

We're getting a conversion done by JAL and we need to decide about water supply but I have to be honest, I'm confused!

Phil has advised (and I think I've seen other people on here say the same thing) that we have outside connection with electronic water pump to taps. I don't think this would work for us though because there will be many occasions when we don't have any kind of hook up. I get that having tanks is unhygenic if you leave them to get yucky, but don't you just empty them out between trips, like we do with our water container when we are in the tent? Are they really inaccessible on a conversion? If we have the outside connection, does this mean that we have no way of getting water to the sink if we are wild camping or at a festival?

I've spend ages googling it and I can't quite get my head round it. Please help! You guys all seem pretty friendly....

We have ours internal black ones, and provided you keep them full then there is insufficient Oxygen to allow growth of anything. We do drain it a couple of times a year and use a cleaner but then promptly refill, been doing that for 12 years without problems. If you don't use the water in the tank within about 2 months then a drain and refill just to ensure that the water doesn't get to stagnant is all we have needed to do.
The cleaner we use is the https://www.amazon.co.uk/Puriclean-Wate ... r_1_11type.

Whether you have an internal or external tank the electric pump will run from the battery, leisure battery if you have one fitted.

This needs to be topped up, either from mains or a solar panel, but this system will work on site or at festivals, both need to be cleaned, as Geoff says.

If you don't recharge the battery it will (obviously) go flat, regardless of which tank you go for.

An internal tank has the disadvantage you need to drive to a water point or fill it from a container, an external one needs to be stored when not in use.

Whichever you decide I would keep a water container (I use a 2 gallon one with tap) as a simple, fail safe, back up, or save a good bit of £££ by just using that method.

Hope that helps a little, and welcome to BF.

Thank you!

Do feel free to ask any more questions.

We're a friendly rabble.

My fresh water and waste water tanks are inside the van, in the cupboard under my kitchen unit. They are small so easy to fill and empty so I just drain them after a trip and leave the tanks empty. I wanted to be self contained, rather than have an external water supply and bucket for grey water, so it works for me.

My van has a full side conversion. The water tank is housed in the dead space at the bottom of the unit, good in that it makes use of an inaccessible area so isn't wasting usable storage space, bad in that because it's inaccessible it was difficult to replace the pump when I needed to. The filler for the tank is on the outside of the van and needs either a hose or jerry can to fill the tanks 15l capacity, not a big deal really. The sink waste is piped outside which again saves taking up usable storage space inside the van. I carry a jerry can to catch it rather than leave a soggy corner outside. I don't tend to stay in one place for very long so the leisure battery gets a good charge between stops. The tap takes very little power, it's the fridge that's the big hitter, the 95ah battery survives running it for about four days in hot weather.