Yahooligan
Temecula, CA
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Joined: 11/05/2007
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Just wondering if anyone has figured out about how much water they use per day when dry camping or if there is some approximate formula.
5 minute shower turned off while soaping = X gallons
Toilet flush = X
and so on...
Not like we're planning on rushing out into the middle of nowhere to staying until we run out of water to find out, but it would be useful to know what other peoples' usage has been.
There are 4 of us (2 adults, a 4-year-old and 8-year-old) and our TT holds 45 gallons of fresh water. I'm thinking maybe 3-5 gallons max for quick showers, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 gallon per flush, then whatever we need for cooking (Though we may end up using bottled water for cooking and drinking).
That being the case, it sounds like we'd only get 2 days out of a tank if we all took "long" showers and flushed the toilet a few times a day.
This may be an ongoing experiment for us. I've also thought about looking for a little water meter that hooks up to a garden hose, that way we can monitor our usage when hooked up to city water and be able to tell how much we use, how long we could go, and how we can change our usage to use less water.
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Dixonmatco
Santa Rosa, California
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Our TT has 55 FW, 40 Grey and 40 Black tanks. We dry camp 90% of the time. The first to reach limit is the Grey tank. If we do not make any special effort to conserve, we do the dishes in the sink, use the toilet exclusively (never use CG Toilets or Showers) and both of us shower every morning, we can make it 4 days easily. It is just the two of us. We could stretch it another day with some conservation efforts.
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BENT ARROW
CO.
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In June for 6 days with 4 adults taking 2 showers each, washing dish's twice a day, drinking bottled water and the 2 men using the outdoor tolet we had about 10 gal. of fresh water left in our 100 tank. The main water use was washing dish's, about 4 gal. each time.
With just my wife and I the dishwashing is cut 1/2 or more and have used less than 50 gal. in 8 days with both using the tolet and more showers.
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djgarcia
Northern, Ca. , USA
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Joined: 07/26/2002
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Two thoughts-
1. Put an off / on switch on your shower head.
2. teach everyone how to take the old "navy shower" technique. Rinse 10 seconds---H20 off--lather up the whole body-rinse 15 seconds, shower done . While not the ideal shower you would take at home, it will conserve H20.
Dick
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Love Boat II
Some where in the USA
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Dixonmatco wrote:Our TT has 55 FW, 40 Grey and 40 Black tanks. We dry camp 90% of the time. The first to reach limit is the Grey tank. If we do not make any special effort to conserve, we do the dishes in the sink, use the toilet exclusively (never use CG Toilets or Showers) and both of us shower every morning, we can make it 4 days easily. It is just the two of us. We could stretch it another day with some conservation efforts.
If you shower togeather you can save more.---
Use paper plates & drinking cups---
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dbbls
Missouri
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Joined: 09/29/2005
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Divide the number of days to empty the fresh water tank into the gallons in the tank and you will get an accurate number.
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Ajones42
North Texas
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I would think 4 days would be a good goal to shoot for and should be doable.
Some good suggestions above.
Washing dishes and pots and pans takes up a large volume of water. More than you would ever think. If you do wash dishes and pans, make sure the water is very hot. They come clean quicker.
Navy showers are a must. Catch the shower water when you are getting the temp set in a bucket. Use it for rinsing dishes or flushing the toilet.
Start with 3-5 gallons of water in your black tank when you leave home. Scrimp and save on water everywhere BUT the black water tank. Make sure you use plenty of water when flushing to adequately liquefy the waste.
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CT_WANDERER
E. Lyme, CT
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Love Boat 11 Every time DW and I try your method we use a lot more water. I can't figure that out? Two people it should be half the water!
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windriderjr
Massachusetts
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If you are camping in CGs that don't have water hookups, you are looking at two limits: fresh water and gray water. Gray water seems to be the real limiting factor and is the reason many of us have purchased "blue totes". We have 25 gal tanks for all three of our tanks and always seem to fill the gray tank before emptying the fresh water tank. I think it's just one of those camping mysteries. If you would rather not move your TT during longer stays to dump the gray water and refill the fresh water, a blue tote may be in your future.
I use a bunch of hoses (total up to 150 ft) with a "water thief" on the spigot end and a fresh water tank filler on the other end to refill my tank from the common water supply. Even if the hoses wont reach, I still use the water thief and a hose to fill 3 5-gal water jugs in the bed of the truck (that way I don't have to lift them). Then I siphon the water from the bed of the truck into my tank.
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Yahooligan
Temecula, CA
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Thanks for the info, this is really helpful.
Since I didn't mention it before, the BW and GW tanks are both 38 gallons each (45gal FW as mentioned before). Our general thoughts on dishes are, having kids, we'll probably stick with paper plates, plastic cups and utensils, and only have to deal with cleaning cookware. It's amazing how quickly dishes get dirty with kids! My concern with the disposable stuff is finding a place to drop them off for recycling, I hate the thought of just tossing everything into the trash where it won't be recycled.
Do we plan on dry camping a lot? I have no idea. It'd say a lot of it would be in state/national parks that don't have full hookups but I suspect they would have water and a dump station. Camping with no hookups or dump station would probably be pretty rare, a cursory check of the places we're likely to go shows one that is completely dry, all the others have water and a number of USFS campgrounds in the area also have dump stations if not hookups in some of the sites.
All things considered, it doesn't sound like this will be a huge problem for us and the places we're likely to spend multiple days are likely to have the facilities we need.
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